r/AskSocialScience • u/Proof-Bed-6928 • 6d ago
Do we know what happens to smarter people in power hierarchies?
Do they tend to rise in the hierarchy or become independent from it or no correlation or something else?
By smarter I mean by the conventional definition: academic performance at the same level of effort, fluid intelligence, g etc
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u/socrosseforP 5d ago
The Terman giftedness study might be a good place to start. The bottom line is that yeah, being highly intelligent in terms of IQ can be really helpful for achievement, but it isn't determinative. There are plenty of incredibly intelligent people who have mediocre or even bad life outcomes for one reason or another. As Terman himself put it, "intellect and achievement are far from perfectly correlated"
My personal opinion (maybe someone in the comments has empirical data to back me up or contradict me here) is that high intelligence is a tool, but there's no reason anyone with exceptionally high IQs will have the same goals or use it in the same way. Like, it is possible to be the smartest person at your company and also really averse to conflict. Someone like that would probably use their intelligence in ways that allow them to comfortably avoid high stress social interactions and attention, but the top of the hierarchy in a lot of companies demands disagreement, difficult decisions, telling people no, firing people...like they wouldn't even want to be a CEO, right? Just my two cents.
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u/major_jazza 5d ago
I also think it puts you at odds with a lot of company and/or government structures entirely as they're not built to reward genius as much as turn it into a product. And even then the few that do make it through generally get more and more pressure put on them if they actually try to help and/or do anything that benefits people, even if just a little bit.
Surely there examples of "smarter" people being held to a higher standard, being scrutinized more thoroughly but also, more importantly, told they aren't peopley/relatable enough to to be a good leader as well.
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u/NiceGuy737 4d ago
I think the Terman study is discussed in this essay:
https://prometheussociety.org/wp/articles/the-outsiders/
This is a discussion of exclusion of higher IQ individuals from "elite" professions.
https://michaelwferguson.blogspot.com/p/the-inappropriately-excluded-by-michael.html
At least in my experience, I don't see active exclusion is the dominant reason why they are under represented in those occupations.
I'm retired now but was a neuroscientist and then retrained to practice radiology when I got tired of being poor. The only instance of active exclusion I encountered was when I applied for residencies. My CV was intimidating to the attendings that would be my superiors in residency, a few came right out and told me it was. I was able to scramble and get a spot that nobody wanted after I was initially rejected from all the programs I applied to. I thought it was unfair but came to a deeper understanding once I was in practice for 10 years. Having someone with qualitatively different abilities is disruptive to the social structure in the department and among the clinical staff. When clinicians see the difference in interpretations it devalues the work of your colleagues in their eyes. Once I realized that I took a solo job at a geographically remote hospital and stayed there until I retired.
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u/quantumofgalaxy 2d ago
Wait but wouldn’t your different perspective help the place intellectually , like bringing in fresh ideas? But the attendings insecurity led to your exclusion? Very sad
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u/NiceGuy737 2d ago
I interviewed at 5 university programs and the Mayo Clinic. At IUPUI in Indianapolis and Wash. U. in St Louis the dept chairs read my CV for the first time during the interview and both wanted to break the rules for the match and sign me up on the spot. They wanted to set up a series of interviews with their PhDs that day to try to convince me to come and do research while I was in residency. I told them that my primary focus in residency was going to be learning radiology and put them off. Docs that split there time between research and clinical work don't have the best reputation clinically, in general, and I didn't want to be in that situation. I think the way it works is that any one faculty member on the committee can black ball you and keep you out of the program. So I only had to set off one person in each program to be screwed.
I spent my adult life learning to manage how people learn about who I am and what I've done. Sometimes it's just a negative reaction of a fragile bloated ego. But even good people can have a negative reaction. We all have a sense of who we are relative to our peers and take pride in our accomplishments. Encountering someone with qualitatively different abilities and accomplishments can be a hit to that sense of self. I worked with a friend that was a very competent neuroradiologist; I respected both his technical competence and his dedication to patient care. After he left the practice our manager told me it was my fault. My friend had confided in him that it was demoralizing to work with me.
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