by Adam Grant
role that wildfires play in the life cycles of forests: Kathryn Schulz, “The Story That Tore Through the Trees,” New York Magazine, September 9, 2014, nymag.com/arts/books/features/mann-gulch-norman-maclean-2014-9/index.html.
Chapter 1. A Preacher, a Prosecutor, a Politician, and a Scientist Walk into Your Mind
“Progress is impossible without change”: George Bernard Shaw, Everybody’s Political What’s What? (London: Constable, 1944).
Mike Lazaridis has had a defining: Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff, Losing the Signal: The Untold Story behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry (New York: Flatiron Books, 2015).
the fastest-growing company: “100 Fastest-Growing Companies,” CNN Money, August 31, 2009, money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortunefastestgrowing/2009/full_list/.
five times as much information: Richard Alleyne, “Welcome to the Information Age—174 Newspapers a Day,” Daily Telegraph, February 11, 2011, www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/8316534/Welcome-to-the-information-age-174-newspapers-a-day.html.
medical knowledge was doubling: Peter Densen, “Challenges and Opportunities Facing Medical Education,” Transactions of the American Clinical and Climatological Association 122 (2011): 48–58.
become more extreme: Joshua J. Clarkson, Zakary L. Tormala, and Christopher Leone, “A Self-Validation Perspective on the Mere Thought Effect,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 47 (2011): 449–54.
and more entrenched: Jamie Barden and Richard E. Petty, “The Mere Perception of Elaboration Creates Attitude Certainty: Exploring the Thoughtfulness Heuristic,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 95 (2008): 489–509.
such subjects as Cleopatra’s roots: W. Ralph Eubanks, “How History and Hollywood Got ‘Cleopatra’ Wrong,” NPR, November 1, 2010, www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130976125.
tyrannosaurs had colorful feathers: Jason Farago, “T. Rex Like You Haven’t Seen Him: With Feathers,” New York Times, March 7, 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/03/07/arts/design/t-rex-exhibition-american-museum-of-natural-history.html; Brigit Katz, “T. Rex Was Likely Covered in Scales, Not Feathers,” Smithsonian, June 8, 2017, www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/t-rex-skin-was-not-covered-feathers-study-says-180963603.
sound waves can activate the visual cortex: Alix Spiegel and Lulu Miller, “How to Become Batman,” Invisibilia, NPR, January 23, 2015, www.npr.org/programs/invisibilia/378577902/how-to-become-batman.
“blowing smoke up your arse”: Sterling Haynes, “Special Feature: Tobacco Smoke Enemas,” BC Medical Journal 54 (2012): 496–97.
the Ponzi scheme: Stephen Greenspan, “Why We Keep Falling for Financial Scams,” Wall Street Journal, January 3, 2009, www.wsj.com/articles/SB123093987596650197.
mindsets of three different professions: Philip E. Tetlock, “Social Functionalist Frameworks for Judgment and Choice: Intuitive Politicians, Theologians, and Prosecutors,” Psychological Review 109 (2002): 451–71.
we marshal arguments: Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber, “Why Do Humans Reason? Arguments from an Argumentative Theory,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 34 (2011): 57–74.
guilty of “knee-jerk cynicism”: Stephen Greenspan, “Fooled by Ponzi (and Madoff): How Bernard Madoff Made Off with My Money,” eSkeptic, December 23, 2008, www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/08-12-23/#feature.
why we get duped: Greg Griffin, “Scam Expert from CU Expertly Scammed,” Denver Post, March 2, 2009, www.denverpost.com/2009/03/02/scam-expert-from-cu-expertly-scammed.
scientist is not just a profession: George A. Kelly, The Psychology of Personal Constructs, vol. 1, A Theory of Personality (New York: Norton, 1955); Brian R. Little, Who Are You, Really? The Surprising Puzzle of Personality (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017).
view startups through a scientist’s goggles: Arnaldo Camuffo et al., “A Scientific Approach to Entrepreneurial Decision Making: Evidence from a Randomized Control Trial,” Management Science 66 (2020): 564–86.
when business executives compete: Mark Chussil, “Slow Deciders Make Better Strategists,” Harvard Business Review, July 8, 2016, hbr.org/2016/07/slow-deciders-make-better-strategists.
