Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2021

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue and Part 1, Chapter 1

Part 1, Chapters 2-4

Part 2, Chapters 5-7

Part 3, Chapters 8-10

Part 4, Chapter 11 and Epilogue

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

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Discussion Questions

Themes

Thinking Like a Scientist

The main overarching argument of Think Again is that intelligence is not just about learning how to think but learning how to rethink. For Grant, a major problem is that we tend to be resistant to new ideas and alternative perspectives, digging in our heels when faced with opposing perspectives. An important marker of intelligence is cognitive flexibility, which comes from the ability to reexamine beliefs we hold in the face of new, possibly contradictory evidence. For Grant, being wrong and changing one’s mind aren’t the marks of failure as an intelligent person, but rather marks of cognitive maturity.

Grant describes this as thinking like a scientist. More specifically, he argues that when we resist rethinking, we instead act as preachers, prosecutors, or politicians, finding ways to maintain our current way(s) of thinking instead of opening ourselves up. Grant argues that we must learn how to think like scientists more often because the hallmark of thinking like a scientist is to consider new evidence and be open to changing our ideas if that evidence contradicts our current beliefs; a core line of inquiry in his project is to determine if it’s “possible to train people in other fields to think more like scientists, and if so, [if] they end up making smarter choices” (20). Rethinking is fundamental to scientific thinking, but antithetical to preaching, prosecuting, or politicking; as a result, thinking like a scientist—employing some version of the scientific method in regular interactions—is a key part of learning how to rethink.

However, it’s important to note that Grant doesn’t equate being a scientist with thinking like a scientist, nor does he believe that there is no place for preaching, prosecuting, or politicking. Grant writes in Chapter 1, that scientists “morph into preachers when they present their pet theories as gospel” or that they “enter prosecutor mode when they’re hell-bent on debunking and discrediting rather than discovering” (21). In other words, he is interested in ways of thinking rather than venerating ways of being and pushes for us to separate those two. Likewise, although he doesn’t spend much time on preaching, prosecuting, or politicking situations, in the epilogue and at some points in the text he notes that there are times when all three are necessary—his argument isn’t to replace one with the other, but rather to learn how to incorporate a method of thought into our everyday lives that we currently do not.

Separating Identities from Ideas

Grant believes that scientists do not necessarily or always think like scientists, and this is a microcosm of a larger separation Grant makes between thinking and identity. This is key to understand his core argument on the surface because he wants to explore how most of us who are not scientists might be able to incorporate scientific modes of thinking to make better decisions in our lives. At the heart of that question is a separation between one’s identity and one’s way of thinking, a separation between being a scientist and thinking like one. The scientific method, for Grant, is a toolkit, not something reserved for certain people.

More importantly, this separation becomes a fundamental part of the approach to rethinking. Grant argues that “what keeps us from recognizing when our opinions are off the mark” is in part an inability to detach “[our] opinions from [our] identity” (62). Here, he is addressing how we can feel more comfortable with being wrong, but this concept runs throughout the text. For example, an important part of learning how to make conflict constructive (Chapter 4) according to Grant is to learn to separate task conflict from relationship conflict, which is in large part learning to separate disagreement of ideas from disagreement with people. Motivational interviewing (Chapter 7) is largely about getting the other person not to see you as an adversary representing the opposing perspective but as a person with common aims. Moving from a performance to a learning culture (Chapter 10) involves acknowledging that an organization’s identity is not the same as its methods, which can and should change over time.

This isn’t to say that Grant believes our identities and opinions should be weak, and in fact he pushes back against his earlier conviction that the best approach is to have “strong opinions, weakly held” (116). Rather, he argues here for confident humility (47): confidence in ourselves and our intelligence, but with enough humility to be willing to rethink our beliefs and recognize that we don’t know everything. Overconfidence results in overconfidence cycles, which prevent rethinking, and for Grant, believing our identities are our ideas and opinions only serves to activate overconfidence cycles; instead, we want to separate the two and allow for rethinking cycles.

The Individual and the Community

A more subtle thread, but nevertheless one that runs throughout the text, is the relationship between the individual and the community. In the final chapter, Grant explains that one reason why psychologists find, counterintuitively, that valuing happiness has an inverse relationship with happiness itself is that we have a particularly individualistic conception of happiness in the West. In contrast, in “more collectivistic Eastern cultures, that pattern is reversed: pursuing happiness predicts higher well-being, because people prioritize social engagement over independent activities” (238). In other words, in the West, there’s a tendency to emphasize individual gains and successes, which is a lonelier pursuit.

Although this is a small part of the final chapter, this is closely intertwined with Grant’s desire to divorce the individual from their ideas and beliefs because it instead places those ideas and beliefs into a larger cultural context. Part of thinking like a scientist for Grant is that we must learn to think in more community-driven terms. Our own ideas are part of that community, but so are others’ ideas, and when we’re confronted with other ideas that may not mesh well with our own, it’s our responsibility to open ourselves up to those ideas rather than insisting on the supremacy of our own personal beliefs. Part 2, for example, emphasizes the need to find common ground when persuading people, a fundamentally communitarian and collaborative approach. Likewise, Part 3 asks us to think in less hierarchical terms and more as collaborative learning communities working together to progress, whether we’re discussing controversial issues (Chapter 8), taking a college class (Chapter 9), or working at NASA (Chapter 10).