General Intelligence vs. Multiple Intelligences in Psychology

Introduction: The Complexity of Measuring Intelligence

Perhaps no concept in psychology is more polarizing than that of intelligence. Quantifying intelligence is an emotional issue, not simply a scientific one. The question of whether nature or nurture influences a person's intelligence carries political and social ramifications alongside its academic ones. Nevertheless, because intelligence is considered useful for educational and vocational guidance, the attempt to measure it in a meaningful way continues.

The Development of the Stanford-Binet Test

As noted by Becker (2003), the original version of what is now known as the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Test was developed within the French school system — not to quantify intelligence, but merely to determine whether a child was too developmentally deficient to benefit from schooling. It did quantify degrees of what was called retardation at the beginning of the 20th century, but it did not measure degrees of exceptional ability (Becker, 2003).

Later, the American psychologist Lewis Terman, in 1916, began to craft a more systematic version of the French intelligence test, generating the scoring system now widely recognized, in which performance was translated directly into mental age (Becker, 2003). Under this system, a child might be said to have a mental age of seven even though the child was ten years old, or conversely, a ten-year-old might register a mental age of twelve. This method of expressing a child's score as a 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 development of computer-adaptive tests, trained examiners were expected 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, when concerns about cultural bias prompted revisions. Until the 1980s, the test also purported to measure a construct called general intelligence — a notion that remains controversial.

General Intelligence and 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 and spans 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, para. 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-spatial reasoning capacity are all considered part of this general intelligence (Cherry, 2021).

Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences

As the g-factor was debated within the discipline of psychometrics, challenges to the Stanford-Binet conception began to emerge. One of the most influential is Howard Gardner's theory of Multiple Intelligences. It should be stressed that Gardner's theory is not the same as the largely debunked concept of learning styles ("Howard Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences," 2020). Regardless of one's intelligence profile, it is possible to learn the same material in different ways. In fact, Gardner was quite adamant that teachers use approaches drawing on all the intelligences in his framework, regardless of the composition of the class.

Gardner argued that the tests used to assess general intelligence were extremely limited in scope, excluding aspects of intelligence that are valuable in school, life, and the workplace. He also contended that having strengths in one area of intelligence does not automatically produce strengths in other areas. On some basic level, this resonates with what most people assume intuitively: simply because someone is a great accountant does not necessarily mean that person can effectively analyze Hamlet. However, Gardner's intention was not to validate stereotypes that sort people into categories such as "math people" or "verbal people," but specifically to critique the intelligence testing of his era.

Writing in the 1970s, when the Stanford-Binet test still measured intelligence primarily as general mental age, Gardner stated that "human beings have a number of relatively discrete intellectual capacities. IQ tests assess linguistic and logical-mathematical intelligence, and sometimes spatial intelligence" alone — which, he argued, represents only a fraction of human potential (Gardner, 2012, p. 2). He also stressed that this narrow approach merely identified students likely to flourish in a traditional 20th-century school, but not necessarily in the 21st-century school or workplace (Gardner, 2012).

In his original conceptualization, the multiple intelligences included verbal, mathematical, musical, kinesthetic, interpersonal, and intrapersonal intelligence (Gardner, 2012). He has since added naturalist intelligence — the ability to understand and classify the natural world — and has argued for also including existential intelligence (philosophical reasoning) and pedagogical intelligence (the intelligence of teaching) (Gardner, 2012).

References

Becker, K. A. (2003). History of the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales: Content and psychometrics. Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales, Fifth Edition Assessment Service Bulletin No. 1. Itasca, IL: Riverside Publishing. Retrieved from

Cherry, K. (2021). What is general intelligence? Verywell Mind. Retrieved from

Gardner, H. (2012). Frequently asked questions: Multiple intelligences and related topics. Retrieved from

Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences. (2020). Northern Illinois University Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning. In Instructional guide for university faculty and teaching assistants. Retrieved from https://www.niu.edu/citl/resources/guides/instructional-guide