What Intelligence Tests Miss; The Psychology of Rational Thought

by Keith E. Stanovich

• ISBN13: 9780300123852
• ISBN10: 030012385X
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Trade Book
• Copyright: 2009-01-27
• Publisher: Yale University Press

Summary

Critics of intelligence testswriters such as Robert Sternberg, Howard Gardner, and Daniel Golemanhave argued in recent years that these tests neglect important qualities such as emotion, empathy, and interpersonal skills. However, such critiques imply that though intelligence tests may miss certain key noncognitive areas, they encompass most of what is important in the cognitive domain. In this book, Keith E. Stanovich challenges this widely held assumption. Stanovich shows that IQ tests (or their proxies, such as the SAT) are radically incomplete as measures of cognitive functioning. They fail to assess traits that most people associate with "good thinking," skills such as judgment and decision making. Such cognitive skills are crucial to real-world behavior, affecting the way we plan, evaluate critical evidence, judge risks and probabilities, and make effective decisions. IQ tests fail to assess these skills of rational thought, even though they are measurable cognitive processes. Rational thought is just as important as intelligence, Stanovich argues, and it should be valued as highly as the abilities currently measured on intelligence tests.

Author Biography

Keith E. Stanovich is professor of human development and applied psychology, University of Toronto. He is author of How to Think Straight about Psychology and The Robot’s Rebellion: Finding Meaning in the Age of Darwin, among other books. He lives in Portland, OR.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. ix
Acknowledgments	p. xiii
Inside George W. Bush's Mind: Hints at What IQ Tests Miss	p. 1
Dysrationalia: Separating Rationality and Intelligence	p. 8
The Reflective Mind, the Algorithmic Mind, and the Autonomous Mind	p. 20
Cutting Intelligence Down to Size	p. 45
Why Intelligent People Doing Foolish Things Is No Surprise	p. 59
The Cognitive Miser: Ways to Avoid Thinking	p. 70
Framing and the Cognitive Miser	p. 86
Myside Processing: Heads I Win-Tails I Win Too!	p. 101
A Different Pitfall of the Cognitive Miser: Thinking a Lot, but Losing	p. 115
Mindware Gaps	p. 129
Contaminated Mindware	p. 152
How Many Ways Can Thinking Go Wrong? A Taxonomy of Irrational Thinking Tendencies and Their Relation to Intelligence	p. 172
The Social Benefits of Increasing Human Rationality-and Meliorating Irrationality	p. 195
Notes	p. 213
Bibliography	p. 243
Index	p. 303
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