Speaker 1: Hey everyone, and welcome to the Psychology Podcast. I'm excited
Speaker 1: to introduce this new series in the show called the
Speaker 1: Human Potential Lab. In this series, we're going to answer
Speaker 1: your burning questions about psychology and human potential. And now
Speaker 1: I get to nerd out and show my enthusiasm for
Speaker 1: science and psychology to you all and really hopefully unravel
Speaker 1: a lot of the mysteries that we all have about
Speaker 1: what in the world is going on with humans. We're
Speaker 1: going to start off today with the question of what
Speaker 1: is intelligence, which is a topic that has interested me
Speaker 1: for a very long time. Ever since I was a kid,
Speaker 1: I've wondered what does it mean to be smart? Does
Speaker 1: it simply mean high IQ? Are there other ways of
Speaker 1: being intelligent? Do multiple intelligences exist? What does it mean
Speaker 1: to be generally intelligent? As a kid, I was placed
Speaker 1: into special education due to an auditory learning disability, which
Speaker 1: I eventually outgrew. In special Ed, I would look around
Speaker 1: and see greater potential among all my friends than other
Speaker 1: people gave them credit for. This ignited my passion for
Speaker 1: understanding and tell diligence, which carried me through to college
Speaker 1: where I started to scientifically study this fascinating topic, and
Speaker 1: I've been studying this topic ever since. In today's episode,
Speaker 1: I'm going to focus just on the facts and the
Speaker 1: science an attempt to show you why this topic really
Speaker 1: is so fascinating and so important to study for a
Speaker 1: broader understanding of how to unlock the potential of all people. So,
Speaker 1: without further ado, here is your first episode of the
Speaker 1: Human Potential Lab series. Let's start off with the question
Speaker 1: what is intelligence and acknowledge first of all that in
Speaker 1: different cultures, people have viewed intelligence in different ways and
Speaker 1: have defined in different ways. So in Chinese philosophy, you know,
Speaker 1: the Confucian perspective emphasizes benevolence and doing what is right.
Speaker 1: Under that philosophy, the intelligent person is the one that
Speaker 1: enjoys learning and persists in lifelong learning with enthusiasm. You
Speaker 1: may have talist approaches that emphasize the importance of humility
Speaker 1: or the freedom from conventional standards of judgment and the
Speaker 1: knowledge of oneself and of external conditions. Well, if you
Speaker 1: go onto Google and you type in what is intelligence,
Speaker 1: dictionary dot com will give you a definition that's very
Speaker 1: much in line with a Western definition or a Western understanding.
Speaker 1: Probably what many listeners of the show immediately conjure up
Speaker 1: when they think of the word intelligence, and that's that's
Speaker 1: defined as the capacity for learning, reasoning, understanding and similar
Speaker 1: forms of mental activity aptitude and grasping truths, relationships, facts, meanings, etc.
Speaker 1: You know, that's an actual, really reasonable definition of intelligence,
Speaker 1: I think. But there's a difference between the conceptual understanding
Speaker 1: of what intelligence is and how it tends to be measured.
Speaker 1: And we're going to be focusing a lot on the
Speaker 1: measurement today. When you look at the history of IQ tests,
Speaker 1: a lot of it traces back to a Frenchman by
Speaker 1: the name of Alfred Burnet who was tesked by the
Speaker 1: Department of Education to come up with a test that
Speaker 1: would differentiate those who would need remedial help from those
Speaker 1: who you know, wouldn't need remedial help or just find
Speaker 1: in the classroom. And that was it. That was all
Speaker 1: that he was tasked with, and he came up with
Speaker 1: a test. He never called an intelligence test. He just
Speaker 1: came up with a test designed to measure the ability
Speaker 1: to profit from explicit instruction. And in fact, it were
Speaker 1: the Americans who got ahold of the test and were like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is amazing. Let's use this test in all sorts
Speaker 1: of ways to limit potential, you know, such as people
Speaker 1: coming in from immigrants coming in from like Ellis Island,
Speaker 1: or for army recruits, and various ways to see whether
Speaker 1: or not people are intelligent to be able to pass
Speaker 1: some sort of threshold. That really wasn't the original intention
Speaker 1: of Benet, in fact the original intention. In fact, the
Speaker 1: use of the Americans once they got ahold of Benez's
Speaker 1: tests really fundamentally betrayed benee original spirit of the test,
Speaker 1: and Bene towards the end of his life life he
Speaker 1: wrote how set he was that the American's betrayed that
Speaker 1: they made it very clear that intelligence testing, or his
Speaker 1: type of testing, because he never called an intelligence test,
Speaker 1: requires individualized testing between one person, a trained competent psychologist
Speaker 1: and a person. So intelligence tests really stem from those
Speaker 1: earliest measures by Benet and the way intelligence tests are
Speaker 1: typically measured. And these are just some sample IQ test items.
Speaker 1: What you tend to find on an IQ test or
Speaker 1: a whole like cognitive Schmorgas board of tests, from arithmetic
Speaker 1: kinds of tests to a category test to reading comprehension,
Speaker 1: to similarities like in what way are dogs and rabbits alike.
Speaker 1: So it's just a whole kind of cognitive Schmorgas board
Speaker 1: of tests. And what's really interesting is that you do
Speaker 1: find that these tests tend to positively correlate with each other.
Speaker 1: Psychologists call this the G factor. People who are ten
Speaker 1: people tend to be good at vocabulary kind of questions.
