The Intelligence Trap: Why Smart People Make Dumb Mistakes — and How to Make Wiser Decisions

David Robson — a science writer and BBC Future contributor — examines the counterintuitive phenomenon that high intelligence and expertise often fail to protect against poor reasoning, and in some cases actively worsen it. Drawing on research in cognitive psychology, he shows how the skills that make people successful in one domain — facility with abstract argument, pattern recognition, rapid inference — can generate overconfidence, motivated reasoning, and resistance to correction in others. The "intelligence trap" is the gap between measured cognitive ability and the practical wisdom required to reason well under uncertainty.

For practitioners in the information environment, the book is relevant on two levels. First, it provides insight into why technically sophisticated professionals — including intelligence analysts, security researchers, and policy advisers — can be systematically wrong in their threat assessments, and what cognitive processes produce those errors. Second, it documents what research shows actually works to improve judgment: actively seeking disconfirming evidence, soliciting criticism from trusted colleagues, and cultivating epistemic humility as a professional practice. For organisations designing assessment processes or training programmes for staff working in contested information environments, these are practically important findings.