How To Make Yourself Smarter

Adding to the above, according to Bill Gates, Warren Buffet protects his time and has empty days in his calendar. This strongly suggests there is wealth-generating potential in planning ahead and leaving yourself time to digest information without pressure.

Note: Buffet made his career by reading copiously in isolation.

academic wrote:There might be other ways to becoming smarter. Travis Bradbury says you can be smarter by wearing spectacles as this impacts the cognitive bias of others, but I am not sure this is clinically proven.

Studies have shown others will rate a person wearing glasses as being “smarter” than a control group. This doesn’t mean the person is actually smarter. The cognitive bias is all about perception.

This is similar to the “Authority Principle” which is a well researched cognitive bias related to how a person is dressed and gaining compliance. In one study a person dressed in street clothes asked passers by to give change to a 3rd person to pay for an expired parking meter. Compliance was low. The study was repeated, but the person was dressed as a police officer. Compliance skyrocketed.

Richard@DecisionSkills wrote:

academic wrote:There might be other ways to becoming smarter. Travis Bradbury says you can be smarter by wearing spectacles as this impacts the cognitive bias of others, but I am not sure this is clinically proven.

Studies have shown others will rate a person wearing glasses as being “smarter” than a control group. This doesn’t mean the person is actually smarter. The cognitive bias is all about perception.

My view is that appearance has the potential to unlock opportunities in the right time and place.

However, there can be no universally accepted optimal appearance because whatever you project is then internalised and interpreted by individuals - each with their own learned expectations. Whatever you wear will be unrecognised (or disapproved of) by certain groups of people; unless you wear a national uniform of course!

There is also the issue of fear vs respect. People will submit to appearances they fear, be it an imagined police officer or a suited senior manager, and that is no guarantee that their submission is followed by loyalty.

academic wrote:My view is that appearance has the potential to unlock opportunities in the right time and place.

Certainly. Appearance can be important. Wearing glasses can give off the impression that a person is smarter. In certain situations that might unlock an opportunity. In other situations it might shut down an opportunity.

I agree that an appearance can shut down opportunities. I also suggest more studies are needed on the perception of spectacles because current assertions are at odds with personal observations.

There is a possibility that recent experiments have made impactful assumptions by selecting certain actors, using certain styles of spectacle, certain lens types, or certain cultural environments. Thick lenses, facial distortions, unusual rims, work environment backdrop, might each generate different cognitive biases.

academic wrote:I agree that an appearance can shut down opportunities. I also suggest more studies are needed on the perception of spectacles because current assertions are at odds with personal observations.

There is a possibility that recent experiments have made impactful assumptions by selecting certain actors, using certain styles of spectacle, certain lens types, or certain cultural environments. Thick lenses, facial distortions, unusual rims, work environment backdrop, might each generate different cognitive biases.

I guess it is all in what you are trying to accomplish. Wearing glasses has zero impact on your IQ, i.e. wearing glasses does not make a person any more or less smart. It best fits under the “stereotype” cognitive bias, but it may also fall under others as well.

Glasses just happened to be what the researchers decided to use to demonstrate stereotype bias. Researchers could equally have used carrying a book. Carrying a book doesn’t raise the IQ of a person, it doesn’t make them smarter. But, carrying a book triggers the “bookworm” stereotype. Anyone that carries a book, must be smart.

You could alter the experiment and demonstrate that the size of the book, the type of book, and location of the encounter might alter the perception, i.e. alter the degree of bias. For instance, seeing someone on a college campus carrying a book might not trigger the exact same reaction as carrying a book in a park. But, so what? That is not the point of the experiment. It isn’t about determining the different degrees of stereotype bias as much as it is about demonstrating the bias exists. It has zero to do with actual intelligence, but rather the perception of intelligence.

One reason stereotypes exist is related to correlation. You see a person carrying a book. There is a strong correlation between IQ and people that read books. That doesn’t mean carrying a book makes you smarter. It is only a correlation, not causation. But, people see a book and the cognitive bias kicks in.

Here is a list of scientifically researched “cognitive biases”. Check it out. You might find some pretty interesting information.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of ... ive_biases

academic wrote:

BBC Psychology wrote:There might be other ways of appearing smarter. Travis Bradbury says you can be smarter by wearing spectacles as this impacts the cognitive bias of others...

Fixed it for you.