As social animals, we humans are always comparing ourselves to others. During our childhood, we compare ourselves to others in terms of our physical and mental attributes. Physical stature, athleticism, beauty and intellectual ability are common methods of comparison and they have a significant impact on our emerging self-concept. Those who feel superior in these comparisons are often emboldened to build on their strengths and develop a “can do” attitude toward life, while those who see themselves as less talented, often feel inferior, developing a lower self-confidence and subsequently failing to develop their potential.
By the time we reach adulthood, most of us have formulated a self-concept that falls somewhere between “defeated” and “arrogantly empowered.” Our comparisons to others may involve income, possessions, social status or intelligence and they influence significantly how we feel about ourselves. How you feel about yourself also influences how others feel about you. If you are submissive and feel inferior, others will tend to think of you in that context and this will reinforce your acceptance of a lower status. However, if you are confident in you abilities, people will usually accord you a higher level of respect and that will tend to embolden your confidence. Yet, these perceptions are often a mirage that hides the real truth about you and you capabilities.
Many people believe that intelligence is a simple linear scale like height, whereby any two people can be compared. But intelligence, unlike height, is multi-dimensional. The oratorical intelligence of Martin Luther King is different from the musical intelligence of Mozart and the capacity for abstraction possessed by Einstein. Each person is unique in their set of skills and proclivities, and those who may show superiority in one particular cognitive area, may be lacking in another. Avoiding contact with those who seem to have special cognitive gifts, is a formula for stunting one’s own intellectual growth. Almost everyone, including those of high intelligence in various areas, is reluctant to be seen as unintelligent or unknowledgeable, because perceived intelligence is an important component of our self-concept.
Years ago, I was attending a lecture by an esteemed professor from the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. During his talk, he mentioned a key mathematical element that I’ll refer to as a “supertoid.” I had never heard the term, but as a graduate student, surrounded by esteemed professors, who were nodding their heads to indicate understanding, I was loathe to show my ignorance by asking for a definition. Suddenly an old man sitting in the front row raised his hand and asked, “Could you please define the word supertoid for me? I’m not familiar with that term.”
The lecturer, peering through thick spectacles, seemed to awaken from his trance, “Oh yes, Donald; How are you? Please accept my apologies for my oversight!” With that he wrote a definition of supertoid on the blackboard. The clatter of clipboards and pens emerged to record the definition that almost everyone had pretended to know.
The old man addressed as “Donald” was Professor Donald Coxeter, a world-class, widely respected geometer, who was not afraid to admit a gap in his knowledge, because his reputation was intact. The “take-home message” in this anecdote is that we are all uninformed in most areas of human knowledge because what each individual knows is a tiny fraction of what is known. The critical issue is how we deal with our lack of knowledge.
Famous Nobel laureate Richard Feynman was recorded to have a “modest IQ” of 125–far below that of most theoretical physicists. Yet Feynman outperformed by a large margin all the profoundly gifted people on a Putnam Examination in mathematics, and made remarkable contributions to quantum physics. He respected the intelligence of all his colleagues, but he wouldn’t take a backseat to any of them, debating relentlessly with the gurus on the Manhattan project while still a fledgling scientist.
The take home message from these observations was perhaps best captured by Eleanor Roosevelt who observed, “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” When you are surrounded by people who are more informed than you on a particular topic, you must realize that there are some topics in which you can teach each of them something.
