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Why People Dislike Really Smart Leaders (scientificamerican.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Scientific American: Intelligence makes for better leaders -- from undergraduates to executives to presidents -- according to multiple studies. It certainly makes sense that handling a market shift or legislative logjam requires cognitive oomph. But new research on leadership suggests that, at a certain point, having a higher IQ stops helping and starts hurting. The researchers looked at 379 male and female business leaders in 30 countries, across fields that included banking, retail and technology. The managers took IQ tests (an imperfect but robust predictor of performance in many areas), and each was rated on leadership style and effectiveness by an average of eight co-workers. IQ positively correlated with ratings of leader effectiveness, strategy formation, vision and several other characteristics -- up to a point. The ratings peaked at an IQ of around 120, which is higher than roughly 80 percent of office workers. Beyond that, the ratings declined. The researchers suggest the "ideal" IQ could be higher or lower in various fields, depending on whether technical versus social skills are more valued in a given work culture. The study's lead author, John Antonakis, a psychologist at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland, suggests leaders should use their intelligence to generate creative metaphors that will persuade and inspire others -- the way former U.S. President Barack Obama did. "I think the only way a smart person can signal their intelligence appropriately and still connect with the people," Antonakis says, "is to speak in charismatic ways."
The difference between the average person (IQ 100) and and a legally retarded guy in a helmet (IQ 70) is the same as between a bright college guy (IQ 115) and a really dull witted convict (IQ 85) is the difference between a professor (IQ 130) and average guy. Maybe the gap becomes too big for the brainy prof to care about winning popularity contest?
-The art of programming is the pursuit of absolute simplicity.
Hitler, David Koresh and Charles Manson were charismatic too. Shortly after Obama was elected the wiki article on Charismatic Leaders was deleted. Charisma will lead the sheep to slaughter but it doesn't indicate strong leadership or managerial skills.
Trump DID beat something like 17 supposedly very well qualified Republican opponents who had that Washington DC establishment stamp-of-approval.....
and then he beat Hillary Clinton, who Democrats told us was the smartest and most-qualified candidate ever (at least now that Obama was ineligible to run again) even though she rigged her primary and outspent Trump by something like 7-to-1 AND had ABC,CBS,NBC,MSNBC,PBS,CNN,NPR and nearly every newspaper on her side - oh, yeah, and a lot of the Republican establishment backed her too.....
Now it appears that even the Obama FBI and the Obama DOJ were pulling for Hillary.
The "stable genius" was so stable and so genius he remembered that Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania exist - apparently quite a feat.
The problem with "common sense" is for the most part, its neither common, nor sense. Theres a lot of things that "common sense" says is right , but reality disagrees. Things like migration , crime and punishment , foreign relations, military tactics, climate change, and so on, all having counter intuitive truths behind them that defy "common" sense.
Its a problem thats been recognized all the way back to the ancient greeks. Plato though a good alternative was the Philosopher King, putting the smartest man in greece in charge (presumably, him). Fortunately for democracy later thinkers noted dictatorships tended to favor military experts rather than civil experts, and kindoms favored heredity.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
You're on the right track I think. I doubt it has to do with the number of neurons, but high IQs correlate with autism, for example. People with excessive but narrowly focused intelligence do well on a test that measures a narrow aspect of intelligence...
Beyond autism, which is a neurological condition, I've noticed intelligent people often develop particularly bad attitudes and ways of interacting with people. (Some of these attitudes have been codified as "personality disorders".) It's easy for them to feel like they are above other people, and for that conception to shine through as taking a condescending tone when talking to people. I was the same way early on in my youth. Some people develop the maturity to grow out of it, others don't. Well, I still maybe talk that way sometimes on Slashdot. But in contexts where I'm interested in maintaining a positive relationship with whoever I'm talking to, no.
But how smart was Einstein really? Yes, we know he produced the Theory of Relativity. But was that a result of extraordinary intelligence, or the result of a serendipitous insight, similar to the creative insights artists and musicians have (people that aren't exactly renowned for their intelligence).
While Einstein did produce the Theory of Relativity, I've also heard that Teller and Oppenheimer excluded him for the A-bomb project because, Theory of Relativity or not, they just weren't that impressed with his abilities as a physicist. Also, people who knew him personally have reported he wasn't particularly fast on his feet.
