Chapter 6
Dr. Jekyll Meets Mr.
Hyde:
Two Faces of Research on Intelligence and Cognition
Robert J. Sternberg,
Yale University
In the Robert
Louis Stevenson novel, Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,
written over one hundred years ago in 1886, a basically well-meaning,
well-mannered doctor, Dr. Jekyll, makes a discovery that enables
him temporarily to transform himself into a hideous monster of
a man, Mr. Hyde. At first, the discovery
is merely a curiosity. But gradually the alter
ego, Hyde, begins to dominate Dr. Jekyll, until, of course, tragedy
strikes. Eventually,
Mr. Hyde takes over. Early
death puts an end simultaneously to both Jekyll and Hyde, as it
must, because the two individuals share but a single body.
The field of intelligence has many
of the characteristics of a Jekyll and Hyde relationship.
It has been and continues to be, in many respects, well-meaning
and well-mannered, offering the possibility of doing good for
science and for the public. But the field also has
an ugly side, which continually seems to be trying to dominate
its good side. The question remains as
to whether one side will ultimately dominate the other, or whether,
as is more likely, the two sides will continue to live together
in an uneasy truce as time passes by.
The field of intelligence has had
its Jekyll and Hyde sides for me personally, which is why I entered
the field in the first place. I became interested in intelligence when, as
an elementary-school student, I did poorly on IQ tests. In fact, I did so poorly that in sixth grade
I was sent back to a fifth-grade classroom to retake the fifth-grade
intelligence test. In a sense, my professional
career has been an attempt to understand and come to terms with
my own early failures on these tests!
It is important to realize that this
Jekyll-and-Hyde dualism is not limited to the field of intelligence.
Consider physics: Is nuclear power good or bad? Potentially, it is either
or both. Or try biology: Is gene splicing good or bad? It can be either, or both. In field after field, there is the potential
for good or bad. What
decides which way things go is not the knowledge base, but the
people who use it for wise or unwise ends (Sternberg, 1998). How knowledge is used
is always a choice. Thus, students need not
only acquire knowledge, but the wisdom to use the knowledge for
good ends.
A
Brief History Lesson
Thinking in the field of intelligence
dates back at least to ancient philosophers such as Plato and
Aristotle. For example,
in Book 5 of the Republic, Socrates asks Glaucon whether
he is not in agreement that a gifted individual is one who easily
acquires knowledge and tends to remember it, in contrast to the
less gifted individual who acquires knowledge only with great
difficulty, and then tends to forget it. Glaucon, of course, agrees. Who can disagree with
Socrates, other than those of his contemporaries who put him to
death? Aristotle, in Posterior
Analytics Book I, conceives of intelligence in terms of "quick
wit," which is the notion of hitting on ideas instantly. Such ancient thinking was rather harmless,
but some more modern thinking has not been.
What is Intelligence?
The issue of the nature of intelligence
was important in ancient Greece and continues to form today a
fundamental issue in the psychology of intelligence. What makes the issue so
important?
Importance of Issue
First, we use many different kinds
of tests to measure intelligence. But before we measure
intelligence, certainly we ought to seriously consider just what
it is we are measuring. Otherwise, we run the
risk of measuring the wrong thing.
If we are going to use these tests to make high-stakes
decisions, such as about tracking in schools or admission to colleges,
universities, and professional schools, we especially should make
sure we are measuring the right thing. This problem is not limited
to intelligence. If
we want, say, to sort children or adults on creativity, "good
personality," or "good values," we also need a
sense of just what we mean by these things before we blindly sort
by them.
Second, when we start measuring something
before we know what it is, we run the proverbial risk of putting
the cart before the horse. Instead of ideas driving measurement, measurement
ends up driving ideas. We
may end up manipulating our theories to fit our measurements,
rather than the other way around.
Most likely, we will measure what is easiest to measure,
and then end up creating theories that justify these measurements
after the fact.
Modern thinking about intelligence
is usually dated back to Sir Francis Galton (1883), who proposed
that intelligence could be understood in terms of the qualities
of energy and sensitivity.
Galton had much that was positive to say about those who
were well endowed with intelligence, but much that was negative
to say about individuals and groups of individuals in what he
believed to be the lower ranges of intelligence. Galton thus exhibited
early the Mr. Hyde lurking in the background of work in intelligence. For example, Galton believed
that
The discriminative facility of
idiots is curiously low; they hardly distinguish between heat
and cold, and their sense of pain is so obtuse that some of the
more idiotic seem hardly to know what it is. In their dull lives, such pain as can be excited
in them may literally be accepted with a welcome surprise. (p. 28)
Given that Galton believed that idiots
were ones who did poorly on psychophysical tests of visual, auditory,
haptic, and other forms of acuity and discrimination, one shudders
to think of the implications of Galton's views for those who were
on the lower end of what Gardner (1983) has more recently dubbed
"bodily-kinesthetic intelligence." You want to do them a favor? Give them some pain as a gift that will excite
in them a welcome surprise.
