27-1 How do psychologists define intelligence, and what are the arguments for g?

In many studies, intelligence has been defined as whatever intelligence tests measure, which has tended to be school smarts. But intelligence is not a quality like height or weight, which has the same meaning to everyone worldwide. People assign the term intelligence to the qualities that enable success in their own time and culture (Sternberg & Kaufman, 1998). In Cameroon’s equatorial forest, intelligence may reflect understanding the medicinal qualities of local plants. In a North American high school, it may reflect mastering difficult concepts in tough courses. In both places, intelligence is the mental potential to learn from experience, solve problems, and use knowledge to adapt to new situations.

You probably know some people with talents in science, others who excel in the humanities, and still others gifted in athletics, art, music, or dance. You may also know a talented artist who is stumped by the simplest math problem, or a brilliant math student who struggles when discussing literature. Are all these people intelligent? Could you rate their intelligence on a single scale? Or would you need several different scales? Simply put, is intelligence a single overall ability or several specific abilities?

Charles Spearman (1863–1945) believed we have one general intelligence (often shortened to g) that is at the heart of all of our intelligent behavior, from navigating the sea to excelling in school. He granted that people often have special, outstanding abilities. But he noted that those who score high in one area, such as verbal intelligence, typically score higher than average in other areas, such as spatial or reasoning ability.

Spearman’s belief stemmed in part from his work with factor analysis, a statistical procedure that identifies clusters of related items. In this view, mental abilities are much like physical abilities: The ability to run fast is distinct from the eye-hand coordination required to throw a ball on target. Yet there remains some tendency for good things to come packaged together—for running speed and throwing accuracy to correlate. In both athleticism and intelligence, several distinct abilities tend to cluster together and to correlate enough to define a general underlying factor. Distinct brain networks enable distinct abilities, with g explained by their coordinated activity (Hampshire et al., 2012).

27-2 How do Gardner’s and Sternberg’s theories of multiple intelligences differ, and what criticisms have they faced?

Other psychologists, particularly since the mid-1980s, have sought to extend the definition of intelligence beyond the idea of academic smarts.

GARDNER’S MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES Howard Gardner has identified eight relatively independent intelligences, including the verbal and mathematical aptitudes assessed by standardized tests (FIGURE 27.1 below). Thus, the computer programmer, the poet, the street-smart adolescent, and the basketball team’s play-making point guard exhibit different kinds of intelligence (Gardner, 1998). Gardner (1999) has also proposed a ninth possible intelligence—existential intelligence—the ability “to ponder large questions about life, death, existence.”

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Gardner (1983, 2006, 2011; Davis et al., 2011) views these intelligence domains as multiple abilities that come in different packages. Brain damage, for example, may destroy one ability but leave others intact. And consider people with savant syndrome. Despite their island of brilliance, these people often score low on intelligence tests and may have limited or no language ability (Treffert & Wallace, 2002). Some can compute complicated calculations quickly and accurately, or identify almost instantly the day of the week corresponding to any historical date, or render incredible works of art or musical performance (Miller, 1999).

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About four in five people with savant syndrome are males. Many also have autism spectrum disorder (ASD), a developmental disorder. The late memory whiz Kim Peek (who did not have ASD) inspired the movie Rain Man. In 8 to 10 seconds, he could read and remember a page. During his lifetime, he memorized 9000 books, including Shakespeare’s works and the Bible. He could provide GPS-like travel directions within any major U.S. city. Yet he could not button his clothes, and he had little capacity for abstract concepts. Asked by his father at a restaurant to lower his voice, he slid down in his chair to lower his voice box. Asked for Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, he responded, “227 North West Front Street. But he only stayed there one night—he gave the speech the next day” (Treffert & Christensen, 2005).

STERNBERG’S THREE INTELLIGENCES Robert Sternberg (1985, 2011) agrees with Gardner that there is more to success than traditional intelligence and that we have multiple intelligences. But his triarchic theory proposes three, not eight or nine, intelligences:

Gardner and Sternberg differ in some areas, but they agree on two important points: Multiple abilities can contribute to life success, and varieties of giftedness bring spice to life and challenges for education. As a result of this research, many teachers have been trained to appreciate such variety and to apply multiple intelligence theories in their classrooms.

CRITICISMS OF MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCE THEORIES Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the world were so just that a weakness in one area would be compensated by genius in another? Alas, say critics, the world is not just (Ferguson, 2009; Scarr, 1989). Research using factor analysis has confirmed that there is a general intelligence factor (Johnson et al., 2008): g matters. It predicts performance on various complex tasks and in various jobs (Gottfredson, 2002a,b, 2003a,b; see also FIGURE 27.2). Much as jumping ability is not a predictor of jumping performance when the bar is set a foot off the ground—but becomes a predictor when the bar is set higher—so extremely high cognitive ability scores predict exceptional attainments, such as doctoral degrees and publications (Kuncel & Hezlett, 2010).

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Even so, “success” is not a one-ingredient recipe. High intelligence may help you get into a profession (via the schools and training programs that take you there), but it won’t make you successful once there. Success is a combination of talent and grit: Those who become highly successful tend also to be conscientious, well connected, and doggedly energetic. Researchers report a 10-year rule: A common ingredient of expert performance in chess, dancing, sports, computer programming, music, and medicine is “about 10 years of intense, daily practice” (Ericsson, 2002, 2007; Simon & Chase, 1973). Becoming a professional musician, for example, requires native ability. But it also requires practice—about 11,000 hours on average, and a minimum of 3000 hours (Campitelli & Gobet, 2011). The recipe for success is a gift of nature plus a whole lot of nurture.

27-3 What are the four components of emotional intelligence?

Is being in tune with yourself and others also a sign of intelligence, distinct from academic intelligence? Some researchers say Yes. They define social intelligence as the know-how involved in social situations and managing yourself successfully (Cantor & Kihlstrom, 1987). People with high social intelligence can read social situations the way a skilled soccer player reads the defense or a meteorologist reads the weather. The concept was first proposed in 1920 by psychologist Edward Thorndike, who noted, “The best mechanic in a factory may fail as a foreman for lack of social intelligence” (Goleman, 2006, p. 83).

One line of research has explored a specific aspect of social intelligence called emotional intelligence, consisting of four abilities (Mayer et al., 2002, 2011, 2012):

Emotionally intelligent people are both socially aware and self-aware. Those who score high on managing emotions enjoy higher-quality interactions with friends (Lopes et al., 2004). They avoid being hijacked by overwhelming depression, anxiety, or anger. They can read others’ emotional cues and know what to say to soothe a grieving friend, encourage a workmate, and manage a conflict. They can delay gratification in pursuit of long-range rewards, rather than being overtaken by immediate impulses. They often succeed in career, marriage, and parenting situations where academically smarter (but emotionally less intelligent) people might fail (Cherniss, 2001a,b; Ciarrochi et al., 2006). Emotionally intelligent people also perform modestly better on the job (O’Boyle et al., 2011).

Some scholars, however, are concerned that emotional intelligence stretches the intelligence concept too far (Visser et al., 2006). Howard Gardner (1999) includes interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligences as two of his multiple intelligences. But let us instead, he offers, respect emotional sensitivity, creativity, and motivation as important but different. Stretch intelligence to include everything we prize and the word will lose its meaning.

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For a summary of these theories of intelligence, see TABLE 27.1.