Speaker 1: Do you tend to be good at arithmetic or tend
Speaker 1: to good at block design? You know, taking a block
Speaker 1: and make putting it to its correct configuration. And so
Speaker 1: there does tend to be a positive correlation there. And
Speaker 1: people who tend to be score poorly in one test
Speaker 1: tend to score poll in an other poorly in all
Speaker 1: the other kind of subtests. Now, these aren't perfect correlations
Speaker 1: by any stretch of the imagination, but you do see
Speaker 1: a positive correlation suggesting there is something called general intelligence
Speaker 1: that people differ on, and that's you know, quite controversial
Speaker 1: in certain circles, but it seems to become less controversial
Speaker 1: if we frame it in other domains. For instance, do
Speaker 1: you remember the physical fitness test you took in school
Speaker 1: where you had to like do the long jump or
Speaker 1: high jump. You had to, like, I remember we had
Speaker 1: this chalk test where he had to run as quick
Speaker 1: as possible from one side or the other. And what
Speaker 1: you find is if you have a whole sorts of
Speaker 1: smorgas board of physical fitness tests, they tend to correlate
Speaker 1: positively as well. You know, people who tend to do
Speaker 1: pretty well on one of these kinds of physical fitness
Speaker 1: tests tend to do better than others on other tests
Speaker 1: of physical fitness, forming an f factor or physical or
Speaker 1: fitness factor. But within the realm of mental ability or cognition,
Speaker 1: you know, things get a little bit more controversial for
Speaker 1: many reasons. But let's stick to the science for a second.
Speaker 1: Because what you find is that while all these things
Speaker 1: positively correlate with each other, not all IQ type tests
Speaker 1: are equally as valid a measure of this general intelligence.
Speaker 1: You can actually lay out on a what looks like
Speaker 1: a dartboard various kinds of tests and in three tooment,
Speaker 1: and you know, in different spaces, and ask the question, well,
Speaker 1: what tests really are tapping more into a general form
Speaker 1: of intelligence than other kinds of tests. And we could
Speaker 1: start at the very perimeter of the dart board before
Speaker 1: we throw the dart rate of the center to what
Speaker 1: is the key of general intelligence. Let's start at the periphery.
Speaker 1: And when we started the periphery, we have kinds of
Speaker 1: very mindless kinds of tasks like number comparison, W, digit symbol,
Speaker 1: identical figures, auditory letter span, just repeating things back, you know,
Speaker 1: simple memory things which don't tend to be that strongly
Speaker 1: correlated with IQ or the whatever is in common across
Speaker 1: all these different kinds of tests. On an IQ test,
Speaker 1: when you let's go closer to the center of the target,
Speaker 1: you have things like W object assembly, listening comprehension, vocabulary recognition,
Speaker 1: quantitative achievement. So you know, not as cognitively complex you can,
Speaker 1: but a little bit more cognitively complex than just repeating
Speaker 1: things back. You know what, Let's go away to the
Speaker 1: center to the target. When you go away to the center,
Speaker 1: you find that congregating around that center target, you know
Speaker 1: what is the target of general intelligence? You find it
Speaker 1: has a lot to do with anological reasoning, and maybe
Speaker 1: the content doesn't matter, maybe it's not made. It's verbal
Speaker 1: analogies or geometric analogies or letter series like ABCD. What
Speaker 1: comes next? I hope you all got that one right
Speaker 1: or else you're in trouble. Yeah, And so when you
Speaker 1: go to kind of the center there you find that
Speaker 1: there's something about anological reasoning that seems to be most
Speaker 1: strongly correlated with general intelligence. That people who are good
Speaker 1: at that kind of reasoning tend to be good at
Speaker 1: a whole wide range of forms of reasoning and problem
Speaker 1: solving and things that we want to call intelligence. It
Speaker 1: turns out psychologists call that fluid reasoning. And one of
Speaker 1: the best measures of that is the Raven's Advanced Progressive
Speaker 1: Matrices test or the Raven Advanced Progressive Matrices test. And
Speaker 1: this is just an example of a Raven's kind of item.
Speaker 1: For those who are listening to this just on the
Speaker 1: Auditory podcast, you might want to watch the YouTube video
Speaker 1: for the video for the for the solides. But what
Speaker 1: you see here is you have a sequence of geometric
Speaker 1: figures and you have to fill in the missing piece
Speaker 1: across and down, and I've highlighted here the answer. So
Speaker 1: usually in my lectures, I ask my students or I
Speaker 1: ask people to kind of figure out the answer, then
Speaker 1: I'll give them some time to come up with it.
Speaker 1: But today I'll just show you the answer. And I'm
Speaker 1: sure most of you. I'm sure most of my listeners
Speaker 1: here will have figured this out. You're all very smart people,
Speaker 1: but this is a You're all smart in terms of
Speaker 1: food reasoning, I'm sure, but this is considered a moderately
Speaker 1: difficult test item on the Raven test, and what you
Speaker 1: find is welles, What does it take to be good
Speaker 1: at this test? Well, to be good at this fuloid
Speaker 1: reasoning test, you have to be able to integrate various
Speaker 1: things and hold various features in your working memory at
Speaker 1: the same time size shape, You know in some instances
Speaker 1: that things differ by another feature, such as color, And
Speaker 1: what you to do is you have to hold one
Speaker 1: piece of information in your head at one time while
Speaker 1: you're figuring out other pieces of information and then integrating
Speaker 1: them to find out what the overarching pattern is. Well.
Speaker 1: It turns out that ability to score well on these
Speaker 1: kinds of fluid reasoning tests is correlated with a particular
Speaker 1: brain network called the executive attention brain network. And the
Speaker 1: executive attention brain network is really important for having focused
Speaker 1: attention and being able to hold multiple things in your
Speaker 1: working memory at one time and synthesize and integrate them.
Speaker 1: You can train artificial intelligence programs to solve raven items
Speaker 1: pretty well. So if this is what you view as
Speaker 1: all there is to intelligence, then then computers are already
Speaker 1: pretty intelligent. You know, they can you can program them
Speaker 1: to come up with patterns and things. I also think
Speaker 1: in defense of fulloid reasoning ability for a second, I
Speaker 1: do think it's important. You know, I think that if
Speaker 1: you have the ability to fill in the blanks quickly
Speaker 1: in a situation, you're going to be more adaptable, and
Speaker 1: that is a reasonable aspect of intelligence. When and then
Speaker 1: so let's ask the question what is the correliated with Well,
Speaker 1: this kind of ability is pretty strongly correlated with school achievement. Surprise, surprise.
