But Oppenheimer could be unsettling, especially in his arrogant youth. He was intolerant of anyone who he thought was mediocre and did little to hide his contempt. He would interrupt a colleague and finish the sentence for him. At age 9, he told an older cousin: "Ask me a question in Latin and I'll answer you in Greek."
Edward Condon, a young American physicist who knew Oppenheimer as a graduate student in Europe, said: "Trouble is that Oppie is so quick on the trigger intellectually he puts the other guy at a disadvantage. And dammit, he is always right, or at least right enough."
The vast majority may be intimidated by the brilliant few, but those on the far right tail of the bell curve have their own woes. Domineering geniuses fail to see why the rest of us just don't get it. One of Ayn Rand's biographers, Barbara Branden, wrote of those with "vast intelligence": "Such men and women stand alone, cut off from the world by a sense of distance from other people that is not an illness and cannot be cured... They endure the loneliness of seeing rather more clearly than others see, of understanding what others do not understand."
Reacting positively to such people depends on one's own goals and sense of self-worth. To Condon and Dundridge, Oppenheimer shone a light on the possibilities of the mind. Robert Wilson, a brilliant physicist himself, said of Oppenheimer: "In his presence I became more intelligent, more vocal, more intense, more prescient, more poetic myself. Although normally a slow reader, when he handed me a letter I would glance at it and hand it back prepared to discuss the nuances of it minutely." University of Michigan psychologist Chris Peterson was overwhelmed listening to eminent psychologist Steven Pinker speak a few years ago—and remains convinced that the experience enhanced his own performance.
"I know a lot of smart guys and some are inspiring," says Peterson. "I do feel that I speed up, try to say interesting things, try to think of things I've never thought of before." Seligman says it brings out the best in him. "I've only met three geniuses in my life—writers Carl Sagan and Michael Crichton and philosopher Robert Nozick, and each time I tried to think more clearly and say things that made sense," he says. "I watched my step very carefully."
We will be scared or stimulated depending on whether we feel that we're in direct competition, says Simonton. "Certainly in leadership positions, a highly intelligent person can represent a potential challenger. On the other hand, we often feel inspired if we are viewing that individual as a potential role model."
Those who turn deerlike in the headlights of a dazzling intellect are often afraid that they will be toyed with or not taken seriously. The young Gates awed Jim Towne, Microsoft's first recruited president in 1982 and briefly the company's chief operating officer. Rather than argue with the most intelligent man he'd ever met, Towne would retreat—in effect telling Gates that he could win by intimidation. (Towne, a professional manager accused of caring too little about computers and software to satisfy Gates, was gone by the summer of 1983.) "When someone appears brilliant and is dominant in a meeting, others often back off and become more reticent, which elevates the difference between them," says Simonton.
Supreme intelligence is also alienating because it is, in fact, alien to us. We don't often come across a mind manifestly superior to our own. "We live in a pretty intellectually segregated society," says Doug Detterman, editor of the journal Intelligence and professor of psychology at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. "Smart people talk to smart people." Plus, we tend to overestimate our own intelligence, one of many domains in which we unconsciously inflate our abilities (we also overestimate our love-making, driving and comedic abilities). So it's something of a jolt to realize that someone else is much smarter than we are.
If the ability to easily gauge a peer's intelligence allows us to navigate our social world, the ability to successfully assess a love interest's brainpower is just as critical: Wooing a high-wattage mate ups our chances for a competent partner and smarter-than-average children. In fact, evolutionary psychologists contend that intelligence evolved as a way to assess the quality or "fitness" of a potential partner.
Says Borkenau: "Perceived intelligence is certainly important in interpersonal dealings. Competence seems to be one of a few core dimensions underlying judgments of personality, and it is important for the overall evaluation of a person."
Whether we're in search of a brilliant mate or cowering in the presence of a too-smart colleague, Simonton cautions that we can be fooled. We may think we are chatting with a blindingly clever individual, when we are actually just talking to someone who knows his or her stuff.
Tags:
brainpower,
communication,
computer engineers,
corporate software,
floppy drives,
genius,
intelligence,
intimidation,
laugh lines,
luminary,
mere mortals,
microsoft executives,
microsoft sales,
romp,
self examination,
seminal questions,
shock to the system,
software business,
university of pennsylvania,
water fountain,
work