In this and other writings, Galton made no effort to hide
the Hyde side. Fortunately, at least
for a time, his views more or less died.
Binet and Simon (1916) devised a test to measure intelligence that was based not on psychophysical acuity and discrimination, but on judgment. Their test had a distinctly Jekyll-like character to it. Their purpose was to determine which students would learn well in school. They also were trying to save children who were behavior problems in school from being relegated to special classes or schools for the mentally retarded. At the time, teachers did not clearly distinguish between behavioral and mental problems, and often the teachers would assume that bad behavior was tantamount to mental retardation. Such an assumption had the Hyde-like advantage of giving teachers a quick way to get rid of students they didn't want in their classes. Thus, the intelligence tests of Binet and Simon were designed to protect students, in Jekyll-like fashion, from Hyde-like decisions that could ruin their careers and their lives.
The problem is that the two faces
of selection and retention are so easily reversed.
Just as tests can be used to preserve talent, so can they
be used to rid society or other groups of individuals who, for
one reason or another, come to be viewed as undesirables.
Indeed, some people believe that intelligence tests and
related tests have come to be used in just such a way: They can
provide a pseudo-scientific smoke screen for rejecting people
from the mainstream of society whom the society wants to reject
for nonscientific reasons (Gould, 1981). Instead of rejecting the people on the basis
of their ethnic or national or other group, one creates a test
that appears to give an objective reason for their exclusion.
Gould's (1981) recounting of events
is sometimes in devoted service of his message, and so one needs
to exert caution in accepting some of his conclusions. But there can be little
doubt that, de facto, tests have tended to favor certain groups
over others, for whatever reason (Sternberg, 1996).
This fact illustrates an additional complexity in the study
of intelligence as applied to society.
When certain groups do more poorly on intelligence tests
than others, there are those who believe that the difference reflects
the Dr. Jekylls of psychology who create the kind of fair meritocracy
that our country should be, and there are others who believe that
the difference reflects the Dr. Hydes of psychology who legitimize
institutional discrimination against the unfortunate. In other words, unlike
in the novel, it is not always totally clear who is Jekyll and
who is Hyde.
Although a major conflict regarding
testing was between Galton and Binet, a main conflict regarding
theory was between Charles Spearman (1904) and Louis Thurstone
(1938). Spearman
believed that performance of cognitive tasks requires two kinds
of abilities, a general ability (g) common to all of the tasks,
and specific abilities each relevant to just a single task.
Thurstone, in contrast, believed that no single ability
existed, but rather, that there are multiple primary mental abilities,
such as verbal-comprehension ability, numerical ability, and spatial
ability. The conflict between unitary
and multiple conceptions of intelligence has carried down even
to the present day.
Contemporary Theories of Intelligence
Today, the question of what intelligence
is remains as hot as it was in the days of the differences between
the views of Galton and Binet (Sternberg, 2000). Some investigators are
actively attempting to expand our notions of intelligence. Two examples are the work of Howard Gardner
and of myself.
Gardner (1983, 1993, 1999) has proposed
a theory of multiple intelligences according to which intelligence
comprises not just a single entity, but multiple ones, including
linguistic, logical-mathematical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic,
musical, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalist intelligences. For example, when you
write a paper, you are using primarily linguistic intelligence. When you solve calculus or other mathematical
problems, you are using primarily logical-mathematical intelligence. When you try to figure
out why you procrastinate in your work, you are using intrapersonal
intelligence. Gardner has also speculated
as to the existence of existential and spiritual intelligences. According to Gardner, each of these multiple
intelligences is more or less independent of the others. Conventional tests of intelligence measure
primarily linguistic and logical-mathematical intelligences, and
to some extent spatial intelligence, but ignore the other intelligences. Moreover, even the intelligences that are measured
are assessed in ways that are very limited, such as through fairly
trivial multiple-choice kinds of questions.
Thus, these tests can at best give only a limited picture
of what children and even adults can do.
I, too, believe that conventional
tests give only a limited picture of what people can do, although
my beliefs originate in a somewhat different way. In my own work
(Sternberg, 1985a, 1988, 1996, 1999b), I have suggested a triarchic
theory of intelligence, according to which there are three major
aspects of intelligence: analytical, creative, and practical. Conventional tests of intelligence measure
primarily analytical abilities, and all but ignore creative and
practical abilities. The result is that people
who might have very important contributions to make to society
may be derailed early in their lives because they do not do well
on conventional tests.
I sometimes refer to my own theory
as the theory of }successful intelligence,” because I place
emphasis not just on predicting success in schoolwork, but also,
predicting success in life. Intelligence tests were originally created
to predict success in school, but there is much more to life than
school, of course. The question then arises
as to what, exactly, success is.
