Frank believes strongly that if we can improve the way we think, the actions that follow also improve. It’s more likely to be able to measure someone’s intelligence based on their field of study or profession, or based on how they’ve chosen to spend their life. On the moderating role of chronotype on the association between IQ and conscientiousness: the compensation effect occurs only in Evening-types.

Additionally, more conscientious folks are early risers, presumably because when the conscientious get up early they have more time to get things done (Gorgol et al. They are Harry Houdini and Arthur Conan Doyle—and by the end of the evening, their friendship will never be the same again.

In outcome bias people dismiss a near miss, without reflection, because the outcome was benign, rather than taking it as a serious warning requiring urgent attention. But greater education and expertise can often amplify our mistakes while rendering us blind to our biases.

This is common among university graduates; years down the line, they believe that they understand the issues as well as they did when they took their final exams. It is June 17, 1922, and two middle-aged men—one short and squat, the other tall and lumbering with a walrus moustache—are sitting on the beach in Atlantic City, New Jersey.Such wisdom may be related to health and happiness but is poorly correlated with intelligence, though it does tend to increase with age in Western cultures. People who believe in the paranormal rely on their gut feelings and intuitions to think about the sources of their beliefs, rather than reasoning in an analytical, critical way. That’s an extraordinarily modest correlation for a trait that many might assume comes hand in hand with a greater analytical mind.

A study examined the journals of 1,700 scientists and found that 75% of articles with conclusions that contradicted their prior beliefs were never published. The chain of failures within the FBI and the courtroom should not have been able to escalate so rapidly, given the lack of evidence that Mayfield hadn’t even left the country. Other notable biases include framing (the fact that you may change your opinion based on the way information is phrased), the sunk cost fallacy (our reluctance to give up on a failing investment even if we will lose more trying to sustain it), and the gambler’s fallacy—the belief that if the roulette wheel has landed on black, it’s more likely the next time to land on red.This may be true for many people with vaguer, less well-defined beliefs, but there are some particular elements of Conan Doyle’s biography that suggest his behavior can’t be explained quite so simply.