Popular culture has long suggested that there’s a cost to being highly intelligent: Austin Powers’ nemesis, Dr Evil, who attended the British Intelligence Academy, is depicted as villainous and narcissistic, for example; while The Big Bang Theory’s cast of scientists are presented as socially inept.

Clever people are also frequently seen as being out of touch with reality. There is a belief that their enormous intellect means they are unable to see simple solutions and thus their practical use in the workplace is minimal. In short, the common view appears to be that the phrase “too clever for your own good” is based on fact.

But do teachers really think that and, if so, is there any truth in it?

Jonathan Wai, professor of education policy at the University of Arkansas, has looked at this issue as part of his broader research on high attainers and cognitive ability. On the first question, he says the view that intelligence comes at the cost of social and emotional failings is highly influential among policymakers, the general public and even teachers. Research shows that educators often implicitly assume that their highest- attaining students experience more emotional maladjustment. Studies show that, within an educational environment, intellectually gifted students - those who display exceptional talents and score highly in tests - are frequently perceived as suffering more from social and emotional problems such as distress, depression or loneliness.

This perception is particularly prominent for male students. A 2015 study titled Gifted and Maladjusted? Implicit Attitudes and Automatic Associations Related to Gifted Children concludes: “Most films, novels or portraits of the gifted as struggling socioemotionally involve males.”

Another commonly held idea is that intelligence is actually harmful beyond a certain point, typically stated as 120 IQ points; while yet another belief is that intelligence is irrelevant for most meaningful outcomes in life and that virtually anyone can reach high levels of performance or achievement simply by devoting enough time and practice to it.

These views have infiltrated the education system, according to Wai. He points to how the “test-optional” movement is soaring in popularity in the US. Almost 1,000 schools no longer rely on standardised tests - which have been proven to be reliably predictive of long-term outcomes - to admit large numbers of undergraduate applicants.

“We are discovering more effective ways than a student’s standardised test score to predict college success,” argues Michael Poll, vice-president of enrolment management services at Georgia Gwinnett College. “Writing samples, interviews and academic projects are reliable, holistic ways to effectively measure likelihood for academic success.”

Wai says this movement ignores “the large body of evidence supporting the predictive validity of cognitive ability”.

“Evidence supports the predictive validity of tests, so removing tests seems to be odd, especially because the evidence for using other criteria for admission has a lower standard of evidence,” he says.

The earlier noted negative aspects that people believe to be associated with intelligence are also unsupported, says Wai. In his paper, co-authored with Matt Brown and Christopher Chabris of Geisinger Health System - Can You Ever Be Too Smart for Your Own Good? Linear and Nonlinear Effects of Cognitive Ability - he comes to the conclusion that cognitive ability measured in youth has a positive association with most occupational, educational, health and social outcomes later in life.

Cognitive ability is also strongly correlated with income, greater educational attainment and better physical health, according to the paper. “Greater cognitive ability is generally advantageous - and virtually never detrimental,” Wai says. “There’s just a bias towards the idea that being clever can come with negative aspects. In general, as we show in our paper, being more clever is almost never a bad thing.”

Smart thinking

It’s Wai’s view that schools, in particular, need to change their understanding of highly intelligent students, because if they don’t they are at risk of not adequately meeting intellectually gifted students’ needs. If we believe cognitive ability to be detrimental, we may not push students enough, or if we believe it to be associated with social issues, we may create problems that do not exist through those misconceptions.

But changing viewpoints could be difficult, Wai believes, as teachers can find such pupils threatening. He also acknowledges that very high-attaining students present a teacher with more complexity in their teaching.

“If a kid is smart and already knows the stuff the teacher is teaching, some of those kids may point out that the class is not challenging, and perhaps some teachers may view this as a threat to authority,” Wai says. “Kids should be challenged in class, but it’s tough since some kids are performing at very different levels - some challenging authority, others struggling with the topic.”

But he suggests that if we can help teachers - and society more broadly - get over untrue negative perceptions of high-attaining students, and assist teachers in meeting their needs, we can better support these pupils for the benefit of all.

This effective management of students with varying levels of intelligence and academic performance will likely depend, though, on effective leadership, according to John Antonakis, professor of organisational behaviour at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland. And his research suggests that as intelligence increases above a certain level, effectiveness of leadership decreases - so the ability of that leader to help may depend upon their IQ.

His research shows that leaders registering an IQ up to 120 had a positive relationship with leadership effectiveness, but this “flattened out and then reversed at an IQ of about 120”.

Though the study couldn’t pinpoint exactly why the brightest people were worse leaders than their less intelligent counterparts, it suggested that it could be because they are more likely to use complex language, be less skilled at simplifying tasks and struggle to see what others find difficult or challenging.

“When a person is too smart relative to the group they are leading, they may not be a good influence to that group because people don’t understand that person,” Antonakis says.

However, if you think this gives some weight to the assumption that you really can be too clever for your own good, Antonakis is about to disappoint you: “It doesn’t mean there’s nothing to be gained after an IQ of 120. It very much depends on what the task is, and depends on what the person is doing.”

Indeed, overall, the research is very clear that any belief that high intelligence at any age automatically comes with a social or emotional cost is very problematic. And the fact that these beliefs are so pervasive is likely to be to the detriment of high attainers in a school setting. In addition, the belief that cognitive ability can make you out of touch and less effective in employment is also false.

So, should we banish the phrase “too clever for your own good” for ever? Wai certainly feels that in schools, we would all benefit from having any misconceptions about intelligence - at all levels - debunked.

“It would be helpful for teachers and parents to understand the larger body of evidence across the past half-century,” he says.

Carly Page is a freelance journalist

This article originally appeared in the 8 May 2020 issue under the headline “Can we be too clever for our own good?”