Speaker 1: You know, in the school system we have lots of
Speaker 1: tests that are what psychologist would call g loaded or
Speaker 1: really draw heavily on general intelligence or fluid intelligence. Some people,
Speaker 1: by the way, think fluid intelligence is synonymous with general intelligence,
Speaker 1: whereas others argue that general intelligence comprises fuluid reasoning as
Speaker 1: well as knowledge like what's called crystallized intelligence. And more
Speaker 1: on that. More than that in a second, we're getting
Speaker 1: ahead of ourselves. But when you look at the correlation
Speaker 1: between IQ and academic achievement, what you find is there
Speaker 1: is a pretty strong correlation people who tend to score
Speaker 1: higher on IQ tests or measures of general intelligence do
Speaker 1: tend to do better on school tests and do tend
Speaker 1: to be better at standardized tests of academic achievement. But
Speaker 1: I think it's also important to recognize this is not
Speaker 1: a perfect correlation and a lot of people, a lot
Speaker 1: of kids do fall between the cracks. Remember that was
Speaker 1: Benai's original intention here was to find the kids falling
Speaker 1: between the cracks. But here's what I mean by falling
Speaker 1: between the cracks. I think that there are a lot
Speaker 1: of ways in which schools use IQ as a measure
Speaker 1: of prediction, and then they expect that they're going to
Speaker 1: be able to forecast the child's future on these kinds
Speaker 1: of tests are in school and sometimes even beyond that
Speaker 1: into life. And I never think we should use IQ
Speaker 1: tests in childhood as a way to forecast owes life
Speaker 1: potential for many reasons. But what you see here in
Speaker 1: this chart is that while fifty percent of people do
Speaker 1: tend to underperform based on what they would be predicted
Speaker 1: of them based on their IQ score on academic achievement tests,
Speaker 1: fifty percent overperform and that's a really big deal, and
Speaker 1: that's really important to recognize. Fifty percent overperform on academic
Speaker 1: achievement tests based on their predicted performance on IQ tests.
Speaker 1: So that is really important to keep in mind in
Speaker 1: our models in schools and in life, you know, in
Speaker 1: terms of trying to predict what kids do or what
Speaker 1: they're capable of doing, because there's a lot more to
Speaker 1: academic achievement than just your food reasonability or your IQ.
Speaker 1: But I just staying in defense of general intelligence for
Speaker 1: a second, or IQ. IQ is not meaningless. So not
Speaker 1: only does it predict some important things in life, actually
Speaker 1: quite a lot of important things in life. There are
Speaker 1: also a certain developmental stability stability to IQ after a
Speaker 1: certain age, So after around seven or eight, IQ tends
Speaker 1: to stabilize. You wouldn't want to predict someone's IQ in
Speaker 1: their teenage years if all you have is information about
Speaker 1: their IQ at age one, for instance, because like as
Speaker 1: you see at this chart here, the correlation between IQ
Speaker 1: at age one and the correlation of IQ at age
Speaker 1: seventeen is almost zero, so you do want to wait
Speaker 1: a bit. But there is some developmental stability. Again, this
Speaker 1: is not perfect, and we individually as as a person
Speaker 1: within person, we change quite a bit throughout our lives
Speaker 1: in terms of our intelligence. Of course, I would hope
Speaker 1: that my age sixteen intelligence was much more intelligent than
Speaker 1: my right now in age intelligence. I'm not going to
Speaker 1: tell you how old I am whatever, But this is
Speaker 1: talking about relative correlations. So people who tend to be
Speaker 1: at the top of the pack on IQ test at
Speaker 1: age eight, when they grow up, they do also tend
Speaker 1: to be top of the pack again when they're measured
Speaker 1: against the same people. But these are not perfect correlations,
Speaker 1: and these correlations can differ across our lifespan. Psychologists have
Speaker 1: expanded our notion of intelligence though beyond general intelligence, and
Speaker 1: this is where we start to get into the fascinating
Speaker 1: multiple intelligences debate, because psychologists have argued that we should
Speaker 1: actually view intelligence as a hierarchy, with G or general intelligence,
Speaker 1: at the top of the hierarchy. Underneath of that some
Speaker 1: more broad abilities like food reasoning knowledge you know some
Speaker 1: refer to as crystallized intelligence, maybe auditory processing, visual spatial ability.
Speaker 1: These things comprise general intelligence, and then underneath each of
Speaker 1: those abilities we have more narrower abilities that are specific
Speaker 1: skills that make up food reasoning specific skills that make
Speaker 1: up visual spatial processing specific skills that make up crystallized intelligence.
Speaker 1: And one of the most prominent models is called the
Speaker 1: HC model or the could Tell Horn Carol model integrate
Speaker 1: they could Tell Horn Carol integrated model of cognitive abilities,
Speaker 1: which does view intelligence as that hierarchy. But note that
Speaker 1: even within this hierarchy, you still have G or general
Speaker 1: intelligence there at the top, and there's still an acknowledgment
Speaker 1: that all these other multiple abilities are still positively correlated
Speaker 1: with each other, and that some and that people who
Speaker 1: do tend to and that people who tend to do
Speaker 1: well one of these cognitive abilities will tend to do
Speaker 1: well on the others. A really big breakout from this
Speaker 1: what we call psychometric model testing model of intelligence came
Speaker 1: in the eighties, I believe nineteen eighty three with the
Speaker 1: publication of Howard Gardner's seminole book called Frames of Mind,
Speaker 1: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. This is one of the
Speaker 1: books that really influenced me a lot when I was
Speaker 1: in college and I really was getting interested in understanding intelligence.
Speaker 1: This book and another book which I'll tell you about
Speaker 1: a second, really deeply influenced me When I read Howard
Speaker 1: Gardner's Frads of Minds, it made in too a sense
Speaker 1: to me that, well, we have multiple intelligences. We have not,
Speaker 1: you know, we have multiple ways of being smart at
Speaker 1: things in life. And here's some of the intelligences that
Speaker 1: Howard Gardner proposed. He proposed a linguistic intelligence, so we
Speaker 1: got the kind of intelligence used in reading a book
Speaker 1: or writing a poem. Logical mathematical intelligence, such as the
Speaker 1: kind of intelligence that comes from deriving a logical proof
Speaker 1: or solving a mathematical problem. Spatial intelligence, such as the
Speaker 1: kind of intelligence we have when we're fitting suitcases into
Speaker 1: the trunk of a car or mentally rotating things in
Speaker 1: our head. Musical intelligence your ability to sing a song
Speaker 1: or compose a symphony. Bodily kinesthetic intelligence, such as your
Speaker 1: ability to dance or play football, play basketball. I think
Speaker 1: sports is associated with bodily kinesthetic intelligence. Interpersonal intelligence, such
Speaker 1: as understanding and interacting with other people, interro personal intelligence
Speaker 1: understanding oneself. Naturalistic intelligence such as discerning being able to
Speaker 1: discern patterns in nature. Well, actually, I should say that
Speaker 1: his proposed seven intelligences stop at inter a personal intelligence.