The point I'm trying to make is that we tend to credit extraordinary achievements to high intelligence. But as far as I know Einstein never took an IQ test. All we can say about the man is that he achieved something extraordinary, and from there we assume it was a product of extraordinary intelligence. Certainly he was more intelligent than average (he had a Ph.D in physics, after all), but it's not clear that his achievements were so much a product of intelligence, as measured by IQ, or simply a smarter than average guy who happened to be a very creative thinker (not the same thing).
http://blogs.discovermagazine....
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Multiple studies have been done on this phenomenon, and I am rather surprised that this is presented as "news".
The simple fact is that people generally do not accept "leaders" who have IQs more than about 20 points higher than their own. And the reason -- according to current theory -- is that they just don't understand how each other think.
This has shown to hold for IQs between about 70 and 160.
Someone with an IQ of 70 does not well understand someone of IQ 100, someone of IQ 90 does not well understand someone of IQ 120 and someone of 120 does not well understand someone with an IQ of 150.
There is a rather large body of study and evidence to support this. It is no great mystery.
You could simply choose *not* to suffer under the administration. ISIS is all but defeated, jobs are coming back, taxes were reduced, many people are getting bonuses, North Korea is coming to the Olympics, and we're no longer in the TPP.
Not to mention, if you happen to live in Puerto Rico, free paper towels.
Who doesn't love free paper towels?
Many smart people who are not a psychologist might believe that leaders can contribute much more in ways other than communications and signaling.
Like oh, I don't know, making wise decisions? Organizing people and their work? Fitting people into roles which will best take advantage of their capabilities?
"Speaking in charismatic ways" from the University of Lausanne in Switzerland sounds like the logic which awarded Obama a Nobel Peace Prize for getting himself elected.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
Mary: It's okay to be smarter than everybody else, but you can't go around pointing it out.
Sheldon: Why?
Mary: Because people don't like it!
Sorry for the quote. It's rare that BBT-quotes are on topic, so let me have that moment.
People don't dislike smart leaders. They dislike people that make them feel stupid. And with half of the people that's pretty easy to do if your intelligence is even just average. What they like is people that make them feel smart and superior. And that's easy to do for someone who comes across as an idiot.
That might have been true for Bush Jr., but not for Trump. Trump is an asshole, but he ain't stupid. He doesn't even fake being stupid. Then why does Trump "work"? Well, mostly because Hillary didn't, but even that's secondary. Trump offers easy answers to very complicated question. Answers that can be understood by anyone, and as long as nobody questions them or even has to implement them, that's fine.
Unfortunately that only gets you so far. That's basically what fell the Soviet Union. Lots of rhetoric but very little substance in the end, and the smokescreen of martial words and promises eventually evaporates.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Mitt Romney is one of the smartest presidential candidates this nation has ever seen, as well as a fundamentally decent human being.
While it's certainly true that Mitt Romney is very intelligent, I very much disagree with you that he was a fundamentally decent human being. If I ever came across him in an everyday situation, I'm sure he'd be perfectly nice and I'd have no problems getting along - but if you look at what policies he was advocating for, sorry, that is not what a decent human being would want to do, at least not in my book.
Of course, I'd vote for him over Trump any day (not that I'd be allowed to, not a US citizen), but that's a very low bar; I'd vote for almost any presidential candidate in the last couple of decades, both Democrat and Republican, over Trump if those were my two options.
And while your criticism toward the New York Times columnist you mention may certainly be justified, and the media with their sensationalist bias do deserve their fair share of criticism in how they covered the 2012 election (the same sensationalist bias had a part to play in the election of Trump, because putting him on constantly boosted their ratings, though of course it wasn't the only factor), I think you're view of Romney is colored with rose-tinted glasses.
I see the same thing with many Democrats who now have this naive view of the Obama administration. Sure, compared to the current one, I'd really like Obama back, but again, that's a low bar. And while I think he had some good accomplishments during his presidency, he also did some truly awful things.
As bad as things are currently, and as much as I'd really like all the other people back compared to the current situation, we really shouldn't forget that those people had huge flaws as well.
(Also, think what you will of Obama's views and actions, but he is really intelligent as well, so it's not like Romney lost _because_ he was intelligent, so I don't think your point in response to this article makes sense.)
Because Thomas Jefferson.
The argument that "too much" intelligence makes for a bad leader is always made by someone who is trying to rationalize the unpopularity of his own pet ideas.
Hard to explain how a former state legislator with no noteworthy accomplishments and current freshmen Jr. US Senator (again, with no real accomplishments) is suddenly thrust into the nomination for the party without considering the identity politics angle as a major driver. I doubt the Democratic party will have another all white male ticket again as the party now sees group identity of people first and foremost.
No matter where you go, there you are.