Why Smart People Can Be So Stupid

✍ Scribed by Robert J. Sternberg (editor)

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Year: 2008
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 264
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

One need not look far to find breathtaking acts of stupidity committed by people who are smart, or even brilliant. The behavior of smart individuals—from presidents to prosecutors to professors—is at times so amazingly stupid as to seem inexplicable. Why do otherwise intelligent people think and behave in ways so stupid that they sometimes destroy their livelihoods or even their lives?
This book is the first devoted to investigating what the most current psychological research can tell us about stupidity in everyday life. The contributors to the volume, renowned scholars in various areas of human intelligence, present fascinating examples of people messing up their lives, and they offer insights into the reasons for such behavior. From a variety of perspectives, the contributors discuss:
• The nature and theory of stupidity
• How stupidity contributes to stupid behavior
• Whether stupidity is measurable
While many millions of dollars are spent each year on intelligence research and testing to determine who has the ability to succeed, next to nothing is spent to determine who will make use of their intelligence and not squander it by behaving stupidly. Why Smart People Can Be So Stupid focuses on the neglected side of this discussion, reviewing the full range of theory and research on stupid behavior and analyzing what it tells us about how people can avoid stupidity and its devastating consequences.

✦ Table of Contents

Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
1. Why and When Are Smart People Stupid?
2. Beliefs That Make Smart People Dumb
3. Smart People Doing Dumb Things
4. The Engine of Folly
5. When Smart People Behave Stupidly
6 Sex, Lies, and Audiotapes
7. Rationality, Intelligence, and Levels of Analysis in Cognitive Science
8. Smart Is as Stupid Does
9. Personality Dispositions
10. When ‘‘Stupid’’ Is Smarter Than We Are
11. Smart People Are Not Stupid, But They Sure Can Be Foolish
List of Contributors
Index