“To punish me”: Walter Isaacson, Einstein: His Life and Universe (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007).
faster at recognizing patterns: David J. Lick, Adam L. Alter, and Jonathan B. Freeman, “Superior Pattern Detectors Efficiently Learn, Activate, Apply, and Update Social Stereotypes,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 147 (2018): 209–27.
the smarter you are: Dan M. Kahan, Ellen Peters, Erica C. Dawson, and Paul Slovic, “Motivated Numeracy and Enlightened Self-Government,” Behavioural Public Policy 1 (2017): 54–86.
One is confirmation bias: Raymond S. Nickerson, “Confirmation Bias: A Ubiquitous Phenomenon in Many Guises,” Review of General Psychology 2 (1998): 175–220.
The other is desirability bias: Ben M. Tappin, Leslie van der Leer, and Ryan T. McKay, “The Heart Trumps the Head: Desirability Bias in Political Belief Revision,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 146 (2017): 1143–49; Ziva Kunda, “The Case for Motivated Reasoning,” Psychological Bulletin 108 (1990): 480–98.
“I’m not biased” bias: Emily Pronin, Daniel Y. Lin, and Lee Ross, “The Bias Blind Spot: Perceptions of Bias in Self versus Others,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 28 (2002): 369–81.
smart people are more likely: Richard F. West, Russell J. Meserve, and Keith E. Stanovich, “Cognitive Sophistication Does Not Attenuate the Bias Blind Spot,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 103 (2012): 506–19.
being actively open-minded: Keith E. Stanovich and Maggie E. Toplak, “The Need for Intellectual Diversity in Psychological Science: Our Own Studies of Actively Open-Minded Thinking as a Case Study,” Cognition 187 (2019): 156–66; Jonathan Baron et al., “Why Does the Cognitive Reflection Test (Sometimes) Predict Utilitarian Moral Judgment (and Other Things)?,” Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition 4 (2015): 265–84.
sharper logic and stronger data: Neil Stenhouse et al., “The Potential Role of Actively Open-Minded Thinking in Preventing Motivated Reasoning about Controversial Science,” Journal of Environmental Psychology 57 (2018): 17–24.
“to move from one extreme”: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention (New York: HarperCollins, 1996).
study of highly creative architects: Donald W. Mackinnon, “The Nature and Nurture of Creative Talent,” American Psychologist 17 (1962): 484–95.
Experts assessed American presidents: Dean Keith Simonton, “Presidential IQ, Openness, Intellectual Brilliance, and Leadership: Estimates and Correlations for 42 U.S. Chief Executives,” Political Psychology 27 (2006): 511–26.
the fat-cat syndrome: Jane E. Dutton and Robert B. Duncan, “The Creation of Momentum for Change through the Process of Strategic Issue Diagnosis,” Strategic Management Journal (May/June 1987): 279–95.
“It’s an iconic product”: Jacquie McNish, “RIM’s Mike Lazaridis Walks Out of BBC Interview,” Globe and Mail, April 13, 2011, www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/rims-mike-lazaridis-walks-out-of-bbc-interview/article1322202.
“The keyboard is one of the reasons”: Sean Silcoff, Jacquie McNish, and Steve Laurantaye, “How BlackBerry Blew It,” Globe and Mail, September 27, 2013, www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/the-inside-story-of-why-blackberry-is-failing/article14563602/.
