1. INTRODUCTION:

Understanding the nature of individual behaviour has been at the core of psychological sciences since the middle 1800’s. Two themes that have earned considerable attention include intelligence and personality. For both themes, numerous theoretical systems have been outlined over the last decades. When one runs quick searches in existing databases, one finds at least four major perspectives of intelligence and six of personality. The existence of multiple views is not a disadvantage, rather each theory explains parts of complex phenomena that is hard to capture by one single perspective. The complement of diverse perspectives is beneficial when the phenomenon under analysis is subject to critical contextual variations.

Notwithstanding the relevance of studying intelligence or personality, it is difficult to understand why other facets of individual behaviour have gone almost ignored by science. One such expression is human stupidity, about which there are rare accounts. But stupidity is not alone in this void of scientific knowledge. Incompetence and evilness, for example, have been rarely addressed in science. And yet, knowing what stupidity is, what makes individuals stupid, and why do crowds follow stupid thoughts and actions, are as important quests as comprehending what is intelligence and what are the results of motivated people. French film director Claude Chabrol alerted that stupidity is infinitely more fascinating that intelligence, because intelligence has its limits while stupidity has none. Therefore, examining stupidity should be a critical concern for behavioural and educational sciences, especially in the modern world where information and knowledge have never been so manipulated and distorted.

The current text addresses several of these issues and topics. Due to the paucity of robust theoretical edifices, many of the inquiries do not yet have a definite answer, however, the existing writings on stupidity provide a first pool of ideas regarding its antecedents and consequences. The relationship between stupidity at different levels of analysis (e.g., the individual and the group) is also an interesting point of reflection.

The next section presents two recent examples of stupid behaviours and highlights similarities and differences between them. Both examples are drawn from the Ukraine conflict, which between 2022 and 2024 has been in the spotlights of most international news. Section 3 introduces D. Bonhoeffer’s perspective of stupidity, and section 4 outlines C.M. Cipolla’s view. Bonhoeffer and Cipolla offer two fascinating accounts of human stupidity. Section 5 advances a taxonomy of the reasons behind individual stupidity and addresses the role of education, and section 6 closes the text with an examination of the advantages and value of stupidity.

2. Recent Examples of Individual and Collective stupid Behaviour:

The number of examples in which individuals or groups exhibit stupid moments is extraordinary. First Chanceller of the Federal Republic of Germany Konrad Adenauer once pointed out that “in view of the fact that God limited the intelligence of man, it seems unfair that He did not also limit his stupidity”. Similarly, Einstein is quoted to have said “only two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the former”.

Two recent examples related to the war in Ukraine illustrate the commonness of stupidity. The first example shows how a popular US politician, with a solid business acumen, expressed an absurd opinion about a dreadful international conflict. The second example shows how a decision by Russian command to deploy troops in the vicinities of Chernobyl may have ruined the lives of at least 300 military.

The invasion of Ukraine by Russia started on 24^th February 2021, bringing destruction and suffering for thousands of Ukrainians and an emerging political international divide which long-term consequences are still to be fully understood. Politicians all over the world have expressed their views of the conflict, and many have advanced solutions to end the war. Chris Cillizza, CNN Editor, in March 2022 analysed the solution announced by an influential US politician to bring the hostilities to an immediate closure ¹. Referring to an audio from The Washington Post, the politician would have told “a group of Republican donors in New Orleans that the United States should paint Chinese flags on its F-22 planes and then use those planes to bomb Russia […] then we say, ‘China did it, we didn’t do it, China did it,’ and then they start fighting with each other and we sit back and watch” ¹.

Cillizza never uses the word “stupidity” in his article; instead, he uses “naivete” and “unorthodox”. However, the suggested solution was most probably a stupid plan. Firstly, because the former politician believed that the Russians would be fooled by painting the Chinese flag on US airplanes; and secondly, because the same politician failed to see the catastrophic global effects of a nuclear war between China and Russia¹. The first instance shows the extremely flawed beliefs held by the person exhibiting the stupid behaviour. And the second instance reveals the inability or unwillingness to see the full set of potentially destructive outcomes, including to oneself.