Speaker 1: He has proposed that maybe maybe there's a naturalistic intelligence
Speaker 1: such as discerning patterns of nature, or as well as
Speaker 1: maybe there's a spiritual and existential intelli dilligence, such as
Speaker 1: your ability to I don't know, be intuitive and understanding
Speaker 1: human existence and being one with the cosmos. I don't know.
Speaker 1: You see a lot of people with self proclaimed spiritual intelligence,
Speaker 1: and Howard Garner identified a bunch of criteria for identifying
Speaker 1: an intelligence, things like isolation by brain damage, the existence
Speaker 1: of exceptional individuals. So the fact that there are people
Speaker 1: who are exceptionally exceptionally gifted in music, for instance, is
Speaker 1: an example that music might be a specific intelligence. Here
Speaker 1: argued there has to be an identifiable core operation essential
Speaker 1: to performance. You know that we can understand the mechanism
Speaker 1: behind it, that there's a distinctive developmental history leading from
Speaker 1: novice to experts, so that in each of these proposed intelligences,
Speaker 1: we know that there's a certain set of stages that
Speaker 1: people go through and developing expertise and intelligence in those areas.
Speaker 1: And by the way, expertise intelligence are not exactly the
Speaker 1: same thing. But that's that's for another episode. There's a
Speaker 1: lot there'll be a lot of things to talk about
Speaker 1: in the in the coming Soul episodes, I guarantee. He
Speaker 1: also argued distinctive evolutionary history is important so that each
Speaker 1: of one that each one of these seven intelligence intelligences
Speaker 1: have their own distinct evolutionary history that you know, are
Speaker 1: just and important, that are importantly distinct from each other.
Speaker 1: Supportive evidence from cognitive experimental research, he argued. He argued
Speaker 1: that another criteria for accounting as an intelligence is that
Speaker 1: susceptibility to encoding in a symbol system. That each of
Speaker 1: these kind of intelligences have their own symbol system, maybe
Speaker 1: it's verbal or spatial or or something else that are
Speaker 1: encoded uniquely in the brain. And then finally, and this
Speaker 1: is the one I'm going to double click on, is
Speaker 1: supportive evidence from psychometric tests. Well, you know, there's been
Speaker 1: some criticism of Howard Garner's theory, and I think some
Speaker 1: of the criticism has been fair. Even even though I
Speaker 1: was deep influenced originally by the theory of multiple intelligences,
Speaker 1: I have come to appreciate some of the criticisms of
Speaker 1: it from academics, for mostly academics, because it's really academics
Speaker 1: who seem to care the most about this shit. But
Speaker 1: so anyway, the academics have argued and point out that, well,
Speaker 1: Howard Garner, even with your different intelligences, that you propose
Speaker 1: very few of them, if any meet all of this criteria,
Speaker 1: you're kind of selectively picking, mixing and match, you know,
Speaker 1: criteria for different intelligences. So none of them really meet
Speaker 1: all this criteria. But probably the most critical one that
Speaker 1: intelligence researchers have pointed out really rightly so to a
Speaker 1: large degree, is that all of these seven intelligences positively
Speaker 1: correlate with each other, forming that G factor or the
Speaker 1: general intelligence factor. It's really hard to sweep the general
Speaker 1: intelligence factor under the rug. This is a big point
Speaker 1: I want to make here. As much as people try to,
Speaker 1: it turns out that whenever fore you try to put
Speaker 1: it to the test, you know, to try to take
Speaker 1: one of these intelligences and operationalize it. That's what psychologists
Speaker 1: called operationalizing something. So psychologists will take one of these
Speaker 1: tests and try to take it, define it, and then
Speaker 1: put it to the test to give to people to
Speaker 1: see exactly how these things correlate with each other. You
Speaker 1: find that a lot of these tests are gladed. Gloaded
Speaker 1: is an expression just to just mean some of these
Speaker 1: tests really do correlate quite strongly with that general intelligence
Speaker 1: factor that we talked about earlier. So I really find
Speaker 1: this test, this study interesting by Beth. Advisor might be
Speaker 1: Beth Visser. I'm sorry, Beth if I mispronounce your last
Speaker 1: name Beth Visa at all? Where And I believe this
Speaker 1: is from two thousand and six, and it's called beyond
Speaker 1: G putting multiple intelligence's theory to the test. You can
Speaker 1: take this test. You can go to Google scholar if
Speaker 1: you want and find this test. Find this paper and
Speaker 1: read it. It's a really interesting paper. And what they
Speaker 1: did is they attempted to take each one of Howard
Speaker 1: Gardner's multiple intelligences and measure them, and they administer it
Speaker 1: to a large group of people, and they look to
Speaker 1: see whether or not these things are really independent from
Speaker 1: each other. And surprise, surprise, linguistic intelligence, spatial intelligence, and
Speaker 1: logical mathematical intelligence in particular were strongly correlated with each other.
Speaker 1: And we're strong correlated with that G factor. Row that's
Speaker 1: a rot road for those who are pure multiple intelligence theorists,
Speaker 1: who think there's no such thing as general intelligence. At
Speaker 1: least those three intelligence researchers for for many many years
Speaker 1: have could have told you that that these that they
Speaker 1: are correlated with general intelligence. But interesting enough, even skills
Speaker 1: like interpersonal intelligence, interpersonal intelligence is being able to have
Speaker 1: kind of like social skills or social intelligence. Even some
Speaker 1: of those kinds of tests, the way that they tried
Speaker 1: to measure that intelligence was still correlated significantly with the
Speaker 1: general intelligence. But some others, like intro personal intelligence, the
Speaker 1: ability to know yourself know thyself was pretty low and
Speaker 1: non significantly correlated with the general with general intelligence, and
Speaker 1: bodily kinesthetic intelligence was very low correlated with general intelligence.
