“How is a kid this smart missing something so simple?” It’s a question I asked several years ago, and I have to admit that this student had me fooled. Which is what this article is about. Sometimes kids can fool you if you aren’t thinking about intelligence in fine detail.
I was wrapping up a unit for older students about research and online information. We talked about how to think critically about sources of information that they might encounter online. I showed students many different online sources as examples. Some were very respectable publications. Others were inflammatory and irresponsible. Others were in between. I did my best to keep those opinions to myself, though, and just asked students to talk me through what they were seeing. They did a good job picking up on things. We talked about whether or not publications had a clear distinction between editorials and news, whether they tended to use click-baity or loaded language, how sources chose to frame arguments, whether they offered sources as support for claims that needed support, whether opposing voices were given the right to reply, and so forth.
Along the way we had extensive conversations about bias in sources and bias in ourselves. I explained that all people have their own biases which means that reliable sources aren’t bias-free, but rather that you can see that they take measures to mitigate bias, or at least to let you know where their biases lie. And, just as importantly, as consumers of information we are biased as well, so how we perceive the bias of a given source will be influenced by our own pre-existing beliefs. Specifically, people are likely to see sources that confirm their beliefs as less biased and sources that contradict their beliefs as more biased. And, of course, I explained that the statement would be true for me also so how I talked to them about sources was influenced by my own biases.
To conclude, we did an interesting activity. I went through a variety of sources and had students rate where they thought the sources stood on a scale reliability in telling both an accurate and complete story as well as where they thought the biases of the sources lay. It was interesting to see students’ ratings, but among all my classes one student fell far outside the norm. Where others gave different sources a variety of ratings, he rated every source as perfectly unreliable.
It puzzled me because I considered this student one of the most intelligent and capable in a very intelligent and capable class. I was certain that he hadn’t misunderstood the nature of the activity or the concepts of the lesson. So I asked him about it after class. He said that he was a biased observer, and therefore unable to fairly rate the reliability or biases of any source. It was at this point that I felt baffled. “How is a kid this smart missing something so simple?” Like I said, he had me fooled. Actually, maybe it was more accurate to say that I had me fooled.
The reason I had me fooled was because I wasn’t thinking through intelligence with any sort of fine distinction. I thought, “He can organize his thoughts, his comprehension is high, he can structure his arguments well, he’s very good at formal logic, and he is articulate. He’s a logical thinker, so how is he missing such a simple idea?”
I wonder if you have ever thought something similar? Did you ever look at a student and because they were strong at organizing ideas, understanding information, analyzing, structuring arguments and were logical thinkers you thought to yourself, “Job done! They are critical thinkers!” Well you were probably right that they really were critical thinkers in that way. But I would also suggest that the question is worth a second look, because if you aren’t looking at intelligence in fine distinction you may miss a key lesson that this particular experience taught me:
What we traditionally call logical thought is a separate mental skill from nuanced thought.
A study published in 2023 in the scientific journal Experimental Psychology and Cognitive Science makes the point well. In the study researchers wanted to understand whether or not deductive reasoning and probabilistic reasoning can truly be considered distinct mental skills. They tested the question by using brain imaging to see if participants using different types of reasoning would draw on separate neurological resources as they thought through logical questions. The design of the study was both simple and interesting.
Participants in the study were asked to evaluate logical operations of three types. All three types were valid, meaning that the conclusions could definitely be drawn if the premises were assumed to be true. But they differed in the level of how likely they were to be true in real terms. Some had a high probability of being true in real terms because there were very few intervening factors that might contradict the major premise of the logical operation. For example:
- If the person jumps into the swimming pool, then the person gets wet.
- The person jumps into the swimming pool.
- Therefore, the person gets wet.
As you can see, very few factors would make it false that if you jump in a swimming pool that you wouldn’t get wet. Maybe if you were wearing a space suit, but otherwise it’s pretty close to a guarantee.
Other logical operations had a low probability of being true in real terms because of a large number of possible intervening factors in the major premise.
- If the person sits in the draft, then the person catches a cold.
- The person sits in the draft.
- Therefore, the person catches a cold.