If reasons existed to believe that this senior politician was not being serious when he proclaimed such a solution, Cillizza reminds that this very same person had a record of similar bizarre thoughts, which included a proposal to buy Greenland from Denmark, and a preference to admit migrants from Norway to the US, rather than from central America and Africa, on the basis of their superior skills and abilities.

As a final note regarding this case, it is important to highlight that although this former politician has accumulated a large number of what can qualify as obtuse decisions and actions, he was also able to amass a fortune and build a business empire in the United States before his career in politics. Such is the nature of stupidity: several stupid decisions and acts should not define a stupid person.

The second example is from an article published by A. Rojas² on 31 March 2022 in El Mundo online. It reports the evacuation of some 300 Russian troops from the Red Forest in the early months of 2022, shortly after the start of the invasion. In the early days of the raid, the occupying army took positions near the Chernobyl region, some 150 kms from the Ukrainian capital. Faced with almost no resistance, the new Red Army settled down in the Red Forest, apparently unaware of the high radiation levels that surrounded reactor 4. Moreover, the military dug several trenches, unearthing ashes and other residues that had been buried there after the nuclear disaster in 1986.

For comparison purposes, Rojas explains that tourists going to Chernobyl prior to the war never went to the Red Forest (same reason why the Ukrainian resistance never ventured attacking the invader there), and when they visited the nuclear power plant, the tour would last a few hours, and everybody would be required to wear protective clothing and a dosimeter. The Russians in the forest were not carrying the appropriate gear against radiation. The article in El Mundo further informs that according to Belarussian sources, several trucks with Russian soldiers showing signs of radiation poisoning arrived in the Research Center for Radiation Medicine and Human Ecology, in the city of Gomel, just a few days after occupying the woods.

An important similarity between these examples is that a stupid action or decision is highly likely to generate harmful consequences to the person or group expressing the moronic deed. Idiocy seems to obliterate the capacity to perceive beyond the short-term outcomes, including the outcomes to oneself.

There are also differences between the two cases. In the first example, no actions and behaviours were produced, except via words and speeches, so no further effects were likely generated. In the second example, actions were taken, which certainly lead to horrible consequences to the lives of the unfortunate military. Foolishness can express itself through thoughts, intentions, decisions, actions, or a combination of these. The consequences of stupidity in each case, however, are different. Another difference between the two examples is that the first case depicts individual stupidity, whereas the second one exposes collective idiocy.

As this section shows, stupidity and the stupid individual are two distinct notions. No matter how senseless certain individuals look to external observers, the notion of a “stupid person” is probably a theoretical concept, inexistent in the real world. Correspondingly, stupidity is not an exclusive attribute of certain individuals, which might sound quite unsettling for some readers, for it implies that anyone can be stupid!

In other words, everyone can reveal stupid actions, which means that most people reading this text have already had their moments of low cleverness or brainlessness at least once in life.

3. Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s theory about collective stupidity:

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German Lutheran pastor and theologian who has authored several influential books on Christianity^{3, 4}. He was also an active anti-Nazi dissenter, whose thoughts and writings lead him to imprisonment in April 1943, where he wrote several letters to his family and friends. Bonhoeffer was hanged on 9^th April 1944, when he was 39 years old, 21 days before Hitler committed suicide. His letters were later gathered and selected by his friend Eberhard Bethge, and published posthumously under the title Letters and Papers from Prison⁵, a collection of manuscripts with more than 750 pages. This monumental work covers many topics, including compelling and tantalizing questions about the role of Christianity and the church in an increasingly secular world, and the meaning of life and death.

Bonhoeffer’s surrounding context had a profound influence on his work. In fact, the clergyman spent his last years trying to understand how it was possible that such an advanced society as 1930’s Germany paid attention to, and followed the madness triggered by a rabble of vicious people. Bonhoeffer’s papers offer, therefore, a remarkable perspective on how stupidity progresses from the individual to the group and to society^{3, 4}. À-propos, French writer Voltaire declared that the more often a stupidity is repeated, the more it gets the appearance of wisdom. And this is exactly what the Nazis did: they powered a collective belief in the superiority of one race over all others, for which all means to achieve such end were acceptable, including what they called the Final Solution to the Jewish Question.

