Naivety (or naïvety, naïveté, etc.), is the state of being naive—having or showing a lack of experience, understanding or sophistication - often in a context where one neglects pragmatism in favor of moral idealism. One who is naive may be called a naif.

In early use, the word "naive" meant natural or innocent, and did not connote ineptitude. As a French word, it is spelled naïve or naïf. (French adjectives have grammatical gender; naïf is used with masculine nouns.) The dots above the i are a diaeresis (see also Ï). As an unitalicized English word, “naive” is now the more usual spelling, although “naïve” is unidiomatic rather than incorrect; “naïf” often represents the French masculine, but has a secondary meaning as an artistic style. “Naive” is now normally pronounced as two syllables, with the stress on the second, in the French manner.

The noun form can be written naivety, naïvety, naïveté, naïvete, or naiveté.

In the sciences, and technical professions, it is used to refer to a lack of experience or avoiding the obvious with a specific stimulus (e.g., an image, a drug, a method for solving math problems) and does not carry broader negative connotations about the individual. In computer science, a naive algorithm is one that is correct and simple, but not efficient, e.g. bubble sort for sorting or linear search to find a value in a list.

Herman Cain (born December 13, 1945) is an American author, business executive, radio host, syndicated columnist, and Tea Party activist from Georgia. He was a candidate for the 2012 U.S. Republican Party presidential nomination.

Cain grew up in Georgia and graduated from Morehouse College in 1967 with a Bachelor of Science in mathematics. Cain pursued graduate studies at Purdue University, and graduated with a Master of Science in computer science in 1971, while also working full-time for the U.S. Department of the Navy. In 1977, he joined Pillsbury Company where he later became vice president. During the 1980s, his success as a business executive at Burger King prompted Pillsbury Company to appoint him as chairman and CEO of Godfather's Pizza, in which capacity he served from 1986 to 1996.

Cain was chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City Omaha Branch from 1989 to 1991. He was deputy chairman, from 1992 to 1994, and chairman, from 1995 to 1996, of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. In 1995, Cain was appointed by Newt Gingrich to the Kemp Commission, and was a senior economic advisor to the Bob Dole presidential campaign. Cain became the CEO of the National Restaurant Association, in which he served as president and CEO from 1996 to 1999. During the Presidency of Bill Clinton, Cain publicly opposed the Clinton health care plan of 1993, about which he questioned the president at a town hall meeting. Cain has served as a member of the board of directors of several companies, including Aquila, Inc., Nabisco, Whirlpool, Reader's Digest, and AGCO.