According to my theory, success is what you believe it
is, so long as you are defining it in a prosocial way.
So it success could be life as a teacher for one person,
as a carpenter for another. But being an axe-murderer
does not count because it is antisocial rather than prosocial.
Gardner's and my own theories are
sometimes presented as though they are "alternative"
theories of intelligence. Indeed, in almost all of the introductory-psychology
texts, they are presented in this way. But in fact, they deal with somewhat different
aspects of intelligence. Gardner's theory deals
with domains of intelligence, my own with processes within (or
between) domains. Thus, one can think analytically,
creatively, or practically, for example, in the linguistic (or
any other) domain, as when one analyzes a work of literature (analytic),
writes a poem (creative), or discusses the relevance of the travails
of a literary character for one's own life (practical).
It is thus important in psychology to realize that views
that are presented as being in conflict with each other often
only have the appearance of being in conflict.
We must examine them rather carefully to determine whether
the conflict is real or apparent.
Relation to General Issues in Cognitive
Psychology
The issue of what intelligence is may seem remote from the concerns
of cognitive psychology, in general, but nothing could be further
from the case. There are several reasons
why this is so.
First, many theorists view intelligence
as the central set of abilities that organizes all cognitive functions
(see, e.g., Anderson, 1983; Newell 1990; Schank, 1980; Sternberg,
1977, 1996, 1997). Thus,
an understanding of what intelligence is would help us understand
how all of cognition is organized and effectively brought to bear
upon the tasks we face in our daily lives.
Second, the tension between Galton,
on the one hand, and Binet, on the other, is a tension that has
existed in cognitive psychology since its inception, and that
shows no sign of abating.
This tension is between those who emphasize the sensory
and perceptual functioning characteristic of bottom-up processing
(as did Galton), and those who emphasize the judgmental and comprehension
characteristic of top-down processing, (as did Binet).
In bottom-up processing, one starts information processing
at the level of elementary sensory processes, and then builds
up to more complex cognitive processes, such as reasoning. In top-down processing,
one starts information processing at a complex level, and then
works down to more basic processes.
The tension between the two kinds of processes can be seen
in many areas of cognition. In the field of visual perception,
for example, some theorists emphasize bottom-up perceptual processes
(e.g., Gibson, 1979) whereas others emphasize top-down perceptual
processes (e.g., Rock, 1983). A similar issue arises
in speech perception, where some theories are more bottom-up (Massaro,
1987) and others are more top-down (Liberman, Cooper, Shankweiler,
& Studdert-Kennedy, 1967; Liberman & Mattingly, 1985).
Theories of reading can also emphasize bottom-up or top-down
processing, although modern theories tend to seek a balance between
the two emphases (e.g., McClelland & Rumelhart, 1981).
Third, the nature of intelligence
raises questions about the extent to which the mind is modular,
a key question in contemporary cognitive psychology. Modularity refers to the
minds being divided into multiple systems of processing information
that are largely independent of each other.
For example, is the intelligence you use to do your schoolwork
in a different module, or functional part of the brain, than is
the intelligence you use to decide whether you like someone?
In a much-cited book, Fodor (1983) argued that the mind
is largely modular, except for higher intellectual processes. Gardner (1983), however, argued that even the
higher intellectual processes are modular.
The problem for a theory such as Gardner's, however, is
adequately accounting for what Spearman (1904) called the positive
manifold--the tendency for tests of higher level intellectual
abilities all to intercorrelate positively with each other.
At the very least, a hierarchical structure that somehow
integrates the lower order modules seems to be necessary to account
for these intercorrelations (Carroll, 1993).
Gardners theory, proposed more than 15 years ago, still
has not generated even a single empirical test.
Until it does, the theory must be viewed as intriguing
but, from a scientific viewpoint, as highly speculative.
In particular, research is needed to know whether the intelligences
Gardner has proposed actually exist, are truly independent, and
are measurable in reliable and valid ways.
Finally, it is not clear that there
even is any one answer to what intelligence is. A cognitive psychologist,
Ulrich Neisser (1974), pointed out that intelligence may be best
conceived of as a prototype (Rosch, 1978), or as a fuzzy concept. According to this view, we have conceptions
of what characteristic features of intelligence might be but there
are no necessary features that categorically distinguish intelligence
from everything else. We have invented the concept
to make sense of differences we see among people in everyday life. Different cultures may
have different prototypes for intelligence (Sternberg & Kaufman,
1998).
Relation of the Nature of Intelligence
to Everyday Life
The question of whether intelligence
comprises a more general ability (Jensen, 1998), perhaps with
subsidiary abilities embedded hierarchically beneath it (Carroll,
1993; Cattell, 1971) or instead is modular with no general factor
(or at least none of importance; Gardner, 1983; Thurstone, 1938)
is not one just of theoretical importance.