As said, Letters and Papers from Prison ⁵ deals with many topics, including stupidity, civil courage, and justice. Concerning stupidity, Bonhoeffer states that it is more dangerous than evil. Evil can be fought with good and love, but stupidity cannot, hence one is largely defenseless against idiocy and idiots. Contrary to a malicious person, a stupid one is profoundly self-satisfied and self-centered, and construes a myopic reality around which everything else must abide. How to combat stupidity is a tricky endeavour, which is why this matter is developed further in section 5.

The relationship between intelligence and stupidity is a complex one. Some argue that they are mutually exclusive, but some others defend that they can co-exist in the same person. Bonhoeffer belongs to the second group. The more intelligent the stupid person, the more complex is the fantasy world imagined by him or her, and the more difficult to accept divergent views and values. Being easily irritated, the foolish individual can become dangerous by going on the attack. Bonhoeffer advises that greater caution should be exerted with this type of people, especially when they have a strong decision-making power⁵. In a recent working paper, Kets de Vries (2023,⁶) alerts to the dangerous combination of intelligence, foolishness, and malicious narcissism, which according to him produce the worse type of stupid people.

Bonhoeffer probes deeper into the nature of the concept when he explains that stupidity is not an intellectual defect, instead it is a human one. This means that people are not born stupid or chose to be stupid, instead they are made stupid, or they allow this to happen to them under the right circumstances. The problem, then, is not of a psychological nature, but of a sociological one. He goes on to explain that strong upsurges of power in the public sphere, be it of a religious or political sort, have the potential to infect large parts of the population with stupidity. The author wonders if this is not some kind of law, which could be expressed as follows: the power of the one needs the stupidity of the other.

During this infection process, the populace gives up its independence and its capacity to critically judge the stupid ideas and decides to blindly follow the stupid person or group. The process is even more efficient when the person or the group is invested with legitimate power, is persistent in pursuing the stupid ideas and convictions, and masters sophisticated crowd manipulation skills.

In conversation with the stupid individual or group, one feels that they are not dealing at all with a person, but with slogans and catchwords that have taken possession of him or her. He or she is under a spell, blinded, and abused in his or her own very being. The stupid person or group thus becomes a mindless tool, capable of using evilness if needed to defend and impose his or her truths about the world.

This systems-view of stupidity shows how the phenomenon can spread from one person to the wider group. The equation includes several components: intelligence and coalitions, power and domination, persistence and resistance to the opposition, crowd manipulation and persuasion, absence or desertion of critical perspectives and actions by the group, social contagion, evilness and immorality, and, of course, a mindset of stupid ideas and values.

How does one overcome this stupidity flow? Bonhoeffer believes that only an act of liberation, not instruction, can defeat stupidity. In other words, education is not the solution, because the stupid person does not want and/or will not accept to be changed. His or her internal liberation becomes possible only when external liberation has preceded it. External liberation does not mean to return violence for violence, however justified it might seem in the circumstances. As he wrote, “the sacrifice more painful than that of his life is that of his ethical purity”, which means staying true to one’s own values and convictions even in the face of evilness and absurdity⁵.

At this point it should be clear that evilness and stupidity are distinct constructs. Bonhoeffer fought the Nazi regime because it was an evil one. Fighting evilness makes sense and there are concrete steps that can be taken, which Bonhoeffer did, and for which he was sent to prison and executed. In his writings, he asserts that the German society in the 1930’s was not evil, and people never saw themselves as evil or as supporting evil things but were generally too stupid to understand the difference.

The final quest is then what exactly is “external liberation”? ⁵ How does one change a person, a group, or a system that is blind and deaf to differences that does not want to evolve morally and ethically? No source consulted to compose the current text explained what “external liberation” exactly meant to Bonhoeffer; hence one is left to wonder how to fight stupidity. The frequent recurrence of stupid ideas and individuals since the fall of the Nazis, however, seems to confirm that “external liberation” is not a simple notion. Nor it is an idea without followers. Martin Luther King built on the work of Thoreau and Gandhi, to prove that civil disobedience and nonviolence could be effective tools of mass protest when the laws and the system are unjust and flawed⁷. Luther King declared that one has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws; conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. He also stated that nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.