In this case you can see that if you sit in a draft, you might wear a sweater, have a strong immune system, not be exposed to a virus, etc. and any of these might keep you from catching a cold.
Finally, some of the logical operations had no basis for probability or improbability. For example:
- If the box is empty, then the box has stars on it.
- The box is empty.
- Therefore, the box has stars on it.
As you can see, there is no particular reason to believe or disbelieve the major premise because whether or not boxes with stars are empty is entirely contextual.
For all three types, participants were also asked to evaluate invalid operations (invalid meaning that the premises don’t necessarily add up to the conclusion) such as:
- If the person jumps into the swimming pool, the person gets wet.
- The person gets wet.
- Therefore, the person jumps into the swimming pool.
As participants evaluated the logical operations, half were asked to evaluate the validity of the conclusion based on formal rules of logic. This means that they were instructed to presume that the premises were true and to simply evaluate, yes or no, whether the conclusion followed logically from the premises.
The other half of participants were asked to reason in probabilistic terms. This means that they were instructed to consider on a scale how likely the conclusion was to be true given their understanding of the real world and how it works. By comparison, one of these tasks was very simple and the other more complex. The results were fascinating.
fMRI imaging showed that as the participants considered the questions, the two groups drew on very different areas of the brain to do the two different types of thinking. However, this was only true for two of the three types of operations. For both the high and low probability operations, participants in the two groups drew from different areas on different sides of the brain. However, with the operations that had no basis for probabilistic reasoning, participants reverted to the parts of the brain used for formal logic.
These results suggest that not only are probabilistic reasoning and deductive reasoning distinct mental skills, but that the distinction is grounded in biology and brain structure. This, in turn, suggests that a person may have well developed pathways to facilitate one type of thinking, but poorly developed pathways to facilitate another.
As a side note, there is more to the study and it is relatively readable and very interesting, so if you want to take a further look, you can see it here.
Which brings me back to my poor assumption and lack of fine distinction regarding my student’s poor assumption and lack of fine distinction (the irony here is deep).
Bias isn’t a binary issue. People don’t just simply have bias or not. Everyone has bias in some degree large or small depending on a host of contextual factors. And bias doesn’t either entirely erase the ability to draw his conclusions or not interfere at all. It always interferes to some extent based, again, on many contextual factors. So bias isn’t best understood as a simple yes or no issue. It’s more like a scale. The question is how much bias affects our judgment in a given situation. It’s a difficult question that you probably can’t answer perfectly, but that doesn’t mean you can’t come to any meaningful conclusions. But that isn’t how my student was thinking about it. My student was treating bias as a simple yes or no issue. I have bias, therefore I am entirely biased. He wasn’t seeing in fine distinction, but neither was I. I assumed that just because he was so strong in what we traditionally call logical thought that seeing bias as a complex issue of scale instead of as a binary issue would be clear and intuitive for him.
Since that experience with my very intelligent student years ago, I’ve come to appreciate the distinction I was missing more and more as I’ve come to see both what we traditionally call “logical thought” and what I am calling here “nuanced thought” as key issues in a student’s intellectual development and ability to capture a good and meaningful life. I’ve also observed that the activities and frameworks we pursue in education often emphasize traditional logical thought but leave something to be desired in the realm of teaching nuanced thought.
To help you understand the stakes here, let me offer a profile of what I have come to recognize as students who are very capable logical thinkers, but have room to grow as nuanced thinkers. These students are well organized, articulate, have high comprehension, are often regarded as thought leaders, and speak with lots of confidence. These students tend to really believe in their conclusions deeply. Of course they do! They have thought through them, their opinions can be logically concluded from the premises they operate on. And they can organize and explain what they think.
But on the other hand, these students also don’t exhibit a great ability to wonder if they are incorrect. They aren’t sorting through probabilities and counter examples of their premises in the way that they might. This means that they sometimes fail to consider contradictory evidence or arguments to their own premises even if those contrary arguments and evidence are readily available and fairly obvious. As a result, they are often baffled, exasperated, or even angry that others haven’t drawn their same conclusions. These students also tend to speak and think in sweeping absolute terms and dichotomies such as “celebrities are just idiots,” “we all know that politicians are corrupt,” “capitalism is oppression,” “feminism ruins everything it touches,” “American history is an embarrassment,” “good parents raise good kids,” or, of course, the absolute inverse of any of these statements. This effect means that these students are often susceptible to strawman fallacies and tend to evaluate statements as either absolutely true or false, even if those statements would be better understood as “mostly,” “sometimes,” or “contextually” true or false. So statements like “people are biased” or “crimes are bad” tend to register in their minds more like “all people are absolutely biased” or “all crimes are absolutely wrong to the same degree.”
