This is the kind of rational thinking we are compelled to do every day, whether deciding which foods to eat, where to invest money, or how to deal with a difficult client at work. That's because they are unable to assess things such as a person's ability to critically weigh up information, or whether an individual can override the intuitive cognitive biases that can lead us astray. IQ tests are very good at measuring certain mental faculties, he says, including logic, abstract reasoning, learning ability and working-memory capacity - how much information you can hold in mind.īut the tests fall down when it comes to measuring those abilities crucial to making good judgements in real-life situations. To Stanovich, however, there is nothing incongruous about it. He says it applies to more people than you might think.
How can someone with a high IQ have these kinds of intellectual deficiencies? Put another way, how can a "smart" person act foolishly? Keith Stanovich, professor of human development and applied psychology at the University of Toronto, Canada, has grappled with this apparent incongruity for 15 years.
Bush himself has described his thinking style as "not very analytical". The political pundit and former Republican congressman Joe Scarborough accused him of lacking intellectual depth, claiming that compared with other US presidents whose intellect had been questioned, Bush junior was "in a league by himself". Even his loyal speechwriter David Frum called him glib, incurious and "as a result ill-informed". Even those sympathetic to the former president have acknowledged that as a thinker and decision-maker he is not all there. But this, surely, does not tell the whole story. Bush's IQ score is estimated to be above 120, which suggests an intelligence in the top 10 per cent of the population.
BUSH stupid? It's a question that occupied a good many minds of all political persuasions during his turbulent eight-year presidency.
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