4. Cipolla’s Basic Laws of Human Stupidity:

Carlo Cipolla was an Italian economics historian with a long academic career in several universities in Italy and in the United States. Author of twenty books, exploring economic and monetary history and the history of medicine and public health, he was a member of several respectful societies, including the Royal Historical Society of Great Britain and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Cipolla passed away in 2000, at the age of 78 ⁸.

In 1988 he published a humorous treatise titled “The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity” ⁹, which became a bestseller in Italy and was produced as a play in France. Using no more than common-sense and irony, Cipolla’s text is rather original, and in the almost total absence of scientific explanations for stupidity, it gained the status of a scientific writing.

Cipolla starts by defining a stupid person: it is someone who shows senseless decisions and behaviours in specific contexts. Just like Bonhoeffer, Cipolla argues that no one is free from taking stupid decisions or acting idiotically. In other words, everyone can have, and most probably already has had, their instances of brainless actions or decisions.

This democratisation of foolishness does not mean that there are not stupid individuals. Cipolla advances a typology of people, with four groups, according to their actions to others and to themselves: the intelligent, the bandit, the helpless, and the stupid⁹. The first group generates benefits to themselves and to others. The second group creates benefits to themselves, at the expenses of others. The actions of helpless individuals enrich others at their own expenses. Finally, the stupid bring losses both to themselves and to others.

This grouping suggests an apparent difference to Bonhoeffer’s account. As said, in Bonhoeffer’s formulation, intelligence and stupidity can concur in the same individual, i.e., clever folks can be utterly stupid, while others can be mentally dull yet anything but stupid. In Cipolla’s view, an intelligent person falls into a distinct category from a stupid one, hence intelligent individuals cannot be stupid, and vice-versa. In support of Cipolla’s perspective, it is worthwhile to recall that in the past the terms “idiots” and “imbeciles” were used to classify individuals scoring less than 20 and 20-34, respectively, in the famous Binet and Simon IQ scale ¹⁰. Such words no longer are accepted in modern intelligence tests, but the idea that stupidity is at one end of intellectual ability still has its supporters.

Dortier (2018)¹⁰ acknowledges that intelligent people can be extremely dumb at times, which suggests that final behaviours can be affected by many other factors. As Cipolla’s laws below will show, intelligent people can have stupid ideas, so although according to him there are the stupid and the intelligent, people falling in the second group can also act foolishly. Portuguese writer and poet Fernando Pessoa wrote that no intelligent idea can gain general acceptance unless some stupidity is mixed in with it. In sum, intelligence and stupidity seem to be different dimensions that can indeed coexist in the same person.

If the relationship between intelligence and idiocy is a complex one, the same can be said of the ones between stupidity and other individual characteristics, such as ignorance and evilness. For example, some ignorant people are not stupid at all, whereas some knowledgeable individuals are absolute morons.

Cipolla’s model is based on five principles or laws⁹. The First Law reads “Always and inevitably, everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation”. This means that there are stupid persons out there, but its number is largely underestimated by the rest of the population. This wrong evaluation is compounded by the biased assumption that some people are intelligent because they have great jobs, houses, or are important influencers. Even more dangerous, is to underestimate the power of these people to influence society.

The Second Law establishes that “The probability that a certain person (will) be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person”. Stupidity is a human attribute that exists in all classes and types of human beings; hence it is not more prevalent in some groups over others. Highly educated people or people with a high decision-power can be as stupid as people with low academic qualifications or people who do not have any decision power in groups. Stupid people can be found amongst university professors, presidents of a country, monasteries, or at a dinner party full of millionaires. Stupidity is as inevitable as anything else in life; one is bound to deal with stupid people, ideas, and behaviours.

