Why You're Smarter Than You Think
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Many of us know what it feels like to be overlooked. The school we would love to study at doesn't love us back. We get passed over for a job or a promotion.
What assumptions about intelligence do we have from childhood?
When we ask to try our hand at something, we're told no. Now, sometimes rejection might be a true reflection of our abilities. We can't run fast enough to make the team or remember all the facts needed to get through medical school. There are other times, however, when rejection is not about our limitations, it's that other people see us as limited. Our concerns over how we are judged are often most acute, most charged, when it comes to the topic of intelligence. Most of us don't just want to be smart. We want to be seen as smart.
I just remember being taunted and being told things like, oh, you're too stupid to go on to fourth grade, you idiot, that sort of thing. But yeah, it was really painful.
This week on Hidden Brain, many of us have knee-jerk conclusions about what intelligence is and how it can be measured. We think we know what intelligence is, But do we really?
It almost instantly seduced me into loving the science of IQ intelligence. And I forgot that I was supposed to be on this vendetta. I forgot.
In the first three years of his life, Scott Barry Kaufman suffered from a number of ear infections.
It made it very hard for me to process auditory input in real time. And so I was a couple milliseconds behind everyone else. I would hear things and then I would have to, in my head, cognitively process it. Like listen to it over again while everyone else was already on to the next thing.
The conclusion that many people drew? Scott wasn't very bright.
You know, it's very easy to look at someone and just judge them as dumb because they're slower than someone else. And that sort of processing speed issue is one that I confronted first and foremost as a kid.
Scott's teachers didn't know what to make of him. He was often very creative, but he didn't seem to be able to keep up with his peers. Things came to a head in the third grade.
And I believe the official diagnosis was I was too immature to go on to fourth grade. And I remember thinking to myself, my gosh, I must be really immature if I'm too immature to go to fourth grade. That's really bad.
Scott has seen the reports his teachers wrote about him when he was a kid. They say the problem was about more than academics.
They say things like he's off to the side often, like socially isolated. He seems to be in his own world. I guess they viewed all that as some form of worrying disability, you know, that I sort of was off on my own planet over there.
He quickly discovered that when you repeat a grade, the kids around you start to look at you differently.
It really amplified this feeling I already had of that I was different. I remember even from first to third grade, I felt like a huge outsider from the other kids, but then making me repeat third grade and then having all my friends go on and they kept me there, it amplified it to a very, very large degree. I remember feeling really, really low self-esteem And I remember just being very, very confused because I didn't actually feel like there was anything wrong with me.
Scott has a specific memory from that additional year he spent in third grade. A group of kids formed a circle around him in the bathroom.
If you took me back to Penwyn Elementary School and you're like, show me the bathroom, show me the sink that you were pushed, your face was pushed into the sink and the water was running, I could point you directly to it. And I just remember being taunted and being told things like, oh, you're too stupid to go on the fourth grade, you idiot, that sort of thing. But yeah, it was really painful.
When Scott was seven, and again at 11, school administrators made him take IQ tests so they could figure out next steps for him. One test stands out in his memory like a scene from a movie.
I remember driving up this very windy road to get there. It somehow seems fitting. Very, very long, long, windy road.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:01–0:16
2
What assumptions about intelligence do we have from childhood?
0:16–5:58
3
How does Scott Barry Kaufman's early experience shape his view on intelligence?
5:58–9:10
4
What are the limitations of traditional IQ tests?
9:10–14:13
5
How does engagement impact our potential for learning?
14:13–18:56
6
What role does creativity play in defining intelligence?
18:56–24:44
7
How can acceptance improve relationships?
24:44–31:41
8
What strategies can couples use to navigate conflicts?
31:41–1:34:09