Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know

Reading Check and Short Answer Questions on key points are designed for guided reading assignments, in-class review, formative assessment, quizzes, and more.

PROLOGUE-PART 1, CHAPTER 1

Reading Check

1. What job was Wagner Dodge doing in 1949?

2. What company did Mike Lazaridis found?

3. What does Grant call the mode of thinking that tries to prove others wrong?

4. What profession does Grant think we should all learn to think like?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. How did Wagner Dodge save his own life?

2. How does Grant distinguish mental fitness from intelligence?

3. Why are Grant’s ideas about leadership counterintuitive?

4. According to Grant, to what biases are intelligent people especially susceptible because of their overconfidence?

Paired Resource

“How to Think Like a Scientist: A Crash Course”

• This article from Cedars-Sinai explores the different facets of how scientists think.
• This resource relates to the theme of Thinking Like a Scientist.
• This article reveals what scientists themselves believe about Thinking Like a Scientist. What additional ideas does this article add to the portrayal of scientific thought that Grant offers in his book? Are these additional ideas relevant to the main point Grant is illustrating using scientists? What does this tell you about the particular analogy that Grant is making and about the nature of analogies in general?

“Why People Ignore Facts”

• This Psychology Today article offers a nuanced look at how identity and truth seeking interact.
• This resource relates to the theme of Separating Identities From Ideas.
• What idea does Grant illustrate through the anecdote of the firefighters refusing to abandon their equipment? Do you think there might have been other reasons the firefighters did not think to remove their equipment? What does this point out about using anecdotes to support an argument? How does the Psychology Today article lend more scientific support to Grant’s ideas about identity? What does this article suggest is the adaptive advantage to identity-based thinking? How does it suggest we might be able to retain this advantage and still be truth seekers?

PART 1, CHAPTERS 2-4

Reading Check

1. What country’s elections does Grant use to illustrate his point about competence and confidence?

2. What did Jean-Pierre Beugoms predict in 2015’s Good Judgment Open?

3. What does Phil Tetlock say is the most important predictor of a forecaster’s success?

4. What were the Wright brothers fighting about in the story that Grant tells about them?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. What is the Dunning-Kruger effect?

2. How does Grant tie the Dunning-Kruger effect to metacognition?

3. What distinction does Grant make between types of belief and their relationship to our reactions when our beliefs are challenged?

4. What two types of conflict does Grant discuss, and how do they relate to the effectiveness of working groups?

Paired Resource

“Why and When Beliefs Change: A Multi-Attribute Value-Based Decision Problem”

• This journal article explores the relationship between belief change, evidence, and the utility of a given belief.
• This resource relates to the theme of Separating Identities From Ideas.
• How does this research support, refute, or qualify Grant’s assertions regarding how people respond when their beliefs are challenged and how we can be more open to these challenges?

“The Misunderstood Limits of Folk Science: An Illusion of Explanatory Depth”

• This journal article discusses the reasons behind people’s tendency to believe they understand explanatory information more deeply than they really do.
• This resource relates to the theme of Thinking Like a Scientist.
• What are “folk theories”? What are some reasons the article gives for most people’s inability to understand how incomplete their theories are? How does this compare to Grant’s explanations?

PART 2

Reading Check

1. Who is Debra Jo Prectet?

2. What organization did a man eventually leave after getting to know Daryl Davis?

3. Which two teams’ fans’ beliefs did Grant study?

4. What did a Québécois hospital bring in Arnaud Gagneur to convince Marie-Hélène Étienne-Rousseau to do?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. What approach was Natarajan able to use successfully that his opponent was not able to utilize?

2. What relationship does Grant say exists between stereotypes and counterfactual thinking?

3. What approach did Arnaud Gagneur take in persuading Marie-Hélène Étienne-Rousseau?

4. What is Grant’s purpose in telling the story of Betty Bigombe?

Paired Resource

“The Power of Listening in Helping People Change”

• This article shares research regarding the power of attentive listening in influencing people’s beliefs.
• This resource relates to the theme of The Individual and the Community.
• What do these experiments have in common with Grant’s comments on influential listening? How do these research points and Grant’s observations both emphasize the role of the community in helping individuals examine their own beliefs?

PART 3

Reading Check

1. What contemporary issue does Grant think can be solved by presenting people with a range of positions instead of simply exposing them to opposing points of view?

2. Grant says that “good teachers introduce new thoughts,” but what do “great teachers introduce”? (Chapter 9)

3. What happened to astronaut Luca Parmitano on a spacewalk in 2013?

4. At which organization did Grant have executives read and react to complaints about themselves during a team-building exercise?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. What has Peter T. Coleman at the Difficult Conversations Lab found about pre-discussion reading?

2. Why does social studies teacher Erin McCarthy assign her students readings from older textbooks?

3. What is ironic about student ratings of lecture-style courses versus those that use active learning, and how does Grant explain this phenomenon?

4. What has Amy Edmonson’s research into psychological safety at hospitals revealed?

Paired Resource

“Opinion Amplification Causes Extreme Polarization in Social Networks”

• This research describes how people exaggerate their positions in order to gain followers and how this results in polarization within social networks.
• This resource relates to the theme of The Individual and the Community.
• How does this research relate to Grant’s ideas about polarization? How does it support the idea that communities play an important role in forming people’s opinions?

“What Are the Solutions to Political Polarization?”

• This article summarizes study into the causes and impacts of political polarization and offers research-based solutions to the problem.
• This resource relates to the theme of The Individual and the Community.
• How do the various research studies mentioned in this article either support, refute, or qualify Grant’s ideas about polarization? How do they support the idea that communities play an important role in forming people’s opinions?

PART 4-EPILOGUE

Reading Check

1. What question does Grant think we should avoid asking children?

2. What term does Grant use to describe the phenomenon of making our plans into our identities and shutting down alternative possibilities?

3. What part of writing does Grant dislike?

4. What recent historical event causes Grant to think there may be times when preaching, prosecuting, or politicking by the government can be beneficial to the public?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. What message about plans and goals does Grant illustrate with his anecdote about his cousin the neurosurgeon?

2. What research finding does Grant mention related to maintaining children’s interest in science?

3. What irony does research identify relative to the value people place on happiness?

4. What does Grant reply to those who say that rethinking is a generational, rather than personal, phenomenon?

Recommended Next Reads 

The Scout Mindset by Julia Galef

• This nonfiction text explores how people can more accurately understand the world around them by adopting the mindset of scouts, maintaining an open-minded curiosity, gathering information, and knowing when to reconsider.
• Shared themes include Thinking Like a Scientist, Separating Identities From Ideas, and The Individual and the Community.
• Shared topics include metacognition, cognitive biases, truth seeking, skepticism, open-mindedness, considering alternative perspectives, and rethinking.

Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error by Kathryn Schultz

• This nonfiction text explores the cognitive, social, and philosophical dimensions of errors—why we make them, why we defend them, and how they sometimes can be beneficial.
• Shared themes include Thinking Like a Scientist, Separating Identities From Ideas, and The Individual and the Community.
• Shared topics include metacognition, cognitive biases, and cognitive dissonance.
• Being Wrong on SuperSummary