Have you ever met students like this? Have you ever, more generally, met people like this? Maybe the most important question of all: have you ever been people like this? If you have, maybe you can appreciate why I think it matters to treat and teach nuanced thought as a distinct skill. Perhaps you can project out with me: how strong a person is in nuanced thought can have a huge impact on how they can get along with others, take feedback, develop the sort of mature frameworks that help navigate the really complex parts of life, and critically examine their own biases.
So, to that point, I would like to contribute some frameworks for those who would like to think about, teach, or develop nuanced thought in finer detail. Specifically, I would like to point out mental skills that make major contributions to nuanced thought.
Mental Skill #1: Perceiving Fine Distinction
A number of studies, including this one, have established that musicians are much better at distinguishing between minor pitch changes in notes than non-musicians. In other words it is at least reasonably fair to say that, on average, trained musicians actually hear more notes than people without training. This is a pretty good metaphor for nuanced thought and noticing fine distinction.
I’ll use an example to explain. I used to frequently say to students that “success is best defined as a process as opposed to an outcome.” What that means seemed clear enough to me, but I came to realize that students weren’t always hearing the note that I thought I was playing. Was it because they were dummies? No, it’s just that minds that are maturing (or even mature minds) don’t always see in fine distinction.
I had a student come back after graduation once and ask, “Sam, I’ve been thinking about this a lot. If success is a process, not an outcome, what if you have to escape a bear? Would you be happy that you just tried really hard to escape the bear?” It was a humorous way to make a serious point. Don’t outcomes matter? But here is the question. Did you catch the fine distinction between what I said and what he asked? He asked “If success is a process, not an outcome….” But that isn’t precisely what I said. I told him that I was going to repeat what I had always told him and that I wanted him to really pay attention to its meaning. “Success is best defined as a process as opposed to an outcome.” He got a big smile and said he couldn’t believe he had missed it all those years.
Essentially his maturing mind was finally able to distinguish between the notes
- Success is always a process and never an outcome
and
- On the whole, when seeking to define success in its most meaningful aspects, it is better to think of success as a process than an outcome.
The ability to see to that level of fine distinction has to be hard won, but it enables high level comprehension, reduces misunderstandings, and increases the ability to really say what you are trying to say.
Mental Skill #2: Perceiving Ambiguity
Perhaps this mental skill is just a different shade of mental skill number one (in fact maybe they all are), but is still worth a mention. Do a little exercise with me. Imagine that you read a book and a character in the book makes the statement about the church they grew up in, “I hated that church.” To some that statement will seem very straightforward. The character is anti-that church. Clear enough. But to others the statement may seem to have a great many more possible meanings. So what does it look like to you? What possible meanings do you see? And do those possible meanings come naturally, or did you have to think pretty hard about it? For example, did it strike you that the character may have meant
“I hated that doctrine.”
“I hated that congregation.”
“I hated being in that church, but would have loved being in another.”
“I hated the experience of being in church.”
“I hated the church building.”
“I hated the preacher at church.”
“I hated that my parents made me go to church.”
“I hated the whole church experience for reasons I didn’t understand, but now I do.”
“I hated the whole church experience for reasons I didn’t understand and still don’t.”
“I hated that church, but ‘hated’ is purposefully past tense because I no longer hate that church.”
We could go on for a while here.
As I watch students converse, I sometimes see them take as absolutely certain what is actually only a possible interpretation of another student’s statement. And that doesn’t usually matter too much in class because as they continue to discuss the misunderstanding is usually cleared up. But what about circumstances in which that isn’t possible? What about scam-adjacent advertisements that use purposeful ambiguity for profit? What about personal or political statements that could produce very different meanings depending on how they are understood. The ability to perceive ambiguity allows us to think and speak with greater precision, avoid being taken advantage of, and leave room to consider what someone means as opposed to making quick judgments.
