Is Trump A Genius?

First there was the IQ test and Mensa, the club for people who scored over 130-32 (top 2%) on the IQ test.

Yet Priceonomics in a piece called "The Psychology of Self Appointed Genius"  tells us that 49% of men who filled out OKCupid applications marked yes when asked if they were a genius.

So, in thinking he's a genius, Trump is pretty much an average man.

Except, the Priceonomics article goes on to say:

"when you’re bad at something, it’s likely that the deficits that prevent you from improving also prevent you from realizing how bad you are."

Citing a paper by Dunning, Heath, and Suls, the article continues:

"70% of one million high school seniors surveyed said they had “above average” leadership skills (only 2% said their skills were “below average.”) 60% rated themselves as in the top 10% in “their ability to get along with others”, 25% rated themselves in the top 1%. This is not quite, but almost as extraordinary as the 39% of OKCupid users who thought they were at least in the top 2%.
In a 1970s study, 94% of college professors rated themselves as doing “above average” work (and 2/3rds rated their performance in the top quarter).
Other examples include motorcyclists, who think they’re less accident-prone than the typical biker, and business leaders, who think their firm is more likely to succeed than the industry average."

So Trump, again, is not in the exceptional 2% range in overestimating his abilities.

Another observation from this article:

"People with low IQ tend to overestimate their intelligence, (people with high IQ tend to underestimate their intelligence)."

So, this would predict a genius would not say she was a genius.


Let's think about this a different way.  We began with Mensa requiring being in the top 2% of the IQ test.  But IQ tests don't exactly measure IQ.

 From a Gizmodo article on Mensa and Trump:

"psychology currently recognizes IQ tests as not measuring actual intelligence, a concept which is incredibly hard to define, and which is inevitably linked to both social and individual conceptions. IQ tests primarily measure a range of skills, academic achievements and acquired knowledge—things that tend to have to do with social standing, not innate intelligence."

So people born to an economically higher class, with access to cultural and educational advantages, will naturally score higher on an IQ test than those from a lower economic class.  A good example for me is thinking about and IQ test where all the examples would come from the skills needed to survive in Alaska Native village culture - knowledge of the stories of the particular language group, knowledge about subsistence hunting and fishing, about Arctic astronomy and weather.  Not only do you need to know the logic, but you'd have to understand all the examples.  Say, "A chum salmon is to a silver salmon as a caribou is to a __________."  Your logic might be fine, but if you don't know these particular fish or the caribou, you can't even apply the logic.  But IQ tests and SAT's are written by and for people with a certain cultural background and knowledge.  And it isn't from a Yup'ik or African-American culture and knowledge.

But beyond that IQ tests measure fluency in a particular cultural kind of knowledge.  Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner came up with list of multiple kinds of intelligence.  The Northern Illinois University faculty development site lists them as:

 Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences  

1. Verbal-linguistic intelligence (well-developed verbal skills and sensitivity to the sounds, meanings and rhythms of words)
2. Logical-mathematical intelligence (ability to think conceptually and abstractly, and capacity to discern logical and numerical patterns)
3. Spatial-visual intelligence (capacity to think in images and pictures, to visualize accurately and abstractly)
4. Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence (ability to control one’s body movements and to handle objects skillfully)
5. Musical intelligences (ability to produce and appreciate rhythm, pitch and timber)
6. Interpersonal intelligence (capacity to detect and respond appropriately to the moods, motivations and desires of others)
7. Intrapersonal (capacity to be self-aware and in tune with inner feelings, values, beliefs and thinking processes)
8. Naturalist intelligence (ability to recognize and categorize plants, animals and other objects in nature)
9. Existential intelligence (sensitivity and capacity to tackle deep questions about human existence such as, What is the meaning of life? Why do we die? How did we get here?)
(Source: Thirteen ed online, 2004)

The traditional IQ tests focused on the first three of Gardner's intelligences.

Let's look at these one by one:

1.  "well-developed verbal skills and sensitivity to the sounds, meanings and rhythms of words - his speeches to his base showed a certain sensitivity to sounds and rhythms"  - "Lock her up, Lock her up," "Build that wall, build that wall."  But these are first or second grade level vocabulary and rhythms.

2.  "ability to think conceptually and abstractly, and capacity to discern logical and numerical patterns" - Haven't seen much of this.  Logic and numerical patterns do not seem to be part of his way of thinking.  Tends to be much more of a concrete than abstract thinker.

3.  "capacity to think in images and pictures, to visualize accurately and abstractly" - could well be that he thinks in images and pictures, but I don't see much abstraction.

4.  "ability to control one’s body movements and to handle objects skillfully" - I haven't seen him play golf, but I've heard he's reasonably good.  On his famous grabbing tape, he claimed to be able to handle some objects skillfully.

5.  "ability to produce and appreciate rhythm, pitch and timber" - he's pretty good, again with a supportive audience, at saying things that arouse their emotion and loyalty.

6.  "capacity to detect and respond appropriately to the moods, motivations and desires of others" - again, he's figured out what moves his base, and if he has genius in anything, it would be in pushing people's buttons.

7.  "capacity to be self-aware and in tune with inner feelings, values, beliefs and thinking processes" -  the part of his brain that processes self-awareness seems not to be functioning much at all.

8.  "ability to recognize and categorize plants, animals and other objects in nature" - one of my daughter's college roommates was from Manhattan, like Trump, and she needed to get back to the city on weekends because she couldn't handle all the green of the campus.  She needed her fix of concrete.  Trump's climate change denial, shrinking of national monuments, off-shore drilling all suggest that nature is near the bottom of his list of important things.

9.  "sensitivity and capacity to tackle deep questions about human existence such as, What is the meaning of life? Why do we die? How did we get here?" - No evidence shown of this.

So the only glimmer of genius I see from this list is, as I mentioned in #6 - ability to push other people's buttons.  He pushed his supporters' buttons to positive effect and he skillfully enrages everyone else on a regular basis.

But let's look a little deeper.

Daniel Goleman came up with different kinds of emotional intelligence.  From a Concordia University site:

Emotional self-awareness — knowing what one is feeling at any given time and understanding the impact those moods have on others
Self-regulation — controlling or redirecting one’s emotions; anticipating consequences before acting on impulse
Motivation — utilizing emotional factors to achieve goals, enjoy the learning process and persevere in the face of obstacles
Empathy — sensing the emotions of others
Social skills — managing relationships, inspiring others and inducing desired responses from them

Of these five, I'd say Trump does well on Motivation and, to a certain extent, Social Skills.  He clearly is motivated, though I suspect a lot of this comes from his father who was driven and whose disappointment in his oldest son seems to have motivated Trump not to disappoint his father.
I'd give him high marks for social skills for inspiring others (his base) and inducing desired responses (from the media and from liberals.)  One could debate this.  He'd prefer the media to praise him, but he certainly knows how to get them riled up.  But perhaps that isn't really his intention.  Managing relationships?  He's on this third marriage.  His staff seems to be busy with internal warfare, his most trusted now becoming his avowed enemies.

This is really a quick and dirty assessment.  I haven't given detailed examples to back up my assessments.  I think what I'm mainly offering here is a measuring stick that others can use to measure his self-reported genius against.  And I'm waiting to see readers think I've missed.

I'll end with one other characteristic of geniuses, that  James Fallows, among others, has pointed out: most geniuses don't call attention to their gifts.