The Third Law of Human Stupidity is the most important to Cipolla, as it defines a stupid person. He calls it The Golden Law of Stupidity: “A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses”. The decisions and actions of a stupid individual are rationally difficult to understand and to calculate, which makes such person potentially dangerous to others and to society. The decisions and actions of the intelligent, the bandit, and the helpless are relatively easy to comprehend and to predict, hence there are ways to deal with these three groups. But no rational basis seems to support the stupid decision or action; it is erratic, unexpected, and irregular. The corollary is that stupid people are potentially dangerous and harmful because reasonable people find it difficult to understand unreasonable behaviour. Kets de Vries (2023)⁶ puts forward several limitations to cognition that might trigger idiotic thoughts. For example, sunk cost fallacy refers to the continuous effort to invest time, money, and resources in a endeavour beyond the point where it makes sense to.

Cipolla’s Fourth Law⁹ affirms that “Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. In particular, non-stupid people constantly forget that at all times and places, and under any circumstances, to deal and/or associate with stupid people always turns out to be a costly mistake”. By trusting stupid people, the non-stupid people end up by showing their vulnerabilities and weaknesses, which can be leveraged by the first group to gain power and dominance over the second. This law shows that stupidity has a contagious power which should not be underestimated. The stupid ideas of an intelligent person can lead to the manipulation of crowds, annihilating their critical thinking and action processes, and causing an epidemic of stupidity, or a culture of stupidity. As recent history shows, civilizational retrogressions are not uncommon events, and no country or institution seems to be immune to this law. At an even wider level, one can wonder if the unstoppable dilapidation of the Earth’s resources and the climate warming caused by human action are not the ultimate expression of Cipolla’s Fourth Law?

The final law is the corollary of the first four: “A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person”. As said, the behaviours of the intelligent, the bandit, and the helpless can be predicted and dealt with. But no one can foresee what comes from the stupid, as there is no rational foundation. Constant stupidity is the only thing constant about stupidity.

5. Listing the Potential Causes of Stupid Behaviours:

The previous sections show that there is ample room for researching and learning about stupidity. This section examines some of the roots of behaviours that qualify as stupid. The next paragraphs focus on decisions and actions more than on the individual because decisions and actions can be more easily changed than stable attributes and traits. The attentive reader must have realised by now that it makes more sense to speak of actions and decisions, than of stupid individuals. Although some people seem to suffer from a constant stupidity state, it is probably more reasonable to believe that even such individuals have moments of sensible grace.

There are five considerations to assert, before providing a list of explanations of stupid behavioural expressions. Firstly, labeling an action or a decision as stupid has neither a consensual nor an objective bearing. Whereas some will classify somebody else’s action or decision as obviously imbecile, some others will see it as an expression of human magnificence. Isaac Asimov once said “there is no belief, however foolish, that will not gather its faithful adherents who will defend it to death”. Using Cipolla’s criteria to distinguish stupid individuals from the other three groups helps to give objectivity to the observation, but subjectivity will always play a vital role in judging others’ volitions.

Secondly, individual stupidity and collective stupidity are distinct phenomena. Here only the roots of the first one are scrutinised. But as it is widely accepted, the social and the cultural components of life are also powerful determinants of a person’s final behaviour. For example, social contagion and destructive leadership may also induct stupid behaviours in the most intelligent of followers.

Thirdly, as said, final individual behaviour is not influenced by one single element, rather by a complex interplay of many factors which interact in not-yet known ways. Such elements include the individual’s inner world (biological and psychological factors) and its surrounding context (family, social, and cultural factors).

Fourthly, the cause-effect relationship is very difficult to ascertain in most cases. For example, is ignorance the reason for stupid deeds? Or is stupidity feeding ignorance? Moreover, the presence of a particular cause does not necessarily lead to the production of stupid behaviours.

And finally, much of what follows is only conceptual, not empirical. As already clarified, scientific research about stupidity is scarce, hence the ideas exposed in table 1 should be seen as tentative, in need of more investigation. The table shows seven individual-level causes of stupidity actions and decisions. Six of these can be grouped into three categories: reasoning, knowledge, and personality. Some of the authors used to elaborate the table include ^{6, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17}.

