Reviews and Recommendations; February/March 2009; Scientific American Mind; by Nicole Branan; Corey Binns; Rachel Mahan; Melinda Wenner, Stuart Fox; 2 Page(s)

What Intelligence Tests Miss: The Psychology of Rational Thought by Keith E. Stanovich. Yale University Press, 2009 ($30)

Clumsy speech, immense overconfidence, heavy reliance on intuition rather than factual evidence: many people associate these attributes with George W. Bush, and some believe, based on these traits, that the former president is a man of inferior intelligence. That is why so many people were stunned when, during the 2004 presidential campaign, Bush¿s IQ score was estimated to be 120¿well above average and about the same as that of his opponent John Kerry. Psychologist Keith Stanovich of the University of Toronto, however, was not surprised at all by Bush¿s IQ. In his new book he explains why.