It has implications for our everyday lives. If intelligence comprises
primarily just one ability, then a single IQ (intelligence quotient)
score can tell us pretty much what we need to know about a person's
intellectual abilities. If intelligence comprises multiple abilities,
however, any single number (or two numbers, such as verbal and
mathematics scores) will leave us with an inadequate account of
a person's profile of intellectual abilities. The fight among theorists,
therefore, has implications for the practical realm. People who emphasize multiple abilities may
well see people who emphasize just a single ability as reactionary
Mr. Hydes who allow their right-wing sociopolitical ideology to
corrupt their thinking because of their desire to suppress individuals--often
members of minority groups--whose talents are not well captured
by a single number. People
who emphasize a single ability, however, may see the multiple-ability
theorists as radical Mr. Hydes who allow their left-wing sociopolitical
ideology to corrupt the integrity of their scientific thinking.
It is important to realize that the
same general principle potentially applies to all thinking.
Arguments about the ethical justifiability of abortion
and capital punishment go on and on, for example, and do not get
resolved on the basis of intellectual discourse. Ideology creeps into these
arguments, as surely as it creeps into arguments about psychological
issues. We all always need to
be aware of how our ideology unconsciously shapes our thinking.
Of course, questions about what intelligence
is are not the only ones at the forefront of modern psychological
investigations. Another key question is how intelligence, whatever
it is, should be investigated.
How Should Intelligence be Investigated?
It would seem as though how one would
go about investigating something--say, intelligence--would depend
on just what the thing is that one was investigating. Thus, the answer to the
question of how intelligence should be investigated would seem
to depend on what intelligence is, much as the question of how,
say, a crime should be investigated would depend on what the crime
is. One would not investigate a murder in quite
the same way as one would investigate a land swindle.
So how should intelligence be investigated?
Importance of Issue
Historically, the question of methods
of investigation has, if anything, preceded rather than followed
the question of what is being investigated in the field of intelligence. Methods have become available,
and they have driven, to a large extent, how intelligence is conceived
(see Sternberg, 1990). Although
methods can certainly be helpful in driving substantive research
(Gigerenzer, 1991), they can also lead to the situation where
the methods, rather than the construct, drive research.
In other words, the cart is placed before the horse.
To a large extent, how one investigates
something can determine what one can find out about that something.
For example, if one is investigating a murder, reliance
on eyewitness testimony may suggest a suspect different from the
suspect suggested by DNA analysis. Neither kind of testimony
is infallible: Recall
of eyewitnesses is often quite poor (Loftus, 1975; Loftus &
Ketcham, 1991), and evidence with DNA in it may be planted at
the scene of a crime to point the figure toward a targeted suspect. Similarly no one method
for studying intelligence or anything else is infallible:
Ideally, we want to use converging operations that help
us understand a construct as a result of multiple kinds of analysis
(Garner, Hake, & Eriksen, 1956).
The importance of method, then, is that it may in large
part determine the outcome; but the users of the method may not
recognize the contribution of method to the determination of that
outcome. This issue is not just
hypothetical. Multiple-choice tests tend to correlate with
each other, but they do not correlate as well with essay and other
performance-based tests.
Which kind of test is used has a major effect on how a
person's intelligence is evaluated (Sternberg, 1996; Sternberg,
Ferrari, Clinkenbeard, & Grigorenko, 1996). Thus, who is identified
as intelligent may depend in large part upon the method used to
identify different levels of intelligence.
Contemporary Methods for Studying
Intelligence
Many different methods have been used
to investigate intelligence (Sternberg, 1982, 1990, 2000), but
here I will concentrate on just two methodologies--factor analysis,
which has its origins in differential psychology (Spearman, 1904),
and cognitive analysis, which has its origins in experimental
psychology (e.g., Donders, 1868).
The differential approach.
Factor analysis is a technique that takes correlations--which
represent patterns of individual differences shared across tests
or other measurements--and attempts to find the latent mental
(or other) structures that underlie, or give rise to these correlations.
So, for example, if one were to give tests of vocabulary,
verbal analogies, understanding of mathematical concepts, and
mathematical problem solving, a factor analysis might plausibly
reveal two factors, or latent sources of individual differences--verbal
and mathematical abilities. The idea would be that underlying all the tests
are just two fundamental abilitiestverbal and mathematical. You could be strong verbally but not mathematically,
or vice versa. Or
you could be strong or weak in both.
Because the factors are separate, the abilities are largely
independent.
Factor analysis has been widely used
as a basis for understanding intelligence (see Carroll, 1982,
1993; Jensen, 1998), and continues to be a major source of information
about abilities. Some
psychologists, however, have been less than satisfied with this
methodology as a sole or even primary basis for understanding
mental abilities (e.g., Sternberg, 1977).
Why?
