Scott Barry Kaufman - Ungifted: Intelligence Redefined

Ungifted

UNGIFTED

Intelligence Redefined

Scott Barry Kaufman

Illustrated by
George Doutsiopoulos

BASIC BOOKS

A Member of the Perseus Books Group
New York

Copyright 2013 by Scott Barry Kaufman

Published by Basic Books,

A Member of the Perseus Books Group

All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address Basic Books, 250 West 57 th Street, 15 th Floor, New York, NY 10107-1307.

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A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN: 978-0-465-02554-1 (hbk.)

ISBN: 978-0-465-03789-6 (eb)

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This book is dedicated to everyone who feels trapped by a label. May this book inspire you to believe in yourself and set yourself free.

Heres to the kids who are different,

The kids who dont always get As

The kids who have ears twice the size of their peers,

And noses that go on for days

Heres to the kids who are different,

The kids they call crazy or dumb,

The kids who dont fit, with the guts and the grit,

Who dance to a different drum

Heres to the kids who are different,

The kids with the mischievous streak,

For when they have grown, as historys shown,

Its their difference that makes them unique.

DIGBY WOLFE, KIDS WHO ARE DIFFERENT

CONTENTS

Chapter 1:

Chapter 2:

Chapter 3:

Chapter 4:

Chapter 5:

Chapter 6:

Chapter 7:

Chapter 8:

Chapter 9:

Chapter 10:

Chapter 11:

Chapter 12:

Chapter 13:

I would like to express my deepest gratitude to the many people who have supported me over the years in my pursuit of the truth about human intelligence. You will meet many of them throughout this book, but a few deserve singling out before we begin the journey.

I owe a deep debt of gratitude to my agent, Giles Anderson, for believing in the concept of this book and helping to make it a reality. I am also very grateful for my editor at Basic Books, TJ Kelleher, who gave me this chance, Tisse Takagi for her astute editorial assistance, and my production editor, Melody Negron, and my copyeditor, Wendy Nelson, for their thoroughness and patience. I am also very thankful I found the perfect illustrator for this book: George Doutsiopoulos. I appreciate his keen artistic skills as well as his immense patience!

Warm appreciation goes to the following mentors during high school for believing in me: Joyce Acton, Paul Spencer Adkins, Mary Brown, Tom Elliot, Regina Gordon, Debra Hobbs, Joyce Jeuell, and Mr. O. I am also incredibly appreciative of my mentors in college: Anne Fay, Herbert Simon, and Randy Pausch. Thanks to Fay for taking my dream seriously and helping me get there, Simon for teaching me how to take science seriously, and Pausch for teaching me the importance of not always taking life so seriously. I am also very appreciative to Nicholas J. Mackintosh, Jeremy R. Gray, Jerome L. Singer, and Robert J. Sternberg for their mentorship and collaboration in graduate school.

Thanks to the many other collaborators over the years Ive had the great pleasure of working with and learning from, including Balazs Aczel, Joshua Aronson, Melanie Beaussart, Ronald Beghetto, Sheila Bennett, Jamie Brown, Sarah Burgess, Elise Christopher, Colin DeYoung, Kendall Eskine, Gregory J. Feist, Marie Forgeard, Liane Gabora, Justin Garcia, Glenn Geher, Luis Jimnez, Alan S. Kaufman, James C. Kaufman (my brother-in-spirit), Deidre Kolarick, Aaron Kozbelt, Kevin McGrew, Geoffrey Miller, David Moore, Kate Plaisted, Jonathan A. Plucker, Jean Pretz, John Protzko, Matthew R. Reynolds, and Krishna Savani.

Thanks to the good folks at Psychology Today , including Hara Estroff Marano, Kaja Perina, Matthew Hutson, Lybi Ma, Carlin Flora, Jay Dixit, Andi Bartz, and Jane Nussbaum, for their support of my blog Beautiful Minds (now at Scientific American Mind ), a platform that allowed me to test out many of the ideas in this book. Indeed, some of the content of my blog posts at Psychology Today , Scientific American , Harvard Business Review , the Huffington Post , and The Creativity Post made its way to these pages. Special thanks to Hutson for offering me the blog in the first place, and Marano for being such a strong supporter of this book and commissioning my article Confessions of a Late Bloomer. You may notice that the opening vignette in on new approaches to learning appeared in the special Radical Openness issue of Design Mind Magazine , published by frog in partnership with TED. I am very appreciative of my editor on those pieces, Reena Jana, for her excellent editing skills and valuable additions to the piece.