“We laughed and said”: Jonathan S. Geller, “Open Letter to BlackBerry Bosses: Senior RIM Exec Tells All as Company Crumbles Around Him,” BGR, June 30, 2011, bgr.com/2011/06/30/open-letter-to-blackberry-bosses-senior-rim-exec-tells-all-as-company-crumbles-around-him.
what resurrected Apple: Personal interviews with Tony Fadell, June 1, 2020, and Mike Bell, November 14, 2019; Brian Merchant, The One Device: The Secret History of the iPhone (New York: Little, Brown, 2017).
Chapter 2. The Armchair Quarterback and the Impostor
“Ignorance more frequently”: Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man (London: Penguin Classics, 1871/2004).
“mentally blind to her blindness”: Gabriel Anton, “On the Self-Awareness of Focal Drain Diseases by the Patient in Cortical Blindness and Cortical Deafness,” Archiv für Psychiatrie und Nervenkrankheiten 32 (1899): 86–127.
“One of the most striking features”: Frederick C. Redlich and Joseph F. Dorsey, “Denial of Blindness by Patients with Cerebral Disease,” Archives of Neurology & Psychiatry 53 (1945): 407–17.
the Roman philosopher Seneca: Charles André, “Seneca and the First Description of Anton Syndrome,” Journal of Neuro-Ophthalmology 38 (2018): 511–13.
a deficit of self-awareness: Giuseppe Vallar and Roberta Ronchi, “Anosognosia for Motor and Sensory Deficits after Unilateral Brain Damage: A Review,” Restorative Neurology and Neuroscience 24 (2006): 247–57; Howard C. Hughes, Robert Fendrich, and Sarah E. Streeter, “The Diversity of the Human Visual Experience,” in Perception and Its Modalities, ed. Dustin Stokes, Moham Matthen, and Stephen Biggs (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015); David Dunning, Self-Insight: Roadblocks and Detours on the Path to Knowing Thyself (New York: Psychology Press, 2005); Costanza Papagno and Giuseppe Vallar, “Anosognosia for Left Hemiplegia: Babinski’s (1914) Cases,” in Classic Cases in Neuropsychology, vol. 2, ed. Christopher Code et al. (New York: Psychology Press, 2003); Jiann-Jy Chen et al., “Anton-Babinski Syndrome in an Old Patient: A Case Report and Literature Review,” Psychogeriatrics 15 (2015): 58–61; Susan M. McGlynn, “Impaired Awareness of Deficits in a Psychiatric Context: Implications for Rehabilitation,” in Metacognition in Educational Theory and Practice, ed. Douglas J. Hacker, John Dunlosky, and Arthur C. Graesser (Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 1998).
“My experience and knowledge”: Agence France Presse, “Iceland’s Crisis-Era Central Bank Chief to Run for President,” Yahoo! News, May 8, 2016, www.yahoo.com/news/icelands-crisis-era-central-bank-chief-run-president-152717120.html.
women typically underestimated: Samantha C. Paustian-Underdahl, Lisa Slattery Walker, and David J. Woehr, “Gender and Perceptions of Leadership Effectiveness: A Meta-analysis of Contextual Moderators,” Journal of Applied Psychology 99 (2014): 1129–45.
competence exceeds confidence: Mark R. Leary et al., “The Impostor Phenomenon: Self-Perceptions, Reflected Appraisals, and Interpersonal Strategies,” Journal of Personality 68 (2000): 725–56; Karina K. L. Mak, Sabina Kleitman, and Maree J. Abbott, “Impostor Phenomenon Measurement Scales: A Systematic Review,” Frontiers in Psychology 10 (2019): 671.
Ig™ Nobel Prize: Improbable, “The 2000 Ig™ Nobel Prize Ceremony,” October 5, 2000, www.improbable.com/ig/2000.
original Dunning-Kruger studies: Justin Kruger and David Dunning, “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 77 (1999): 1121–34.
