Why You're Smarter Than You Think

This is Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedantham. Many of us know what it feels like to be overlooked. The school we would love to study at doesn't love us back. We get passed over for a job or a promotion. When we ask to try our hand at something,

We are told no. Now, sometimes rejection might be a true reflection of our abilities. We can't run fast enough to make the team or remember all the facts needed to get through medical school. There are other times, however, when rejection is not about our limitations, it's that other people see us as limited. Our concerns over how we are judged are often most acute.

most charged when it comes to the topic of intelligence. Most of us don't just want to be smart. We want to be seen as smart. I just remember being taunted and and being, you know, told things like, like, oh you're too stupid to go into fourth grade, you idiot, like that that sort of thing. But yeah, it was really it was really painful.

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