Speaker 1: And music some musical skills such as rhythm ability and
Speaker 1: tonal ability that they picked out were quite low in
Speaker 1: their correlation with general intelligence. Interesting enough, naturalistic intelligence, which
Speaker 1: remember I argued was a candidate intelligence in Gardner's model,
Speaker 1: showed a pretty strong g loading or correlation with general intelligence.
Speaker 1: But I think that's because the way they measured naturalistic
Speaker 1: intelligence was really, in my view, like measuring three dimensional
Speaker 1: rotation ability or visual spatial reasoning, like one of the
Speaker 1: tests was called diagramming relationships, And therefore it's no surprise
Speaker 1: that that's g loaded or correlated with general intelligence, but musical, bodily, kinesthetic,
Speaker 1: and intro personal intelligence were not that strongly g loaded,
Speaker 1: suggesting that Gardner was partly right, but he was also
Speaker 1: partly wrong in saying that all of the seven intelligences
Speaker 1: are really completely independent of each other, and that there
Speaker 1: is no such thing as general intelligence, and that doesn't
Speaker 1: make sense to talk about general intelligence. So he's partly
Speaker 1: right and partly wrong. I now want to turn my
Speaker 1: attention to the theory of successful Intelligence by Robert Sternberg.
Speaker 1: This is the Do you remember earlier I said there
Speaker 1: were two books in college that really really deeply, deeply
Speaker 1: impacted me and deeply influenced me in inspiring me and
Speaker 1: wanting to study intelligence and human potential. The second book
Speaker 1: was Successful Intelligence by Robert Sternberg. When I read this book,
Speaker 1: and by the way, his subtitle is how Practical and
Speaker 1: Creative Intelligence Determines success in Life. Now, when I read
Speaker 1: this book, I was super inspired. I was like, Wow,
Speaker 1: this is what I'm gonna do the rest of my life.
Speaker 1: I want to study intelligence. I want to know everything
Speaker 1: there is to know about intelligence and particularly multiple intelligences.
Speaker 1: I really resonate a lot with particularly him talking about
Speaker 1: creative intelligence. And we'll do another episode later on about
Speaker 1: creativity and whether or not there are multiple creative abilities
Speaker 1: that exist. That's a topic for another day. But interestingly enough,
Speaker 1: Robert Stirnberg included creative intelligence as part of his model
Speaker 1: of intelligence, and he also included practical intelligence, or like
Speaker 1: street smarts, as a particular aspect of intelligence. I think
Speaker 1: that is really really quite interesting that he included these
Speaker 1: and I really resonate with that a lot. You can
Speaker 1: really think of your think of a lot of people
Speaker 1: with a lot of street smarts. People maybe grow up
Speaker 1: in the ghetto, grow up under very difficult situations in life,
Speaker 1: under a lot of stress, who are really able to adapt,
Speaker 1: and maybe that doesn't correlate necessarily with their IQ or
Speaker 1: with their analytical intelligence. By the way, that's the third intelligence,
Speaker 1: Analytical intelligence, analytical, creative, and practical he argue together comprise
Speaker 1: successful intelligence. He argues that people, some people could be
Speaker 1: as good as can be on these kind of analytical
Speaker 1: IQ type tests and not be very creative and also
Speaker 1: maybe not have a good street smarts. There's some actually
Speaker 1: really interesting research coming out recently showing that what they
Speaker 1: call stress adapted people are good at all sorts of
Speaker 1: kinds of tests that are uncorrelated with IQ, that people
Speaker 1: grow up in very stressful situations as child of that
Speaker 1: are very unpredictable and chaotic, learn to adapt in very
Speaker 1: important ways. The question here, as the question that we
Speaker 1: have for Howard Gardner's theory as well, is do we
Speaker 1: want to call these things, these extra things that go
Speaker 1: beyond analytical intelligence? Do you want to call them intelligences?
Speaker 1: This is the question, This is the million hour question.
Speaker 1: And at the end of the day, maybe you'll just say, well,
Speaker 1: this is just a semantic argument. This is just the
Speaker 1: kind of thing that only nerdy academics care about. Who
Speaker 1: cares whether it's intelligence or a talent. But in terms
Speaker 1: of our theories of intelligence, it matters, and our operationalizing
Speaker 1: of these constructs and academic papers and how we test them.
Speaker 1: And I also think conceptually it matters in terms of
Speaker 1: how we treat kids and how we view their abilities.
Speaker 1: Do we view only a certain subset of cognitive skills?
Speaker 1: Is that the true intelligence and all the other things
Speaker 1: are just talents or not? I am still on the
Speaker 1: fence with this one, to be honest, I still am
Speaker 1: trying to keep my mind open about this. Do we
Speaker 1: want to call bodily kinesthetic intelligence a talent or an intelligence?
Speaker 1: Is an intelligence as someone who's a good dancer but
Speaker 1: can't reason their way out of a cardboard box intelligent.
Speaker 1: Maybe maybe they're intelligent at dance, but that doesn't seem
Speaker 1: to mean the same thing as being generally intelligent across
Speaker 1: different domains, you know, being domain domain general in your intelligence,
Speaker 1: being able to be quick and reason and deep and
Speaker 1: thoughtful and adapt to multiple situations just doesn't seem to
Speaker 1: be the same thing. What about music intelligence? Well, do
Speaker 1: we want to say that someone who's good at music
Speaker 1: is necessarily talented or is necessarily generally smart? My mentor
Speaker 1: Nicholas McIntosh at University of Cambridge, May he rest in peace.
Speaker 1: He often made the point about sports and because he's British,
Speaker 1: he was at the University of Cambridge, because he's British,
Speaker 1: he's the example of cricket. But he's like, surely we
Speaker 1: can all distinguish between the talented cricketer who's dumb and
Speaker 1: the brilliant cricketer who maybe is not as talented. I
Speaker 1: don't know, do you think you know? Think to yourself,
Speaker 1: can you make that distinction. Can you when you think
Speaker 1: of basketball, can you think of wow, that player is
Speaker 1: really generally intelligent but not as talented as the other players.