First, the identification of abilities
through factor analysis is dependent on there being individual
differences in those abilities. If there are no individual differences, there
can be no meaningful correlations between pairs of tests, and
thus no factors can be revealed.
But not all abilities yield salient individual differences.
For example, the ability to use language is certainly a
part of intelligence. One
characteristic that separates human intelligence from that of
most or even all other animals is the ability to use language. But virtually all humans
have this ability, so the existence of linguistic ability is not
susceptible to identification by factor analysis (although variations
in levels of it usually will be).
Second, factor analysis may be useful
as a structural model, but it typically tells us little or perhaps
even nothing about the mental processes underlying intelligence.
One can imagine factor analysis as revealing a map of the
mind (Sternberg, 1990)--a representation of the terrain of how
abilities are distributed. But factor analysis would not tell us how people
navigate that terrain, or make effective use of it.
Third, conventional (so-called exploratory)
factor analysis does not yield unique solutions.
Imagine a map of the world. The locations of the sites on the map (cities,
mountains, oceans, or whatever) are fixed, but the axes used to
assign meaning to these locations are not. Typically, we use lines of longitude and latitude,
so that we can make meaningful judgments about how far north or
south, or east or west, a given site is.
But there is no particular reason to use lines of longitude
and latitude. We might use polar coordinates
or some other system of coordinates.
Similarly, in factor analysis, interpretation of results
depends heavily on where factorial axes are drawn; but as with
the map, there are an infinite number of axes we might draw that
could be used uniquely to locate sites, in this case, in the factor
space.
In sum, factor analysis is far from
a perfect method for studying intelligence. Does cognitive analysis provide a more nearly
perfect method of analysis, or at least, a better one?
The cognitive approach. The
cognitive analysis of intelligence starts in a place quite different
from that of the factor (differential) analysis of intelligence. The goal is to unpack
variation in difficulties among tasks rather than variation in
performance among people. In other words, the parameters
that are isolated from the method of analysis are based upon stimulus
rather than upon person properties.
For example, in some of my early work,
I was interested in the role of inductive reasoning (a major part
of what is called "fluid abilities" in the literature
on differential psychology) in intelligence. I therefore had experimental
participants solve fairly simple analogy, classification, and
series-completion problems while they were timed by a machine
(Sternberg, 1977; Sternberg, 1983; Sternberg & Gardner, 1983).
Items were carefully selected for their stimulus properties
so that they would vary in difficulty.
For example, an analogy (such as DOCTOR : LAWYER :: PATIENT
: a. CLIENT, b. JUDGE) might vary in the complexity of the relation
between the first two terms of the analogy, or the first and third,
and so forth. Ultimately, processes of inductive reasoning
were identified such as inference--required to understand
the relation between the first two terms of the analogy--and application--required
to carry over the rule inferred in the first half of the analogy
to solve the problem in the second half.
These processes were identified on the basis of differential
patterns of response times across items rather than across persons
(as would be typical in factor analysis).
In the 1980s, the prospects for what
at the time seemed to be a revolutionary approach to intelligence
were rosy indeed. Those of us engaged in the cognitive analysis
of intelligence (such as Carroll, 1976; Hunt, 1980; Pellegrino
& Glaser, 1980; and Snow, 1980) thought that we had found
the cure for the ills of the field of intelligence.
Perhaps we were insensitive, though, to the dialectical
nature of science, in general, and psychology, in particular (Sternberg,
1995, 1999a).
Relation to General Issues in Cognitive
Psychology
In the dialectic, a given approach
to a problem is offered--say, the psychometric one.
In the terms of the dialectic, it is called a thesis. Proponents of it view
themselves as the Jekylls of the field: They have an answer--one
that will help enlighten and benefit all. But not everyone sees
the thesis so positively.
Skeptics come along, and view those promoting the thesis
as the Hydes of the field. At best, they are unenlightened;
at worst, they are reactionary enemies of progress. These skeptics pose an antithesis that is critical
of the thesis on one and usually more than one dimension. Thus, the cognitivists viewed themselves as
offering an antithesis to the differentialists--perhaps even the
panacea intelligence research had been looking for.
As always happens, the supposed panacea
proves to be nothing of the sort. Critics internal and external
to the antithetical movement begin to see flaws.
Thus, in my own work, I began to see cognitive psychologists
as using pretty much the same kinds of test questions as had differentialists,
with the main difference between the two groups in the way they
were dividing up the same variance (Sternberg, 1985a).
Moreover, information-processing analyses of intelligence
were not working out the way they were supposed to. Often, the variation that best correlated with
conventional psychometric tests was that in the regression constant--what
was common to all of the test items being studied. It seemed almost as though general ability
(g) had been rediscovered.
Finally, just as some of the factor analysts had seemed
to be mindlessly applying factor analysis to every data set in
sight, so were cognitivists shown to be capable of applying cognitive
analysis to every task in sight without asking whether the task
was the right one to use. Cognitive analysis became
just as task-based as had factor analysis (Sternberg, 1997).
