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The Truth Wins

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The Truth Wins

You Are Not So Smart

David McRaney,

5 min read
4 take-aways
Audio & text

What's inside?

Learn how social problem-solving boosts human intelligence – and could make online debates smarter.

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Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Innovative
  • Scientific
  • Eye Opening

Recommendation

This episode of You Are Not So Smart explores research in social psychology that suggests, well, maybe you are. Tom Stafford, a University of Sheffield psychologist, delves into his research showing people have more intelligence than they get credit for – it just takes the right context to make their smarts operational. Stafford explains to host David McRaney exactly what that context is, and how computer scientists are working to bring it to online interactions.

Summary

Humans are bad at thinking individually.

Cognitive reflection testing shows most people are lazy, irrational thinkers who often leap to the obvious – but wrong – answer. The most famous cognitive reflection test question goes as follows: If a bat and ball together cost $1.10, and the price of the bat is a dollar more than the ball, what’s the price of the ball? Most people give 10 cents as the answer, and they’re wrong. (It’s five cents.) For the overall standard cognitive reflection test, only 17% of people answer all the questions correctly, and fully one-third of test-takers answer them all incorrectly.

In another “gold standard” test for human reasoning, the Wason Selection Task, people are shown four cards, showing the letters and numbers E, K, 2 and 7. The tester tells the subject each card has a number or letter printed on its reverse...

About the Podcast

Cognitive scientist Tom Stafford studies learning and decision-making at the University of Sheffield. He is the author of Mind Hacks and For Argument’s Sake. The You Are Not So Smart podcast explores humans’ unwarranted confidence in their own reasoning, perception and motivation, and is inspired by host David McRaney’s best-selling book of the same name. McRaney is also the best-selling author of How Minds Change.

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