People Who Act Like They’re Smarter Than Everyone Always Miss These 11 Common-Sense Things
Even those who think they are smarter than everyone overlook what is considered common sense.
syedfahadghazanfar / Shutterstock There are some people who genuinely think they are smarter than everyone else and who just always have to be right. These people tend to miss many common-sense things that other people understand without any problems at all.
While it can be frustrating to be around someone who displays this behavior, they may not be intentionally behaving this way. There is more going on mentally that causes them to miss certain social cues and misunderstand what everyone else views as common sense.
People who act like they’re smarter than everyone always miss these 11 common-sense things
1. The value of learning from others
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When someone acts like they are smarter than everyone else, one common-sense thing they fail to understand is the value of learning from others. They lack the understanding that other people can be experts in certain areas and can have a lot to teach them that they are actually totally unaware of.
“The Dunning-Kruger effect is a type of cognitive bias in which people believe they are smarter and more capable than they are,” explains Kendra Cherry, MSEd.
A person who is dealing with this cognitive bias is unable to recognize when they do not know something, and they can’t recognize the skill and competence levels of other people. If they cannot recognize these two things, it makes sense as to why they are unable to see that they have things to learn from other people.
2. That most people care more about emotional connections than being right
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Someone who thinks they are smarter than everyone else typically misses the fact that most people care more about emotional connections than about always being right. These people are powered by always being right, and it gives them an ego boost.
Many may lack the understanding of emotions and be more likely to suppress the way they are feeling. Instead of holding emotional intelligence to the same regard as mental intelligence, they continue to try to be purely logical and view emotions as a distraction from using their brain to problem-solve and for other matters like that.
3. How to handle failure
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If a person truly thinks they are smarter than everyone else, they will have a very hard time handling failure and understanding it. They perceive themselves as almost being too intelligent to fail.
Even when these people struggle with something challenging, the bias within their minds makes it hard for them to see the struggle, and instead, they feel impressed with their abilities. This bias, however, can also start to underestimate their abilities when they face failure. They will start believing that it comes easily to everyone, and instead of handling failure by continuing to work on the challenging matter, they will rather avoid it altogether to protect their fragile ego and not have to realize their failure.
4. The emotional component of human decisions
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A person who thinks that they are smarter than everyone else usually makes it difficult for them to understand how critical emotions are in making decisions, and many times they fail to ever use their emotions when it comes to decision-making. Human connection relies partially on emotional intelligence.
“Emotional intelligence isn’t a byproduct of age or IQ. It requires attention. Effort. Humility. And above all, practice. If someone never learned how to navigate emotion safely, their brain will default to what it knows: intellectualizing, denying, escaping, or overpowering,” according to professor RJ Starr, an academic psychologist.
Someone who relies too heavily on logic will not let emotion guide them and tends to have difficulty when building relationships and making certain decisions because of this.
5. That humility is strength
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When someone believes that their intelligence is greater than the intelligence of others, they often miss the common-sense thing that humility is strength. Considering their ego relies on intellect, they have difficulty with the vulnerability that surfaces when they are wrong.
When someone allows their self-worth to rely too heavily on their personal opinions, they have a very small chance of showing humility. They always have to be right. Therefore, they will not be open to hearing the opinions of others. If someone tries to change their mind, instead of listening and humbling themselves, they will get defensive because they truly believe that changing their opinions or being unsure of what their opinion is would be considered weak-minded.
6. Always being right is tiring
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If a person considers themselves to be smarter than everyone else, they will most likely miss that always being right is tiring. A need to always be right often leads a person to feel very lonely due to their lack of good communication skills, which mainly stem from their inability to actively listen to other people.
Constantly having to feel misplaced in society and having to deal with fragile self-esteem gets very tiring after a while.
“Always being right is an irrational way of thinking characterized by a person’s need to always prove themselves right, often by proving others’ actions or opinions wrong. People with this unrealistic mindset, known as a cognitive distortion, cannot accept that they can make mistakes or that they can be wrong. They will do everything in their power to show others that they are correct,” explains David Lee, the managing director of CPD Online College.
Having to constantly prove themselves can get overwhelming, but they refuse to view it that way because they are so driven by wanting to be right.
7. The importance of practical skills
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A person who sees themselves as being smarter than everyone will often not understand the true value of practical skills. Their overconfidence leads them to misunderstand where true intelligence and competence derive from.
The Dunning-Kruger effect makes it difficult for the individual to acknowledge their incompetence, and most of the time, someone experiencing this effect has failed to actually engage in practical skills. Considering they have a hard time judging their abilities in certain areas, they may feel as though, without actually engaging in these skills, that they still know them and are able to utilize them if needed. They also may place practical skills below them because they consider more mentally challenging tasks as the only significant things to learn.
8. The difference between perceived reality and actual reality
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Someone who thinks they are smarter than other people tends to struggle with seeing the difference between their perceived reality and actual reality. While for most it is common sense to realize that your perception of yourself may not match how others perceive you, these people have difficulty seeing that their own perceptions are not reality.
These people often have a superiority complex, which the American Psychological Association defines as being an inflated viewpoint of one’s abilities due to their need to overcompensate for their inferior feelings.
“Often people with a superiority complex will make us feel bad about ourselves, but caught up in the power of their complex they won't be concerned about this. They become too identified with their own superiority to think too much about others, except that is for wanting other people to see them as superior,” explains Toby Ingham, a psychotherapist in Oxfordshire, England.
This superiority complex warps their sense of reality.
9. That listening should come with the intent to understand
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A person who thinks they are more intelligent than other people will commonly miss the common-sense thing that listening should come with the intent to understand. Someone who has an inflated sense of confidence will likely believe that what they have to say is more intellectual than what others have to say.
This will cause them to fail to actively listen while someone is explaining something to them, and instead, the whole time, they will be curating what their reply will be.
“It has become the trend to win the conversation without realizing what actually is to be conveyed. They think of only winning the arguments, of only leading the race of becoming an answering machine,” according to the NUHA Foundation, a nonprofit focused on fostering effective learning communities.
10. To adapt communication for their audience
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Someone who believes themselves to be smarter than those around them will likely struggle to understand that they must adapt their communication style for the audience they are speaking to. Their inflated ego hinders their ability to understand that, in order to communicate effectively, they need to consider another person’s perspective.
They have difficulty understanding the perspective of others because they automatically believe that the viewpoints of others are inferior to their own, and they lack empathy. When tailoring the way they communicate, a person needs to be in tune with their own emotions as well as the emotions of others. Still, people who struggle with thinking they are intellectually above others usually lack the emotional intelligence to do so and fear being considered weak if they need to work on their communication skills.
11. That there is still so much they don't know
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The last thing someone who believes themselves to be more intelligent than other people is going to understand is that there is still so much they don’t know. The cognitive bias they face makes it extremely difficult for them to realize their limitations.
They lack the skills required to effectively evaluate their own knowledge in certain areas, so it is hard for them to realize that they still have so much left to learn.
If someone is always acting like they are smarter than everyone else, it can be easy to quickly get annoyed by that person, but it is important to understand that there may be something going on cognitively that is making it hard for them to respond to their limits and failures in the same way you do.
Kamryn Idol is a writer with a bachelor's degree in media and journalism who covers lifestyle, relationship, family, and wellness topics.
