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The Difference between Rationality and
Intelligence
By DAVID Z. HAMBRICK and ALEXANDER P. BURGOYNE
SEPT. 16, 2016
ARE you intelligent — or rational? The question may sound redundant, but in recent years
researchers have demonstrated just how distinct those two cognitive attributes actually are.
It all started in the early 1970s, when the psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky
conducted an influential series of experiments showing that all of us, even highly intelligent
people, are prone to irrationality. Across a wide range of scenarios, the experiments revealed,
people tend to make decisions based on intuition rather than reason.
In one study, Professors Kahneman and Tversky had people read the following personality
sketch for a woman named Linda: “Linda is 31 years old, single, outspoken and very bright. She
majored in philosophy. As a student, she was deeply concerned with issues of discrimination and
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social justice, and also participated in antinuclear demonstrations.” Then they asked the subjects
which was more probable: (A) Linda is a bank teller or (B) Linda is a bank teller and is active in
the feminist movement. Eighty-five percent of the subjects chose B, even though logically
speaking, A is more probable. (All feminist bank tellers are bank tellers, though some bank
tellers may not be feminists.)
In the Linda problem, we fall prey to the conjunction fallacy — the belief that the co-occurrence
of two events is more likely than the occurrence of one of the events. In other cases, we ignore
information about the prevalence of events when judging their likelihood. We fail to consider
alternative explanations. We evaluate evidence in a manner consistent with our prior beliefs. And
so on. Humans, it seems, are fundamentally irrational.
But starting in the late 1990s, researchers began to add a significant wrinkle to that view. As the
psychologist Keith Stanovich and others observed, even the Kahneman and Tversky data show
that some people are highly rational. In other words, there are individual differences in
rationality, even if we all face cognitive challenges in being rational. So who are these more
rational people? Presumably, the more intelligent people, right?
Wrong. In a series of studies, Professor Stanovich and colleagues had large samples of subjects
(usually several hundred) complete judgment tests like the Linda problem, as well as an I.Q. test.
The major finding was that irrationality — or what Professor Stanovich called “dysrationalia” —
correlates relatively weakly with I.Q. A person with a high I.Q. is about as likely to suffer from
dysrationalia as a person with a low I.Q. In a 2008 study, Professor Stanovich and colleagues
gave subjects the Linda problem and found that those with a high I.Q. were, if anything, more
prone to the conjunction fallacy.
Based on this evidence, Professor Stanovich and colleagues have introduced the concept of the
rationality quotient, or R.Q. If an I.Q. test measures something like raw intellectual horsepower
(abstract reasoning and verbal ability), a test of R.Q. would measure the propensity for reflective
thought — stepping back from your own thinking and correcting its faulty tendencies.
There is also now evidence that rationality, unlike intelligence, can be improved through
training. In a pair of studies published last year in Policy Insights From the Behavioral and Brain
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Sciences, the psychologist Carey Morewedge and colleagues had subjects (more than 200 in each
study) complete a test to assess their susceptibility to various decision-making biases. Then,
some of the subjects watched a video about decision-making bias, while others played an
interactive computer game designed to decrease bias via simulations of real-world decision
making.
In the interactive games, following each simulation, a review gave the subjects instruction on
specific decision-making biases and individualized feedback on their performance. Immediately
after watching the video or receiving the computer training, and then again after two months, the
subjects took a different version of the decision-making test.
Professor Morewedge and colleagues found that the computer training led to statistically large
and enduring decreases in decision-making bias. In other words, the subjects were considerably
less biased after training, even after two months. The decreases were larger for the subjects who
received the computer training than for those who received the video training (though decreases
were also sizable for the latter group). While there is scant evidence that any sort of “brain
training” has any real-world impact on intelligence, it may well be possible to train people to be
more rational in their decision making.
It is, of course, unrealistic to think that we will ever live in a world where everyone is completely
rational. But by developing tests to identify the most rational among us, and by offering training
programs to decrease irrationality in the rest of us, scientific researchers can nudge society in that
direction.
David Z. Hambrick is a professor in the psychology department at Michigan State
University, where Alexander P. Burgoyne is a graduate student.
Original Source:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/18/opinion/sunday/the-difference-between-rationality-andintelligence.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur
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