Speaker 1: But or you look at someone else who's like, Wow,
Speaker 1: that player is amazingly talented at basketball, but they're not
Speaker 1: that smart. And so we really need to think this
Speaker 1: through intelligence or talents. I don't know, this is this
Speaker 1: is the question. Let me know what you think in
Speaker 1: the comments. Now, let's talk about another form of multiple intelligences,
Speaker 1: an attempt to go beyond IQ, and this particular one
Speaker 1: is uniquely interesting for a number of reasons. So this
Speaker 1: is emotional intelligence. We're going to talk about emotional intelligence
Speaker 1: right now. Many people who are familiar with the construct
Speaker 1: of emotional intelligence first got their introduction to it in
Speaker 1: the book in the early nineties called Emotional Intelligence Why
Speaker 1: It Can Matter More Than IQ, and that was written
Speaker 1: by Dan Golman. Now, I want to say that when
Speaker 1: I first discovered this book in high school, I believe
Speaker 1: I was in ninth grade in high school I discovered
Speaker 1: this book. I was like, this book is amazing. It
Speaker 1: was one of the earliest times in my life where
Speaker 1: I really realized I loved psychology and I just found
Speaker 1: psychology and neuroscience fascinating because he talks a lot about
Speaker 1: neuroscience in there as well, and I was sold. I
Speaker 1: was sold on the idea of emotional intelligence as Daniel
Speaker 1: Goleman presented it. And the thing with the way that
Speaker 1: Daniel Goleman presented emotional intelligence is that he included so
Speaker 1: many things within that idea of emotional intelligence, so many skills. Basically,
Speaker 1: all the skills that are positive in the world he
Speaker 1: included as emotional intelligence. Your ability to have empathy, your
Speaker 1: ability to have social skills to not be all socially awkward,
Speaker 1: your ability to get things done, to be effective, that's
Speaker 1: emotional intelligence. It was only really when I got to
Speaker 1: Yale for my PhD work in intelligence research where I
Speaker 1: discovered that the original model of emotional intelligence was not
Speaker 1: created by Daniel Goldman. It was created by John Mayer
Speaker 1: and Peter Salve. And in their original model of emotional intelligence,
Speaker 1: they argue that there are four branches of emotional intelligence.
Speaker 1: One branch is the ability to perceive accurately, appraise emotions,
Speaker 1: and express your emotions accurately. The second branch is the
Speaker 1: ability to access and or generate feelings when they facilitate thought.
Speaker 1: The third branch is the ability to understand your emotions
Speaker 1: and as well as emotions of others and have emotional knowledge,
Speaker 1: know that when someone's feeling angry, you understand that that's anger.
Speaker 1: And then the fourth branch is the ability to regulate
Speaker 1: emotions to promote emotional and intellectual growth. This one's really important.
Speaker 1: They're all important, but you could see why the person
Speaker 1: who's emotionally intelligent is able to when they're angry sad,
Speaker 1: to not immediately spiral down, but to regulate their emotions
Speaker 1: in ways that promotes their own personal growth. So this
Speaker 1: is what's interesting about the emotional intelligence thing is that
Speaker 1: Daniel Goldman wrote this popular book because he went to
Speaker 1: a conference. This is the story as it was told
Speaker 1: to me, is he went to a conference where John
Speaker 1: Mayer and Peter Salve were presenting their model of emotional intelligence,
Speaker 1: and he saw a book there. He's like, wow, this
Speaker 1: would make a great best selling book. So he went
Speaker 1: and wrote this popular book. But it went way beyond
Speaker 1: that original four branch model. And another thing that really
Speaker 1: differed between the Goldman model and the John Mayer and
Speaker 1: Peter Salave model of emotional intelligence is that Meyron Salve
Speaker 1: never argued that emotional intelligence was more important than IQ.
Speaker 1: In fact, they argued that it to be to count
Speaker 1: as a form of intelligence, it should correlate with IQ.
Speaker 1: You know that there should be at least a moderate correlation,
Speaker 1: but that there are just extra skills of emotional intelligence,
Speaker 1: such as those branches that are not adequately assessed on
Speaker 1: current measures of intelligence. Whereas Daniel Goleman build up the
Speaker 1: idea that emotional intelligence is the best things in slice
Speaker 1: spread and that it's better than IQ and it outpredicts
Speaker 1: things in life than IQ, Well, what's the data actually
Speaker 1: show about that question about whether or not out predicts IQ.
Speaker 1: This is a paper called a Critical Evaluation of the
Speaker 1: Emotional Intelligence construct by Cherokee, Chan and Kaputi in two thousand.
Speaker 1: By the way, there are a number of these kinds
Speaker 1: of studies that have come out now critically evaluating the
Speaker 1: correlation between IQ and emotional intelligence and pitting the two
Speaker 1: against each other and predicting lots of outcomes in life.
Speaker 1: And we'll summarize some of that research. Not just this research,
Speaker 1: but I'll summarize a lot of in a nutshell, basically,
Speaker 1: what you find is that there's a small correlation between
Speaker 1: IQ and various branches of emotional intelligence. It depends on
Speaker 1: the branch. For instance, the perception branch of emotional intelligence
Speaker 1: is more strongly corel with IQ and some other branches
Speaker 1: such as understanding and managing your emotions. But you also
Speaker 1: find that for things like academic achievement, come on, IQ
Speaker 1: is still a better predictor of academic achievement, far and
Speaker 1: away better predictor than emotional intelligence. You can't just sit
Speaker 1: down at a standardized test of critical reasoning and feel
Speaker 1: your way through it, no matter how social intelligent you are.