Various attempts have been made to
achieve some kind of synthesis between the differential and cognitive
approaches, a call made over 50 years ago by Cronbach (1957). For example, my own triarchic
approach represents one attempt at such a synthesis (Sternberg,
1985a). But there is no one right synthesis, and in
any case, the whole idea of the dialectic is that the synthesis
will eventually become a new thesis, itself to be criticized by
those who will propose an antithesis, and so on.
This kind of dialectic is by no means
limited to intelligence, cognitive psychology, or even psychology.
It seems to be an aspect of reality in many and perhaps
all fields of endeavor. It means, though, that
we have to be careful in viewing our current paradigms or facts
accumulated within these paradigms as in any sense final.
Look at the textbooks of today and of ten, twenty, or thirty
years ago, and you will see that general ways of thinking stay
the same, but not paradigms and the facts accumulated within them.
Most of those facts will never be shown to be wrong or
other disproved. Rather,
they will just come to seem uninteresting. The problems of interest
to psychologists will change, and with them, the answers.
Truly, much of life has a dialectical
property. At times,
we tend to focus on one thing; then we realize we were focusing
too much on that thing, so we try to focus on something different.
Then we realize we need to integrate the two.
For example, we may focus too much on our work at one point,
and then rebel and focus too much on our personal life. Ultimately, we need to find an integration
that incorporates both of these foci.
Relation to the Nature of Intelligence
in Everyday Life
Methods used to study intelligence
may seem to involve an issue quite distant from the concerns of
everyday life. In
fact, though, they are not so distant at all. If the assumptions underlying the psychometric
analysis of intelligence are wrong, then the millions of ability
tests given each year under different acronyms--for admission
to private primary and secondary schools, or to colleges, graduate
schools, or professional schools, not to mention for placement
and diagnosis--are faulty and are possibly leading to questionable
decisions. Where
intelligence is most important is in its interface with everyday
life (Sternberg et al., 2000).
Indeed, there is reason to believe
that some of the assumptions underlying our use of tests are wrong.
The factor structure of a test may be the same across cultures
or subcultures, but it may be that the whole conception of intelligence
differs from one culture or subculture to another, so that the
test is not really measuring the same thing across cultures.
For example, Okagaki and Sternberg (1993) found that different
ethnic groups have different conceptions of intelligence, and
that they socialize their children according to these conceptions.
We found, for example, that Latinos tended to emphasize
the social-competence aspect of intelligence more, whereas Anglos
tended to emphasize the cognitive-competence aspect of intelligence
more. These conceptions
fit the school conception of intelligence to a greater or lesser
degree. To the extent
the fit is lesser, bright children may appear to be dull to their
teachers. Even within the mainstream,
different occupations have different conceptions of what it means
to be intelligent in their field (Sternberg, 1985b). And in different countries, different views
of intelligence may predominate (Yang & Sternberg, 1997).
Indeed, many languages, such as Chinese or Hebrew, have
no word in the languages that corresponds well to the word intelligence.
In sum, what might seem like arcane
issues of methodology have a real impact on what happens from
day to day in children's lives, and what opportunities are given
to or taken away from them--on whether, as psychologists, we serve
as Jekylls or Hydes. Psychologists
and others consequently bear a major burden in ensuring that the
tests of intelligence they are providing adequately represent
the construct they are supposed to be assessing.
The Future
The battles over what intelligence
is and what methods should be used to study it represent only
two of the many issues that intelligence researchers will have
to address during the years of the 21st century. Several other major issues loom on the horizon,
and their answers are potentially high-stakes one. These are the issues that are being hotly researched
today and are likely to be hotly
investigated at least in the foreseeable future.
One of these major issues is the relation
between intelligence, on the one hand, and heredity and environment,
on the other. Although the issue is an old one, new research
on it is proceeding at a rapid clip, and shows no sign of abating
(see Sternberg & Grigorenko, 1997).
Most researchers have passed the point where they merely
wish to attach percentages to hereditary and environmental contributions
to intelligence. They realize the important
roles of covariance (forces that lead heredity and environment
to have the same effects) and interaction.
Various kinds of behavior-genetic designs have been proposed
to tease out the various kinds of effects heredity and environment
can have on intelligence, but all of them have their own idiosyncratic
flaws. Almost certainly, converging
operations are more informative than are single ones.
But we need to remember that, regardless of the methodology
used, the conclusion drawn can be as good only as the tests from
which one draws those conclusions.
Recent findings are quite intriguing
(see Plomin, 1997; Sternberg & Grigorenko, 1997).
For example, we now know that heritability of intelligence,
at least as measured by conventional tests of intelligence, increases
with age.