Warm gratitude goes out to the following colleagues who were kind enough to read drafts of sections of this book and offered helpful feedback: Daniel Bor, Christopher Chabris, Jason R. Cooperrider, Colin DeYoung, K. Anders Ericsson, David Henry Feldman, Dawn Flanagan, Jack Fletcher, Margaret Gayle, Rachael Grazioplene, Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, Wendy Johnson, Rogier Kievit, David Lohman, Nicholas J. Mackintosh, Kevin McGrew, Rebecca McMillan, Nancy L. Segal, Dean Keith Simonton, Jonathan Smallwood, and Darold Treffert. From this list, I must single out Rebecca McMillan for going beyond the call of duty in her support, guidance, generosity, and input from the earliest days of my writing this book. She has not only seen me through many moments of despair and frustration, but also greatly helped me get past those moments. I must also thank Tamara Day for making my vignettes more fully express the moment. Of course, I take the blame for any deficiencies in this book.

My acknowledgments wouldnt be complete without thanking my other friends and colleagues who have supported me over the years, including (but certainly not limited to) Diederik Aerts and the rest of the Center Leo Apostel for Interdisciplinary Studies, where I did a postdoctoral fellowship, Amy Alkon, Catharine Alvarez, Alice Andrews, Piers Anthony, Kanya Balakrishna and the rest of The Future Project team, John Bargh, Deborah Bial and the rest of The Posse Foundation team, Paul Bloom, Marc Brackett, Louisa Egan Brad, Becky Burch, Lynn Butler, Susan Cain, Shelley Carson, Mark Changizi, Saalim Chowdhury, Marvin Chun, Barry Cohen (my dentist), Barry Cohen (the psychologist), Jordan M. Cohen, Kathy Colwell, Matt Conant, Andrew Conway, Erin Coulter, Alia Joy Crum, Orin Davis, Jennifer DiMase, Carol Dweck, Brian Earp, Mo El-Sherif, Seymour Epstein, Jane Erickson, Barbara Esham, Alvaro Fernandez, Kurt Fischer, Milena Z. Fisher, Diana Fleischman, Eugene Ford, Howard Gardner, Syreeta Gates, Sandeep Gautam, Mark Gerban, Kristin Gilmore, Adam E. Green, Sarah Green and the rest of the Harvard Business Review team, Jennifer Odessa Grimes, Corin Barsily Goodwin and the rest of the Gifted Homeschoolers Forum staff, Abby Gross, Heidi Grant Halvorson, Maria Konnikova Hamilton, Joy Hanson, Nicole Hendrix, Erin Joy Henry, Whitney Hess, Adam Horowitz, Sallom Hralima, Laura Jonkman, Melanie Kahl, Daniel Kahneman, Michael Kane, Yoona Kang, Nadeen L. Kaufman, Barbara Kerr, Justin Khoo, John Kounios, Kristof Kovacs, Andrea Kuszewski, Markus Labude, Matt Lanken, Valerie Kaefer LeCureux, Marina Livis, Bret Logan, Max Lugavere, Andrew Mangino, Gary Marcus, Art Markman, Dan McIntosh, Sam McNerney, Rose Swan Meacham, Martha J. Morelock, Paul OKeefe, Lauretta Olivi, John-Michael Parker, Annie Murphy Paul, Esther Perry, Steven Pfeiffer, Patricia Phillips, Zorana Ivcevic Pringle, Kristen Pring-Mill, Sasha Raskin, Arthur Reber, Ruth Richards, Cat Rogerson, Blanche Rubin, Gabrielle Santa-Donato, Lori Schomp, Rebecca Searles and the rest of the Huffington Post team, Emma Seppala, Timbo Shriver, Steve Silberman, Jason Silva, Paul Silvia, Allan Snyder, Lynne Soraya, Lori Stone, Ian Temple, Nienke Venderbosch, Jill Vialet, Jonathan Wai, Joshua Waitzkin, Pascal Wallisch, Jim Westgate, Michael Anthony Woodley, Darya Zabelina, and Bora Zivkovic and the rest of the Scientific American team. Id like to also thank my new friends at Milkboy Coffee in Ardmore, Pennsylvania (particularly Daniel Keller and Hugh Morretta) for their constant encouragement and for providing me with copious amounts of much-needed dopamine. In recent years, Ive also been fortunate enough to form a friendship with Trina Paulus, author of Hope for the Flowers , a book which inspired me tremendously when I was very young. I appreciate Pauluss constant support, and thank her for kindly granting me permission to reprint the illustration at the end of this section, which originally appeared on page 77 of Hope for the Flowers . I am particularly grateful to my two closest friendsElliot Samuel Paul and Ben Irvinefor their ongoing friendship, support, and stimulating conversations. Their philosophical and compassionate minds have enriched my life greatly.