Speaker 1: But there are some demeans, like in relationships, in terms
Speaker 1: of life satisfaction and in terms of just being having
Speaker 1: warmth with others and being people liking you, where emotional
Speaker 1: intelligence probably does matter more than IQ, and the data
Speaker 1: does bear that out in some studies. So there are
Speaker 1: specific demeans where intelligence emotional intelligence matters more. I imagine
Speaker 1: in the helping professions, emotional intelligence skills are going to
Speaker 1: be super important. My friend Mark Brackett has done amazing
Speaker 1: research going in schools. He calls it emotional literacy as
Speaker 1: opposed to emotional intelligence and Mark Bracket although he's at
Speaker 1: the he's head of the Center for Emotional Intelligence at Yale,
Speaker 1: where which is where the original emotional intelligence construct by
Speaker 1: Meyer and Salve was created. And Mark Brackett teaches kids
Speaker 1: various skills of emotional literacy, being able to understand your emotions,
Speaker 1: being able to identify what you're feeling, and all these
Speaker 1: sorts of things, and he has found that that does
Speaker 1: predict various metrics in the school system, like school attendance,
Speaker 1: like even you know, I believe test performance in some ways. Now,
Speaker 1: is it going to be a better predictor than IQ?
Speaker 1: I think it'd be hard. It'd be hard to say
Speaker 1: that it's a better predictor than IQ. Maybe some forms
Speaker 1: of school performance, but not all forms. But it certainly matters.
Speaker 1: I think we can conclude at the end of the
Speaker 1: day that emotional intelligence skills matter. But again, emotional intelligence
Speaker 1: has not made the G factor or general intelligence disappear.
Speaker 1: At this point, it's really important to recognize as well
Speaker 1: that IQ is not the only predictor the best predictor
Speaker 1: of academic achievement, and that there are other factors that
Speaker 1: are really important in affecting academic achievement, not just internal factors.
Speaker 1: But external factors, so being intrinsically motivated and what you
Speaker 1: want to do. Having a cognitively stimulating home environment really matters.
Speaker 1: Research shows the amount of books on the bookshelf that
Speaker 1: you grew up on it with as a kid matters.
Speaker 1: Having social support and high expectations from those in the
Speaker 1: classroom and in your media environment with your family matters.
Speaker 1: Having opportunities for academic enrichment really matters. Being able to
Speaker 1: learn active learning strategies such as taking notes and going
Speaker 1: to the teacher after class really matters. Helping self control,
Speaker 1: self regulation, a lot of these things that come from
Speaker 1: emotional intelligence, and also having creative thinking or ability to
Speaker 1: address problems from many different angles is very important for
Speaker 1: achievement in life as well as academic achievement. But something
Speaker 1: I've been criticizing is that if you look at a
Speaker 1: lot of the models of gifted education in our school
Speaker 1: system and how you know who is the gifted child,
Speaker 1: how do we identify giftedness, you tend to find that
Speaker 1: there still is a predominant focus on IQ testing and
Speaker 1: achievement standardized achievement tests, that is still very much the
Speaker 1: focus in terms of identifying you for giftedness. Above, multiple
Speaker 1: specific abilities or talents, whatever you want to call them,
Speaker 1: specific intelligences or specific talents, Creativity much much less so
Speaker 1: considered important in the idea of what makes a gifted human. Leadership, ability,
Speaker 1: much much less, performing arts virtually no school, I mean
Speaker 1: just maybe three three states, three states consider performing arts
Speaker 1: as important for ideas of giftedness. And then this last
Speaker 1: part really gets at the key of my own personal
Speaker 1: reconceptualization of intelligence, and that's that motivation is considered by
Speaker 1: very few schools, our school, district, or extra school or
Speaker 1: states as important and relevant at all to giftedness. And
Speaker 1: I think that is really unfortunate and incorrect. We're leaving
Speaker 1: a lot of human potential on the table by our
Speaker 1: notions of what it means to be a gifted human
Speaker 1: and even what it means to be smart, and in
Speaker 1: a way in which I'm not even taking a multiple
Speaker 1: intelligence approach at the moment. Let me tell you about
Speaker 1: my approach. And I wanted to really review the approach
Speaker 1: from everyone else so you could make up your mind
Speaker 1: in totality. And I also didn't want to lead, you know,
Speaker 1: with my own ideas. But I'd be remiss if I
Speaker 1: didn't tell you a little bit about my own read
Speaker 1: definition of intelligence, and you can think about whether or
Speaker 1: not you agree with it or not. As I wrote
Speaker 1: about in my book un Gifted, I argue that intelligence
Speaker 1: is the dynamic interplay of engagement and ability in pursuit
Speaker 1: of personal goals. Now, that is a definition that sounds
Speaker 1: very complex, so let me explain it. Let me break
Speaker 1: it down for you. Okay. Basically, I argue that there
Speaker 1: is such a thing as general intelligence. There is in
Speaker 1: the sense that there are multiple cognitive mechanisms that interact
Speaker 1: and with developmental experiences that come together that can cause
Speaker 1: the development of someone to be generally smart. You know
Speaker 1: that there are people differences in people who are generally
Speaker 1: able to reason and problem solve and think on the
Speaker 1: spot and adapt to novel situations fluid what's called you know,
Speaker 1: we called fluid reasoning, and you can clearly see those
Speaker 1: differences among people. However, personal intelligence matters just as much,
Speaker 1: if not more. I call it the theory of personal intelligence.
Speaker 1: I argue, while general intelligence is not something I'm ignoring
Speaker 1: as important, there is a certain kind of intelligence that
Speaker 1: seems to come about when we're really passionate and activated
Speaker 1: about something and we really are engaged in it over
Speaker 1: the long run, the long haul, we're really committed to
Speaker 1: something real, truly committed to something. There's a certain intelligence
Speaker 1: you can only see when that when we give people
Speaker 1: a chance to realize their personal goal over a long
Speaker 1: period of time. And we also recognize that there's a
Speaker 1: dynamic interplay between ability and engagement in that when we
Speaker 1: gain more skills and abilities, our engagement arises in that domain.
Speaker 1: We get more interest in what we're doing. And the
Speaker 1: more that we get interested in what we're doing, the
Speaker 1: more our ability increases. These things work together, and when
Speaker 1: we have tended to measure IQ tests over the past
Speaker 1: one hundred years, the way we have tended to measure
Speaker 1: the way we tend to measure intelligence is we stick
Speaker 1: someone in a room and we give them the battery
Speaker 1: of abstract tests that are completely divorced from their lives,
Speaker 1: and we do like a one snap shot of their intelligence,
Speaker 1: and we conclude all this about their life, life and
Speaker 1: their future and their general intellectual functioning from that. And
Speaker 1: I'm not arguing we can't glean anything valuable from that.