From the table, one can now proceed with the idea that Bonhoeffer’s “internal” and “external liberation” measures should differ according to the roots of stupidity. For example, education, instruction, and training should be efficient means to reduce the number of stupid acts due to ignorance. Kets de Vries (2023)⁶ argues that a strong education system acts as a powerful means to prevent stupid actions. He further asserts that education helps people to walk a journey of personal discovery of their ignorance. At an even higher level, one can argue that universities adhering to educating on the 10 Principles of the UN Global Compact are also contributing to fight individual and global stupidity. For example, Principle 6 reads “the elimination of discrimination in respect to employment and occupation”, which implies a change of mindset towards inclusivity and tolerance, which are usually missing in ignorant individuals.

Education and instruction might be also effective in helping the general population to develop deeper critical thinking skills⁶, thus helping to build shared cultural elements shielding single individuals from falling prey to idiotic messages and movements.

However, education is most probably less effective in preventing stupid behaviours due to the Dark Tetrad¹⁵. Dieguez (2018)¹⁸ writes that “these days, seemingly educated people, who are entirely capable of informing themselves (if they wanted to), reject scientific recommendations on vaccination and climate, spout far-fetched conspiracy theories, vote happily for morons and support stupid initiatives, become outraged over meaningless nonsense, incessantly embrace frivolous whims, and some even decide that, as far as they’re concerned, the Earth is flat no matter what people say” (p. 159). In situations where a stupid idea is coupled with a malicious and powerful individual, other solutions such as passive resistance or active rebellion might be better solutions to cope with idiocy. As the table suggests, if a decision is possible to take regarding the intentionality of the stupid conduct, then this can probably be used to design the types and/or intensity of the liberation measures.

Another conclusion from the table is that eradicating stupidity will be hardly ever achieved; even if one is able to design and implement all sorts of powerful liberation measures to tackle the first six factors, there will always be an element of unpredictability, as represented by the last factor in the table: spontaneousness and impulsiveness of behaviours.

This last conclusion is interesting, as it raises the question related to the importance of stupidity. There is no such thing as perfect decisions and actions, and thus stupidity is something that sounds an inevitable fact of life. However, maybe there are some advantages and benefits of dealing with stupid individuals and groups, regardless of the more or less damaging or tragic outcomes of such behaviours. The last section presents some ideas about the value of stupidity.

6. The value of stupidity:

Any reader who reached this point can probably recognise one or more acquaintances, work colleagues, or even family members whose decisions or actions qualify as foolish. And some others will not be ashamed to confess some moments in their lives where they wer, well, less smart than usual.

In the previous sections stupidity was depicted as a problem, a fault, something to be avoided or eliminated, never to be stimulated or prompted. But as stupidity seems to be inevitable, then it is important to ponder if there are any benefits that one can extract from stupid decisions and actions. This is not to praise or protect stupid people and their behaviours. Rather, it is to think of the learnings and value of stupidity as a human attribute that anyway cannot be completely prevented. In other words, when judging the value of a stupid behaviour, it is always key to first evaluate its intentionality, frequency, continuity, and consequences.

A first obvious advantage of stupid behaviours is its impact on learning and individual development. A stupid decision and/or act due to lack of appropriate knowledge, for example, can be used to help the individual or the group to adopt corrective measures, once the foolishness is accepted as such, and once the consequences of the initial behaviours are ascertained. And even if the individual or the group does not accept or recognise the wrongdoing, the surrounding context can be improved to avoid or deal with future repetitions of the stupidity. Incorporating the learnings from stupid acts into education and in fact into other societal institutions is probably the most powerful deterrent to future idiotic movements or individuals.

A second advantage is related to the active role of stupidity in certain industries, such as in entertainment and creative industries. Stupidity in humorous TV shows, for instance, is mastered by directors and actors to generate value and profit. Similarly, everybody remembers how much fun and joy one takes from the sketches played by clowns in circuses. Stupidity in these cases is clearly fake, a tool to achieve results, but the fact is that it brings value to the ones using it.

