Intelligence In Psychology
What Is Intelligence?
Intelligence is defined as “the global ability of an individual to think clearly and to function effectively in the environment“.
By breaking down this definition we can get a clearer understanding of exactly what intelligence is.
Global
Global means that a person’s intelligence affects many areas of their life.
For example, we think of smart people as people who are good at many things.
Think Clearly
Thinking clearly means the ability to use both inductive and deductive logic when forming conclusions, rather than doing so based on emotional responses.
The main feature of intelligence is the ability to use convergent thinking, something which is tested for using intelligence tests.
Function Effectively In The Environment
A person with intelligence is able to successfully interact with other people and the things around them.
Types Of Intelligence
In the 1930s the researcher Louis Thurstone created a factor analysis of intelligence tests, which allowed sets of data to be analysed for trends.
As a result of his research, Thurstone concluded that there are nine primary mental abilities :
• Inductive reasoning
• Deductive reasoning
• Word fluency
• Speed of perception
• Verbal comprehension
• Verbal fluency
• Memory
• Spatial visualisation
• Mathematics
Expanding upon this view of intelligence was the psychologist Howard Gardner, who suggested that we have multiple types of intelligences.
The eight intelligences proposed by Gardner are :
• Verbal
• Logical
• Kinaesthetic
• Naturalistic
• Musical
• Visual
• Interpersonal
• Intrapersonal
As you can see from the descriptions of intelligence so far, intelligence can be viewed in both a broad perspective (a general/global ability), or as a set of specific abilities such as those proposed by Thurstone and Gardner.
What Is Intelligence?
Despite the theories we currently have, intelligence is still something which is hard to accurately define.
For example, a person may do poorly on their exams at school, but later in life goes on to create a successful business.
According to the test this person displayed a low level of intelligence, but later on showed a high degree of intelligence in creating their own business.
So whilst an intelligence test may give us an idea of what a person is likely to be good at we cannot say for certain how intelligent a person is, because different circumstances may have different affects on the type of intelligence they display.
Hypothetical Construct
One of the reasons why we cannot completely define a person’s intelligence, is because intelligence has the status of a hypothetical construct.
This basically means that there are theories which to help explain intelligence, but we don’t know for sure exactly what it is. We can only make an educated guess based on the tests we use to measure it.
Summary
• A person with intelligence is able to use logical reasoning and function effectively in their environment.
• Intelligence can be viewed in terms of a global ability or specific abilities.
• Louis Thurstone created a factor analysis of intelligence tests and concluded that there were nine primary mental abilities.
• Howard Gardner suggests that there are multiple types of intelligence which are more or less independent of each other.
• Intelligence is a hypothetical construct because we attempt to explain it through intelligence tests which are created to measure it.