Speaker 1: I've argued quite a bit today that there's a lot
Speaker 1: that we can glean from that, but leave out this
Speaker 1: personal intelligence, which may be the most important intelligence that
Speaker 1: matters to each individual human. I created this idea of
Speaker 1: intelligence before I really got into work on self actualization.
Speaker 1: But a lot of ways, I'm just talking about self
Speaker 1: actualizing intelligence, the kind of intelligence that you, and only
Speaker 1: you can display by your own unique constellation of abilities
Speaker 1: and interests. So look, in some ways, what I'm arguing
Speaker 1: is there's no such thing as multiple intelligences. There are
Speaker 1: infinite intelligences, you know, that's one way of looking at it.
Speaker 1: You know, who am I to say, sit in my
Speaker 1: chair with a tweed jacket, you know, in my ivory tower,
Speaker 1: and say, ah, I have decided there's only these intelligences,
Speaker 1: the intelligences that counts, and no other intelligences count. That
Speaker 1: other one doesn't count. Who am I to say that
Speaker 1: there's a certain personal form of intelligence that can wow
Speaker 1: everyone when you give them a chance to tell us
Speaker 1: what their personal dreams are, what are their goals? In
Speaker 1: what way do they want to be judged by their
Speaker 1: intelligence anyway? In fact, probably no one wants to be judged.
Speaker 1: No one likes being judged. So there's a sense in
Speaker 1: which I'm saying that they're infinite intelligences. But before you
Speaker 1: roll your eyes, if you're an intelligence researcher, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: infinite intelligences, multiple intelligences was bad enough. Also recognize that
Speaker 1: I'm a real nerd about g and general intelligence. I
Speaker 1: do think that working memory capacity, you know, the kind
Speaker 1: of cognitive mechanisms that underlie general intelligence, like working memory capacity,
Speaker 1: your ability like processing speed, your ability to form quick
Speaker 1: associations between things. These are important skills, and that people
Speaker 1: do differ in each other on those skills and in
Speaker 1: flood reasoning. But I really am remiss to take that fact,
Speaker 1: take those facts and stop there and not say that
Speaker 1: there isn't a more deeply personal kind of intelligence that
Speaker 1: exists in all of us when we actually are motivated,
Speaker 1: when we're activated, we're inspired. I know personally that when
Speaker 1: I'm uninspired by something and you stick a test on me,
Speaker 1: I can look pretty dumb. But then when I'm activated
Speaker 1: like I am right now, like I am today, and
Speaker 1: in my excitement and explaining to you all the fashioning
Speaker 1: mysteries of intelligence theory and multiple intelligences, there's a I
Speaker 1: would assume I appear smarter, you know, and I appear
Speaker 1: more intellectually alive, so to speak. I've never quite used
Speaker 1: that phrase before. And you know, I've worked with I've
Speaker 1: seen it it up front, you know, I've I've worked
Speaker 1: with an organization, an educational nonprofit called the Future Project UH,
Speaker 1: and I really love what they do. They have like
Speaker 1: the Office of the Dream Director where any student can
Speaker 1: go to the Office of the Dream Director and and
Speaker 1: UH and tell the student, and the student can tell
Speaker 1: the Dream Director what their dreams are in life and
Speaker 1: and what they want to do. You know, they'll say like, oh,
Speaker 1: I want to end bullying or oh I want to
Speaker 1: I want to make the world a better place and
Speaker 1: do this and that and and you know, the dream
Speaker 1: Director says, great, let's help you get there, no questions asked.
Speaker 1: It's not like, you know, we have to give you
Speaker 1: an IQ test to see whether or not you meet
Speaker 1: a certain criteria to be able to make the world
Speaker 1: a better place. No, it's just like, give you that
Speaker 1: that personal that that opportunity to display your personal intelligence.
Speaker 1: And you see a lot of these kids transform. A
Speaker 1: lot of these kids who were written off really become
Speaker 1: alive and and people are like, wow, that person's pretty
Speaker 1: darn smart after all. So where are we at with
Speaker 1: this question that started this whole topic today? So I
Speaker 1: think that I hope I have shown you today that
Speaker 1: certainly multiple abilities exist, and the more cognitively complex they are,
Speaker 1: in the sense that the more those cognitive abilities are
Speaker 1: on the spot and abstract and divorced from our life
Speaker 1: and can apply to a variety of situations, the more
Speaker 1: they will be positively correlated with each other, forming a
Speaker 1: general intelligence factor. So general intelligence does exist. But I'm
Speaker 1: gonna be nuanced here and say that general intelligence exists
Speaker 1: and multiple intelligences exist. Both are true at the same time.
Speaker 1: You often see some people like Kwa Garner will say
Speaker 1: multiple intelligence exists, therefore there's no such thing as general intelligence.
Speaker 1: But I'm not saying that. I think that both multiple
Speaker 1: intelligence exist and general intelligences exist, and personal intelligence exists,
Speaker 1: which can only be seen when someone actually asks you
Speaker 1: what wlights you up and gives you the resources an
Speaker 1: opportunity to realize your dreams. Well, what do you all think?
Speaker 1: This is my first standalone episode. I really hope you
Speaker 1: found it informative and I hope it generated discussion, So
Speaker 1: please weigh in in the commons section message the Psychology
Speaker 1: Podcast and let us know what kinds of topics you
Speaker 1: would like us to cover on this special series of
Speaker 1: standalone episodes that we're calling the Human Potential Lab. I
Speaker 1: hope everyone enjoy this and until next time, stay smart
Speaker 1: in your own way peace. Thanks for listening to this
Speaker 1: episode of the Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to react
Speaker 1: in some way to something you heard, I encourage you
Speaker 1: to join in the discussion at the Psychology podcast dot
Speaker 1: com or on our YouTube page the Psychology Podcast. We
Speaker 1: also put up some videos of some episodes on our
Speaker 1: YouTube page as well, so you'll want to check that out.
Speaker 1: Thanks for being such a great supporter of the show,
Speaker 1: and tune in next time for more on the mind, brain, behavior,
Speaker 1: and creativity.