In your opinion, (or maybe there’s facts), Are all or most sane human beings capable of exhibiting uncharacteristic intelligence when faced with a desperate situation?
In other words - do dumb people have an attack of smarts when they are in a life threatening situation?
My reasons for asking this are fairly weak. I have a feeling I know the answer. (I hear stories of dumb people dying as a direct result of them being dumb) But I ask because I thought it would make a thought-provoking thread. It just so happens that a more direct reason for asking happens to be a Prison Break spoiler…
When Bellick initiated a fight with the guy who he refused to clean up puke for (and whom he caused to step in that sick) He displayed a level of intelligence that implies that nobody previously had done so, and, tellingly, not the guy he’d challenged. It has already been established that challengers and challlengees are allowed to fight dirty. So why didn’t Bellicks opponent have a similar idea to Bellick? Afterall, he’s clever enough to have got himself onto the lachero’s (sp?) staff. And why hadn’t any previous chicken-foot fighter had similar ideas. Bellick has shown himself to be possibly the dumbest guy on this show. Is it down to his experience as a crooked PO that he had this idea?
IME, no. Quite the opposite, unfortunately. I’ve seen a lot of freaking out and panicking, which turns *everyone *stupid.
Based on what I’ve seen of stressful situations, it’s not the intelligence that will get you through an emergency situation, but the ability to remain calm in the face of extremely uncalm situations. Self-control and discipline trump raw smarts.
Adrenaline stress response is a bitch. It limits your ability to plan. It can make you freeze. It can make you focus on a trivial thing instead of the crux of the matter. It can make you do the same ineffective thing over and over. It can practically eliminate all your fine motor skills.
The people who react well in a given emergency just about always do so because they have some kind of prior knowledge of the kind of emergency, have spent some time formulating plans or strategy libraries, and consequently have a somewhat moderated adrenaline stress response. This knowledge can come from life experience or it can come from training.
People who are confronted with a totally new dangerous emergency and handle it like a hero are products of fiction and entertainment media.
I recommend two excellent books on this topic, from which I derived the above post:
Only if they are being willfully stupid. If they are deliberately ignoring facts that they find unpleasant for one reason or another a major emergency can force them to act according to the facts and not what they want to believe. I’ve seen two people diagnosed with cancer suddenly admit that they were addicted to tobacco and quit cold turkey, for example. Both died anyway though; by the point disaster looms the “smarts” can come too late to do much good.
Can’t speak for increased intelligence but can TOTALLY vouch for the whole “Everything going in slow motion” in a life threatening crisis.
I had a quite unpleasant problem with my main 'chute on a night jump but felt very calm and as though I had all the time in the world to sort it out.
(Pull up a sandbag,swing that lantern and listen to my story)
For technical reasons it wasn’t the greatest idea to pull my reserve as there was a very good possibility of it flying up into my main(And I couldn’t cutaway) which would have definitely ended up in a dead L4L.
As I was going downwards rather rapidly I finally decided that the reserve was my only option slim as it was but before I could pull I span out of the twists that had that had restricted the full opening of my canopy and with it,its ability to resist the air.
Not putting it well here,but you get my drift.
I still hit the ground rather faster then usual but apart from having the breath knocked out of me was right as rain.
To my shame when picking up and packing up my 'chutes I picked up my reserve by the red handle with the obvious result.(I blame the adrenalin…)
When I grouped up with my mates one of them said “Yes we thought you’d have to use it(The reserve),we could see that you were in trouble but you left it fucking late didn’t you”
Thank god that they hadn’t seen that I’d accidently pulled it when safe and sound on the ground.
I was too embarrassed to tell a living soul until three years afterwards.
+1. I’ve seen many theoretically-intelligent people lose their head in an emergency, even to the point of needing to be restrained so the rest of us could solve the problem; I’ve never seen someone who was known as “a particularly low-wattage bulb” come up with his best idea when things were rushed.
The first part is quite a big problem, specially when the person who needs to be restrained is the one that should be taking charge. In that case, not only does it take resources away from the emergency, but you have to be careful about how you deal with that person or you could find yourself facing disciplinary action (you’re not supposed to deck a Production Engineer even when he’s swinging madly at the person with the fire extinguisher).
I don’t think there’s much truth to “emergency intelligence”, but I do think there’s something like “emergency attentiveness”.
There are many reasons why people are considered stupid. Sometimes, someone would act intelligently if they just paid attention to what’s right in front of their face. All of us have moments where we miss the obvious, but some people are constantly filtering out important sensory data. (Causing me to have to repeat everything three or ten times to my coworker, for example.)
I think that in some cases an emergency can jolt someone out of their normal foggy stupor so that they actually pay attention to what’s going on around them. This may cause them to act more intelligently than normal; not because they really are more intelligent, but because they’re actually processing useful data about the world instead of just running their mental screensaver.
Good post. I think you sum up stupidity well. I’ve often felt that there are many people who aren’t so much fundamentally stupid as they are fundamentally not alert.
Some people who generally come across as dreamers and airheads are capable of focusing - really, really focusing - in certain situations. Including, occasionally, during emergencies.
I think the OP is confusing blind dumb luck with intelligence.
If Joe Numbnuts is put in front of a ticking time tomb, he can either cut the cut the blue wire #7 and live or he will be blown into tiny bits. The one time in a hundred he does this isn’t due to a sudden increase in IQ, it’s just that human nature makes us forget the 99 guys who hit the bomb with a hammer instead.
I once played a SF RPG that had an alien race with this characterisitic. They had the equivalent of adrenalin but instead of affecting them physically it affected them mentally. Normally they were not very bright but in moments of stress this hormone would be released and their intelligence would shoot way up and make them temporary geniuses.