People are smarter than they think!

People are unaware of the knowledge they really have. They have more ideas to share than they think they actually do. Dr. Bryan Bonner, an associate professor at the University of Utah's David Eccles School of Business, thinks people need to realize their knowledge before becoming successful. Psychologists believe that people need to think about what they already know about a topic before finding a solution.

A research was done with 540 Utah undergraduate students, 270 working alone, and the rest in groups. Their task was to estimate closest to the correct answers to questions like weight of the heaviest man in history. Other questions asked were the elevation of Utah's King's Peak and the population of Utah state. Research shows that we're not good at applying old knowledge to current problems. When people work together consistently and effectively, it increases the amount of brainpower used. I thought this article was really interesting because people don't know how smart they really are. It seems to take much brainpower to effectively use past knowledge and apply it to new problems. Together people can apply old knowledge as a group and become very good at it. Maybe I will try to work in groups to apply my knowledge to new problems.