Thirdly, non-stupid individuals may decide it is easier, less costly, and less time-consuming, to follow individuals which take any kind of decisions and acts, including foolish ones. Blind faith, poor decision-making skills, thinking laziness, are some of the reasons behind herd behaviours. The fact is that it demands less effort to transfer your fate to someone’s else hands, even if they are stupid ones, than taking your fate into your own hands.

A fourth advantage is that stupidity also has an intrinsic value which is important to grasp. Being part of human nature, then it is worthy to examine stupidity, as well as its relationships with other human attributes and with the external environment. More and better theories about stupidity can only lead to expand the knowledge about humankind, at the psychological, sociological, biological, and cultural levels.

A fifth less evident benefit of stupidity is its potential impact on creativity, innovativeness, and improvisation. By definition, a stupid decision or act is something that a person takes and which, for an external observer, can be totally out of context, irrational, and senseless. But it might be also a trigger to think out of the box, to disrupt status quo, and to stimulate imagination and spark inspiration. In corporate contexts, for example, stupid trials in research and development departments can lead to new or improved products or solutions.

Finally, stupidity can also be a sign of a damaged or flawed context. Stupidity is a social phenomenon, which means that the stupid individual, or the individual exhibiting stupid behaviours, is inserted in an environment that allows or stimulates such kind of acts and decisions, just like Bonhoeffer defended. If people are not born stupid, rather they are educated or raised into stupidity, then it is the system that needs to be corrected. Stupidity becomes a systemic issue, hence stupid decisions and acts need to be seen as signs of such a faulty system.

To conclude, this text brought up some issues and themes about a common human attribute which has been seldom examined in science. Stupidity is ideally an undesired outcome, but as the article showed, it is also an inevitable occurrence in life, and it can even carry benefits to those involved in stupid decisions and actions. And as all other occurrences in life, it can and should be explored, understood, and managed.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS:

The authors show their appreciation to Dr. Leigh Jones-Khosla for her valuable and constructive suggestions to a previous version of this text.

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Received on 07.05.2024 Revised on 16.12.2024

Accepted on 01.05.2025 Published on 29.07.2025

Available online from August 05, 2025

Asian Journal of Management. 2025;16(3):167-174.

DOI: 10.52711/2321-5763.2025.00026

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Creative Commons License.

Group	Potential causes	Description
Intellect and reasoning	Low reasoning ability, cognitive decline/biases, mental disorders or illnesses	A lack or a drop of intellectual processing power; a failure to optimally use one’s cognitive capacities; congenital deficiencies. No intention to act stupidly.
Intellect and reasoning	Intelligence and intention to take stupid decisions and actions	Smart people can cut off with reality, creating their own theories, often profoundly flawed, to explain phenomena; very intelligent people may tend to produce counter-intuitive thoughts and neglect common-sense. Stupidity can also be a deliberate tool to achieve something. Intention to act stupidly
Knowledge	Ignorance, flawed or poor information and knowledge	Lack of reliable information and trust on wrong or false sources of information and knowledge; poor knowledge or instruction about certain subjects. Intention might play a role.
Knowledge	Misconceptions, prejudice, religious and other beliefs	Oversimplified ideas and implicit theories, and mental models about phenomena; prejudice or beliefs of any kind based on race, gender, nationality, or any other collective attributes. Intention is related to the beliefs.
Personality	Dark Tetrad (narcissism, sadism, psychopathy, Machiavellianism)	Personality traits related to amoral and antisocial behaviour, that can trigger a detachment from reality, and which can lead to deliberately control or bring pain to other people, often through evilness and malice. Little intention to act with stupidity.
Personality	Hostility, aggressiveness, hate	Personality traits that target specific people, with feelings and thoughts loaded with aggressiveness and hate, and which can result in elaborated ways to harm them with no plausible reason to an outsider. Intention might play a role.
Spontaneous and impulsive decisions and actions		Decisions and actions that are casual, non-planned, infrequent, and are not repeated once acknowledged; related to mistakes, errors, misjudgments. Intention might play a role.