General Intelligence versus Multiple Intelligences

The Concept of Intelligence in Psychology:

General Intelligence versus Multiple Intelligences

Perhaps no more polarizing concept exists than that of intelligence in psychology. Quantifying intelligence is an emotional, not simply a scientific issue. The idea of whether nature or nurture influences a person’s intelligence also has political and social, as well as academic ramifications. But because the idea of intelligence is thought to be useful for educational and vocational guidance, the attempt to do so in a meaningful way continues

The Development of the Stanford-Binet Test

As noted by Becker (2003), the original version of what is now thought of as the Stanford-Binet test was developed within the French school system, not to quantify intelligence, but merely to determine if a child was too developmentally deficient to be able to benefit from schooling. It did quantify degrees of what was called retardation at the beginning of the 20th century, but not degrees of exceptional ability (Becker, 2003). Later, the American Lewis Terman in 1916 began to craft a more systematic version of the French intelligence test, generating the scoring system which is now well known, in which performance was translated directly into mental age (Becker, 2003). In other words, a child might be said to have a mental age of seven, even though the child was ten years old, versus a ten-year-old child with a mental age of twelve. This score of translating a child’s mental age is no longer used in practice (Becker, 2003).

The original forms of this intelligence test were also adaptive in nature. Long before the generation of computer-adaptive tests, the trained examiner was supposed to adapt questions to the respondent’s answers. “Examinees experienced a variety of items that changed both quantitatively and qualitatively. Definitions, for example, went from concrete words to abstract words to the comparison of abstract words” (Becker, 2003, p.3). Verbal items strongly predominated on the test until the mid-1980s, in response to concerns raised about cultural biases. Until the 1980s, the test also purported to measure a construct called general intelligence, which is still a controversial notion.

General Intelligence (the G-Factor)

General intelligence, often known as the g-factor, suggests that there is a generalizable intelligence quality that can be measured cross-culturally, spanning through all disciplines. “This general mental ability is what underlies specific mental skills related to areas such as spatial, numerical, mechanical, and verbal abilities” (Cherry, 2021, par.3). The Stanford-Binet test, although it consists of different components, attempts to measure this g-factor, and some research indicates that it is strongly associated with success in school and in the workforce (Cherry, 2021). Fluid reasoning, working memory, knowledge, quantitative reasoning, and visual and spatial reasoning capacity were all part of this general intelligence (Cherry, 2021).

Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences

As the g-factor was debated within the discipline of psychometrics, challenges to the Stanford-Binet conception began to arise. One of the most influential is that of Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligence theory. It should be stressed that Gardner’s theory is not the same as the largely debunked learning styles (“Howard Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences,” 2020). Regardless of one’s intelligence in different areas, it is possible to learn in different ways. In fact, Gardner was quite adamant that teachers use different approaches using all the different intelligences encompassed in his theory, regardless of the composition of the class. Gardner argued tests used to assess general intelligence were extremely limited in their approach and excluded certain aspects of intelligence which were valuable in school, life, and the workplace, and also that having strengths in one area of intelligence did not automatically result in strengths in other areas.

On some basic level, this seems to resonate with what most people assume intuitively. Simply because someone is a great accountant does not necessarily mean that person can effectively analyze Hamlet. But Gardner’s intention was not to validate what can lead to prejudices in favor of stereotyping certain people (as math or verbal people, or nerds or jocks), but specifically as a critique of the intelligence testing of his day, back in the 1970s, where the Stanford-Binet test was still measuring intelligence as general mental age. Instead, Gardner stated, “human beings have a number of relatively discrete intellectual capacities. IQ tests assess linguistic and logical-mathematical intelligence, and sometimes spatial intelligence” alone, which is a fraction of human potential (Gardner, 2012, p.2). He also stressed that this approach merely validated what students would flourish in a traditional 20th century school, but not necessarily the 21st century school or workplace (Gardner, 2012). In his original conceptualization, the multiple intelligences included verbal, mathematical, musical, kinesthetic, interpersonal intelligence, and intrapersonal intelligence (Gardner, 2012). He has since added natural intelligence, or the ability to understand intelligence in nature, and has argued for also adding existential (philosophical intelligence) and pedagogical intelligence (the intelligence of teaching) (Gardner, 2012).

Critics of Gardner have argued that his concept of intelligence is so fragmented it renders the concept relatively meaningless. Again, even his more recent conceptions of intelligence reflect what seem like commonsense notions—namely that someone can know a discipline very well, but not necessarily have the ability to teach that discipline. But merely because something seems to resonate with commonsense or stereotypes does not necessarily mean it is empirically validated. One problem is that concepts of intelligence are often reflected in test design, and intelligence tests can validate these concepts, as constructed by the test designer, but whether they truly measure intelligence is debatable. Also, as Gardner notes, the types of intelligence needed in specific societies may vary. The types of qualities that may have enabled someone to succeed in an early society, or a modern 21st century virtual workplace, may not have been the skills needed to succeed in the French and later American school system for which the original Stanford-Binet assessment was designed.

Reflection

Gardner’s concept of multiple intelligences may have some issues which continue to be debated in the literature—it is possible that someone may be highly intelligent overall and yet have greater strengths in certain areas, for example. There is also the question about the degree to which the level of interest, personal passions, and environmental shaping can encourage the motivation to develop certain intelligences over others. But Gardner’s definition, at minimum, seems like a less potentially judgmental and narrow view of intelligence, versus a measure of the person’s utility or moral work to society: “intelligence itself is not a content, but it is geared to specific contents” (Gardner, 2012, p. 3).