Most investigators previously had thought that it would
decrease as environment had more and more of an effect. Instead,
it appears that as time goes on, environment matters less and
effects of genes matter more. Another interesting effect
is that within-family rather than between-family differences appear
to matter most for the development of intelligence.
In other words, to the extent that differences in environment
have an effect on the development of intelligence, it appears
that the differences that matter most are those in the way different
children within a given family are treated rather than differences
in the way children are treated across families.
Some investigators, such as Plomin
(1997), are attempting to go beyond quantitative-genetic studies
to actual identification of the genes that are responsible for
various aspects of intelligent behavior. Plomin believes that such
research may eventually supplant the more conventional statistical
studies. Perhaps, but at the moment,
such studies yield little more than educated speculations. Links between genes and intelligence are so
weak that it is unclear how much time it will take before we will
be able to establish any strong and meaningful links.
Certainly, such links would be important to establish,
but they have yet to be discovered.
Studies of the genotype of intelligence have the potential
to bring us either into the land of Jekyll or that of Hyde. Will we use such knowledge
to benefit humankind, or to justify the already questionable treatment
of certain groups? Only time will tell.
A second major issue is group differences
in intelligence. Although such differences
are widely accepted as a fact of life (Sternberg, 1997), they
depend on one's accepting the conventional notion of what intelligence
is. And as the work of Herrnstein and Murray (1994)
made clear, perhaps more important than the existence of such
differences is their interpretation.
The evidence in favor of a genetic interpretation for them
is quite weak (Nisbett, 1995), but again, it is difficult to predict
what the future will tell. At present, our best guess
is that most differences between groups are better attributable
to socialization than to genetic effects, or perhaps to covariance
and interaction between socialization and genetics.
But more research is needed to understand how socialization
has its effects.
A third issue that I will mention
is the modifiability of intelligence. Some investigators are
utterly convinced that intelligence is modifiable (e.g., Feuerstein,
1980; Grotzer & Perkins, 2000; Nickerson, 1994; Ramey, 1994;
Sternberg, 1996), at least in some degree, whereas other investigators
are equally convinced that intelligence is minimally or not at
all modifiable (e.g., Herrnstein & Murray, 1994; Jensen, 1969,
1998). It may be
that we have not gone far in understanding the modifiability of
intelligence because the kinds of tests we use do not give students
much of an opportunity to learntthat is, to modify themselvestwhile
they are being tested. Alternative testing techniques,
called dynamic testing techniquestallow students to learn
at the time they are tested (Grigorenko & Sternberg, 1998;
Vygotsky, 1978). In
such tests, individuals learn material while they are being tested,
and then are tested on how much they have learned at the time
of test. These techniques may give
us a better understanding of peoples ability to modify their intelligence.
Whatever the answer, it is important
to remember that heritability and modifiability are two completely
independent issues. Something
can be heritable and either modifiable or not. For example, height is
highly heritable, and has also shown substantial modification
in recent decades.
The distinction between modifiability
and heritability, and yet its confusion not only in the mind of
the public but even of specialists in the field, is noteworthy.
To many people, it simply seems like a matter of logic
that if something is inherited, then it is nonmodifiable.
These people view genes as opposed to environment. Yet, this view is wrong. Even IQ, which appears to have a heritability
of perhaps .5, has been shown to be modifiable if only because
research shows that scores on tests that give rise to IQs have
risen substantially over the past several generations (Flynn,
1987, 1994; Neisser, 1998).
There is a lesson to be learned, and it is that we often
make assumptions not because they are right, but because they
are easy to make and sound so darn plausible.
The last issue I mention is the one
that excites me the most: how to improve achievement in school
and society by taking into account differences not only in amounts
of intelligence, but in profiles of intelligence.
Our research shows that if one teaches in a way that enables
students to capitalize on their patterns of analytical, creative,
and practical abilities, the achievement of the students increases
(Sternberg, Ferrari, Clinkenbeard, & Grigorenko, 1996; Sternberg,
Grigorenko, Ferrari, & Clinkenbeard, 1999). Moreover, teaching all
students in a way that enables them to use their analytical, creative,
and practical thinking and learning skills appears to result in
higher school achievement for all students (Sternberg, Torff,
& Grigorenko, 1998). It may be possible in the future to help students
improve their achievement by teaching in ways that expand upon
the teaching repertoires that most teachers currently use.
Joining In
The field of intelligence is one of
the most exciting to work in, because the stakes are so high,
both theoretically and practically. But it is not a field
for just anyone. Precisely because the
stakes are so high, people who decide to join the fray need a
thicker than average skin. There are so many different
points of view that it is not a field in which there is any kind
of work that is likely to please everyone; unless an investigator
is prepared to take a certain amount of flack, he or she would
do better finding another pursuit.
Working meaningfully in the field
of intelligence also requires a broader background than might
be the case in another field.