The less intelligent we are: John D. Mayer, A. T. Panter, and David R. Caruso, “When People Estimate Their Personal Intelligence Who Is Overconfident? Who Is Accurate?,” Journal of Personality (May 19, 2020).
when economists evaluated: Nicholas Bloom, Renata Lemos, Raffaella Sadun, Daniela Scur, and John Van Reenen, “JEEA-FBBVA Lecture 2013: The New Empirical Economics of Management,” Journal of the European Economic Association 12 (2014): 835–76, https://doi.org/10.1111/jeea.12094.
it was most rampant: Xavier Cirera and William F. Maloney, The Innovation Paradox (Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2017); Nicholas Bloom et al., “Management Practices across Firms and Countries,” Academy of Management Perspectives 26 (2012): 12–33.
The more superior participants: Michael P. Hall and Kaitlin T. Raimi, “Is Belief Superiority Justified by Superior Knowledge?,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 76 (2018): 290–306.
“The first rule of the Dunning-Kruger club”: Brian Resnick, “Intellectual Humility: The Importance of Knowing You Might Be Wrong,” Vox, January 4, 2019, www.vox.com/science-and-health/2019/1/4/17989224/intellectual-humility-explained-psychology-replication.
claim knowledge about fictional topics: John Jerrim, Phil Parker, and Nikki Shure, “Bullshitters. Who Are They and What Do We Know about Their Lives?,” IZA Institute of Labor Economics, DP No. 12282, April 2019, ftp.iza.org/dp12282.pdf; Christopher Ingraham, “Rich Guys Are Most Likely to Have No Idea What They’re Talking About, Study Suggests,” Washington Post, April 26, 2019, www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/04/26/rich-guys-are-most-likely-have-no-idea-what-theyre-talking-about-study-finds.
“giving a tidy demonstration”: Nina Strohminger (@NinaStrohminger), January 8, 2019, twitter.com/NinaStrohminger/status/1082651708617039875?s=20.
On the questions above: Mark L. Wolraich, David B. Wilson, and J. Wade White, “The Effect of Sugar on Behavior and Cognition in Children: A Meta-analysis,” Journal of the American Medical Association 274 (1995): 1617–21; see also Konstantinos Mantantzis et al., “Sugar Rush or Sugar Crash? A Meta-analysis of Carbohydrate Effects on Mood,” Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews 101 (2019): 45–67.
people who scored the lowest: Oliver J. Sheldon, David Dunning, and Daniel R. Ames, “Emotionally Unskilled, Unaware, and Uninterested in Learning More: Reactions to Feedback about Deficits in Emotional Intelligence,” Journal of Applied Psychology 99 (2014): 125–37.
Yet motivation is only part: Gilles E. Gignac and Marcin Zajenkowski, “The Dunning-Kruger Effect Is (Mostly) a Statistical Artefact: Valid Approaches to Testing the Hypothesis with Individual Differences Data,” Intelligence 80 (2020): 101449; Tal Yarkoni, “What the Dunning-Kruger Effect Is and Isn’t,” July 7, 2010, www.talyarkoni.org/blog/2010/07/07/what-the-dunning-kruger-effect-is-and-isnt.
when they’re offered a $100 bill: Joyce Ehrlinger et al., “Why the Unskilled Are Unaware: Further Explorations of (Absent) Self-Insight among the Incompetent,” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 105 (2008): 98–121.
We tend to overestimate ourselves: Spencer Greenberg and Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, “You Are Not as Good at Kissing as You Think. But You Are Better at Dancing,” New York Times, April 6, 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/04/06/opinion/sunday/overconfidence-men-women.html.
simulated zombie apocalypse: Carmen Sanchez and David Dunning, “Overconfidence among Beginners: Is a Little Learning a Dangerous Thing?,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 114 (2018): 10–28.
patient mortality rates: John Q. Young et al., “‘July Effect’: Impact of the Academic Year-End Changeover on Patient Outcomes,” Annals of Internal Medicine 155 (2011): 309–15; Sarah Kliff, “The July Effect Is Real: New Doctors Really Do Make Hospitals More Dangerous,” Vox, July 13, 2014, www.vox.com/2014/7/13/5893653/the-july-effect-is-real-new-doctors-really-do-make-hospitals-more.