Mental Skill #3: Avoiding Out-Group Homogeneity Bias
A study from 1980 offers interesting insight into a type of bias all of us have observed and participated in called out-group homogeneity bias. In the study students from two rival universities were asked to observe decisions made either by students from their own or the rival school. They were then asked how likely it was that others from the same university would make the same choice. The result was that participants were significantly more likely to predict that students from the rival university would make the same choice than students from their own university. It’s just one example of a well-studied phenomenon: people tend to see members of an out-group as more homogenous (similar to each other) than members of their own group. What I thought particularly interesting about the study is that the choices observed were relatively neutral such as choosing one type of music over another. One might expect to observe out-group homogeneity bias if the observed choices included things like shoving over a helpless grandma (of course “they” all do that, but “we” wouldn’t all be like that). But apparently the effect stayed true even if there wasn’t an intellectual motivation to lump the out-group together.
This sort of bias, and the ability to work against it has big implications for how cohesive society can be. Have you ever heard someone talk about “Trump supporters,” “the Jews,” “the gays,” “homeschoolers,” “public schoolers,” “liberals,” or “conservatives” as monoliths? Like what is really going on is some sort of hive mind where “they” work in concert to accomplish “their” agenda or just generally be dumb unlike “our” group? If you have, then maybe you can see the implications that I’m talking about.
This sort of thinking allows people to take their least favorite members of a given group and use them to represent the motivations and actions of the entire group. It allows us to make the sort of dismissive sweeping generalizations about other groups of people and divide the world into simple categories of good guys and bad guys in a way that causes a lot of problems in American discourse.
And this type of thinking is also inaccurate. People in any group do have enough in common to be in the group, but human hive minds don’t exist and every group of humans is full of humans that aren’t a different species than our own. As much as our own groups are made up of differing motivations, levels of commitments, and thought processes, others are too. And mature nuanced thinking is good at perceiving that fact.
Mental Skill #4: Perceiving False Binaries
One of my most exciting moments as a teacher is when I see a student grow enough in nuanced thinking to challenge false binaries. A false binary is a mental construct that forces one to choose between two options when there is no reason that other options couldn’t be taken. For example, legislators here in Utah are considering lowering the licensed driving age. It’s well established that teens get in more wrecks than older drivers, so key to the debate is the question of why that is true. Do teens get in more crashes because their brains are still developing or because they are inexperienced?
So did you catch it? The phrasing of my question presents a false binary. It presumes that the answer is going to wholly be one of these two options. But there is no reason that both couldn’t be contributing factors in any possible combination of how much they each affect the issue. And, of course, there isn’t any particular reason that there couldn’t be other factors involved as well.
So, like I said, when students start to challenge false binaries, it’s a big moment for me. But there is actually a moment that I like even better. This moment isn’t when they start to challenge other people’s false binaries, but when they start to challenge their own. Because, you see, my long experience teaching debate has taught me that people can be very motivated to engage in nuanced thinking if it helps confirm what they are motivated to believe. But it is much more difficult to engage in nuanced thinking that challenges what we currently believe. So when students begin to challenge false binaries, or think in fine distinction, or perceive ambiguity, or challenge their out-group homogeneity bias in ways that challenge rather than support confirmation bias, it becomes clear that nuanced thinking is really blossoming and becoming intuitive.
Conclusion
We might add other mental skills to the list of contributors to nuanced thinking including accurately imagining the perspective of another person, challenging one’s own biases, skill in calculating probabilities, or others that I don’t have the skill or experience to describe. But short of exploring every possible avenue, I hope that the discussion has been helpful. Specifically I hope you’ll have better frameworks for understanding than I did when I was left asking, “How is a kid this smart missing something so simple?” There was a good answer to that question, and with that answer, perhaps I could have helped him grow in ways I did not. Going back and giving it a second shot would be my first preference. But time doesn’t work that way (trust me, like Kip I’ve looked into it for myself) so my second preference is to understand better in the future.
By Sam Martineau
General Director