Work in this field cross-cuts cognitive psychology, biological
psychology, developmental psychology, differential psychology,
educational psychology, personality psychology, cultural psychology,
industrial-organizational psychology, and perhaps other areas
of psychology as well. To
keep up with the field and advance it, one must be able to understand
and to integrate the contributions from these various aspects
of the field.
Finally, I believe that the best work
in this field, and perhaps any field, is that done by people who
are willing to defy the crowd--to generate their own set of grounded
beliefs and to fight for them (Sternberg & Lubart, 1995). Students like to believe
that science is for the courageous, the willful, the strong of
mind, and the towering intellect that will fight for truth.
None of these stereotypes works awfully well, as Kuhn (1970)
pointed out some years ago.
For the most part, scientists follow the paradigms set
by others, accept what they are told, and fill in the small gaps
left to be filled by others. The result is that much and arguably most of
the work that is done has little impact on a given field; the
field would have changed little if at all had the work never been
done.
We have no final truth in this or
any other area of psychology. At best, we have good
theories that will lead to new and hopefully better theories. It is the responsibility of the next generation
of researchers to take up the dialectic where the previous generation
left off--to build on these past theories, even if building on
them means attacking them in the process.
Perhaps curiously, even work that forms an antithesis to
an existing thesis builds on the past work, because without the
thesis, the antithesis could not exist--there would be nothing
to attack. We need to encourage students
to be scientific but bold, innovative but responsible--in other
words, to show in their work the kinds of broader attributes of
the intelligent people that the researchers themselves study.
Most of all, researchers in this field
need to remember the Jekyll and Hyde character of work in their
field. Work in the
field of intelligence can do enormous good in providing opportunities
for those who would not otherwise have them, or enormous harm
in stealing opportunities from those who truly deserve them. Researchers need to think
not only about the scientific contribution they have to make,
but the contribution to science and society that they leave behind
them.
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Author Notes
Preparation of this article was supported under the Javits Act Program (Grant No. R206R950001) as administered by the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, U.S. Department of Education. Grantees undertaking such projects are encouraged to express freely their professional judgment. This article, therefore, does not necessarily represent the position or policies of the Office of Educational Research and Improvement or the U.S. Department of Education, and no official endorsement should be inferred.
Requests
for reprints should be sent to Robert J. Sternberg, Department
of Psychology, Yale University, P.O. Box 208205, New Haven, CT
06520-8205
| Robert J. Sternberg is IBM Professor of Psychology and Education in the Department of Psychology at Yale University. He received the Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1975 and the B.A. summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, from Yale University in 1972. He also holds an honorary doctorate from the Complutense University of Madrid and this school year will be awarded honorary doctorates by the University of Leuven, Belgium; the University of Cyprus; and the University of Paris V, France. Sternberg is the author of over 800 journal articles, book chapters, and books, and has received about $15 million in government grants and contracts for his research. The central focus of his research is on intelligence and cognitive development. Sternberg is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Psychological Association (in 12 divisions), and the American Psychological Society. He is listed in Who's Who in America and numerous other who's whos. He has won many awards from APA, AERA, APS, and other organizations. These awards include the Early Career Award and Boyd R. McCandless Award from APA; the Palmer O. Johnson, Research Review, Outstanding Book, and Sylvia Scribner Awards from AERA; the James McKeen Cattell Award from APS; the Distinguished Lifetime Contribution to Psychology Award from the Connecticut Psychological Association; the International Award of the Association of Portuguese Psychologists; the Cattell Award of the Society for Multivariate Experimental Psychology; the Award for Excellence of the Mensa Education and Research Foundation; the Distinction of Honor SEK, from the Institucion SEK (Madrid); the Sidney Siegel Memorial Award of Stanford University; and the Wohlenberg Prize of Yale University. He has held a Guggenheim Fellowship as well as Yale University Senior and Junior Faculty Fellowships. He also has held the Honored Visitor Fellowship of the Taiwan National Science Council and the Sir Edward Youde Memorial Visiting Professorship of the City University of Hong Kong. He has been listed in the Esquire Register of outstanding men and women under 40 and was listed as one of 100 top young scientists by Science Digest. He has been president of the Divisions of General Psychology, Educational Psychology, Psychology and the Arts, and Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology of the APA and has served as Editor of the Psychological Bulletin and is Editor of Contemporary Psychology. Sternberg is currently PI on a project with the College Board. Sternberg has consulted for hundreds of educational organizations on projects related to teaching and testing for intellectual skills. He is most well-known for his theory of successful intelligence, investment theory of creativity (developed with Todd Lubart), theory of mental self-government, balance theory of wisdom, and for his triangular theory of love and his theory of love as a story. Sternberg is a member of the Trustees Research Committee of the College Board and has served on a Research Advisory Committee for ETS. |
The author may be reached at Robert_Sternberg@yale.edu |