“fiercely loyal henchmen”: Roger Boyes, Meltdown Iceland: Lessons on the World Financial Crisis from a Small Bankrupt Island (New York: Bloomsbury, 2009).
“arrogance, his absolute conviction”: Boyes, Meltdown Iceland; “Cracks in the Crust,” Economist, December 11, 2008, www.economist.com/briefing/2008/12/11/cracks-in-the-crust; Heather Farmbrough, “How Iceland’s Banking Collapse Created an Opportunity,” Forbes, December 23, 2019, www.forbes.com/sites/heatherfarmbrough/2019/12/23/how-icelands-banking-collapse-created-an-opportunity/#72693f035e97; “25 People to Blame for the Financial Crisis,” Time, February 10, 2009, content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1877351_1877350_1877340,00.html; John L. Campbell and John A. Hall, The Paradox of Vulnerability: States, Nationalism & the Financial Crisis (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017); Robert H. Wade and Silla Sigurgeirsdottir, “Iceland’s Meltdown: The Rise and Fall of International Banking in the North Atlantic,” Brazilian Journal of Political Economy 31 (2011): 684–97; Report of the Special Investigation Commission, April 12, 2010, www.rn
a.is/eldri-nefndir/addragandi-og-orsakir-falls-islensku-bankanna-2008/skyrsla-nefndarinnar/english; Daniel Chartier, The End of Iceland’s Innocence: The Image of Iceland in the Foreign Media during the Financial Crisis (Ottawa, ON: University of Ottawa Press, 2011); “Excerpts: Iceland’s Oddsson,” Wall Street Journal, October 17, 2008, www.wsj.com/articles/SB122418335729241577; Geir H. Haarde, “Icelandic Leaders Accused of Negligence,” Financial Times, April 12, 2010, www.ft.com/content/82bb2296-4637-11df-8769-00144feab49a; “Report on Iceland’s Banking Collapse Blasts Ex-Officials,” Wall Street Journal, April 13, 2010, www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303828304575179722049591754.
“Arrogance is ignorance plus conviction”: Tim Urban, “The Thinking Ladder,” Wait but Why (blog), September 27, 2019, waitbutwhy.com/2019/09/thinking-ladder.html.
that’s distinct from how much you believe in your methods: Dov Eden, “Means Efficacy: External Sources of General and Specific Subjective Efficacy,” in Work Motivation in the Context of a Globalizing Economy, ed. Miriam Erez, Uwe Kleinbeck, and Henk Thierry (Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2001); Dov Eden et al., “Augmenting Means Efficacy to Boost Performance: Two Field Experiments,” Journal of Management 36 (2008): 687–713.
Spanx founder Sara Blakely: Personal interview with Sara Blakely, September 12, 2019; see also Clare O’Connor, “How Sara Blakely of Spanx Turned $5,000 into $1 Billion,” Forbes, March 26, 2012, www.forbes.com/global/2012/0326/billionaires-12-feature-united-states-spanx-sara-blakely-american-booty.html; “How Spanx Got Started,” Inc., January 20, 2012, www.inc.com/sara-blakely/how-sara-blakley-started-spanx.html.
Confident humility can be taught: Tenelle Porter, “The Benefits of Admitting When You Don’t Know,” Behavioral Scientist, April 30, 2018, behavioralscientist.org/the-benefits-of-admitting-when-you-dont-know.
In college and graduate school: Thomas Gatzka and Benedikt Hell, “Openness and PostSecondary Academic Performance: A Meta-analysis of Facet-, Aspect-, and Dimension-Level Correlations,” Journal of Educational Psychology 110 (2018): 355–77.