Intelligence

OUTLINE OF RESOURCES

Introducing IntelligenceNOTE:“Artificial Intelligence,” which is listed at the end of this outline, may be used to introduce intelligence.

Lecture/Discussion Topic: Twelve Interesting Facts About Intelligence (p. 549)

Classroom Exercise/Student Project: What Is Intelligence? (p. 549) UPDATED

What Is Intelligence?Lecture/Discussion Topics: Intelligence as the Capacity to Adapt (p. 550) UPDATED

Is Intelligence One General Ability or Several Specific Abilities?Lecture/Discussion Topics: Savant Syndrome (p. 551) UPDATED

Kim Peek’s Brain (p. 553) Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences (p. 553) UPDATED Successful Intelligence (p. 555) The Psychology of Wisdom (p. 557)

Classroom Exercises: The Factor Analysis Approach (p. 550) (also appropriate for assessing intelligence) Questionnaire for Business Management (p. 556) (also appropriate for assessing intelligence) The Autism-Spectrum Quotient (p. 556) (also appropriate for assessing intelligence) Sternberg’s Balance Theory of Wisdom (p. 558)

PsychSim 5: Get Smart (p. 550)

Feature Film: Rain Man and Savant Syndrome (p. 553)

Worth Video Anthology: Savant Music Skills* Savant Art Skills: In Autism and Dementia*

Intelligence and CreativityLecture/Discussion Topic: Creative People—Ten Antithetical Traits (p. 560)

Classroom Exercises: Assessing Creativity (p. 559) Coding Intelligent/Creative Behavior (p. 560) NEW

Emotional IntelligenceLecture/Discussion Topics: Myths About Emotional Intelligence (p. 562)

Emotional Intelligence: An Ability or Collection of Eclectic Traits? (p. 562) Ego-Resiliency (p. 563) Fostering Children’s Emotional Intelligence (p. 564) UPDATED Intelligence, Self-Discipline, and Academic Performance (p. 565)

Classroom Exercises: Ten Facets of Emotional Intelligence (p. 561) Emotional Intelligence Scale (p. 561) “Reading the Mind in the Eyes” Test: Sample Items (p. 562)

Is Intelligence Neurologically Measurable?Lecture/Discussion Topic: Reaction Time, Intelligence, and Longevity (p. 565)

* Titles in the Worth Video Anthology are not described within the core resource unit. They are listed, with running times and their original sources, in the Lecture Guides and described in detail in their Faculty Guide, which is available at www.worthpublishers.com/mediaroom.

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Assessing IntelligenceSee “Is Intelligence One General Ability or Several Specific Abilities?” for exercises that may also be appropriate here.Classroom Exercises: A World War I IQ Test (p. 566)

Issues in Testing (p. 568) Reliability and Validity (p. 570) Remote Associates Test (p. 570)

Classroom Exercise/Critical Thinking Activity/Homework Assignment: Evaluating “Free” Intelligence Tests on the Internet (p. 567) NEW

Classroom Exercises/Student Projects: Designing and Administering an Intelligence Test (p. 566) Understanding Predictive Validity (p. 569) NEW

Student Project: Joining Mensa (p. 566) UPDATED

Worth Video Anthology: Pros and Cons of Intelligence Tests* Locking Away the “Feeblemnded”: A Shameful History*

The Dynamics of IntelligenceLecture/Discussion Topics: Why Do Intelligent People Fail? (p. 571)

Are Intelligent People Happier? (p. 572) Giftedness (p. 572) Achievement in Later Life (p. 573)

Worth Video Anthology: Psychologist Ellen Winner Discusses “Gifted Children”*

Genetic and Environmental Influences on Intelligence Classroom Exercise: Incremental Versus Entity Theories of Intelligence (p. 573)

Lecture/Discussion Topics: Genes and Intelligence (p. 574) Misunderstanding Heritability (p. 575) NEW

Worth Video Anthology: Hothouse Babies: Mother Tries to Teach Her Two-Year-Old Multiplication*

Group Differences in Intelligence Test Scores Classroom Exercises: Blacks as a “Castelike” Minority (p. 576)

Culture-Biased and Culture-Fair Tests (p. 577)

Lecture/Discussion Topics: Environmental Explanation of Group Differences (p. 577) Intelligence as Culturally Defined (p. 577) The SAT Reasoning Test: A Case Study in Testing (p. 577) UPDATED

Artificial IntelligenceLecture/Discussion Topic: Artificial Intelligence (p. 579) NEW

Classroom Exercise/Podcasts: Computers, Robots, Machines: Simulating Intelligence and Other Human Traits (p. 581) NEW

RESOURCES

Introducing Intelligence

Classroom Exercise/Student Project: What Is Intelligence?

Introduce intelligence by asking your students to list behaviors they believe to be distinctively characteristic of either particularly intelligent or of particularly unin-telligent people. Robert Sternberg and his colleagues asked that question of several hundred laypeople and more than 100 psychologists who have a special interest in intelligence. Analysis of the answers indicated that the behaviors fell into three general classes: practical problem-solving skills, verbal skills, and social compe-tence. On the basis of these responses the researchers developed a behavioral checklist for self-evaluation, Handout 1. Students can rate the extent to which each set of behaviors characterizes themselves. Generally, students who give themselves fairly high ratings will be the better students. Results of Sternberg’s study indi-cated that laypeople and psychologists had very similar views of intelligence, except that the former were much more likely to see social competence as a component of intelligence.

Alternatively, you might use one of Deborah Podwika’s suggestions to introduce the topic of intel-ligence. Ask students to form small groups to discuss who, in their estimation, is the more intelligent: Mark Zuckerberg (founder and CEO of Facebook) or Albert Einstein. Have them report their decision and reasons for it to the full class. Or have each group identify two people (living or dead but well-known) they consider to be intelligent and to explain why. Again, have each group report to the entire class.

Podwika, D. S. (2005, May 6). Re: Intelligence Activities. Message posted to PSYCHTEACHER@list. kennesaw.edu.

Sternberg, R. J., Conway, B. E., Ketron, J. L., & Bernstein, M. (1981). People’s conceptions of intelli-gence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 41, 37–55.

Lecture/Discussion Topic: Twelve Interesting Facts About Intelligence

In reviewing the research, Stephen Ceci distills 12 sur-prising facts about intelligence. They include the following:

1. IQ is associated with some simple abilities. No one with measurable IQ has difficulty deciding which of two lines is longer or whether two pairs of let-ters are identical. However, in order to perform these simple tasks, a person with an IQ below 70

may need up to five times longer than an individual with a higher IQ. The nervous systems of those with low IQs are simply less efficient.

2. School attendance correlates with IQ. Staying in school can elevate IQ or, more accurately, keep it from slipping. Evidence for this dates back to the turn of the twentieth century when the London Board of Education found that the IQs of children in the same family decreased from the youngest to the oldest. The older children progressively missed more school. Toward the end of the Vietnam war, a lottery determined draft priority. Those men born on July 9, 1951, were picked first so they tended to stay in school longer to avoid the draft. Those men born July 7 were last in the lottery and thus had no incentive to stay in school. Men born on July 9 had higher IQs and also earned 7 percent more money. Summer vacations also seem to affect IQ. With each passing month, children’s end-of-year scores decline.

3. IQ is not influenced by birth order. The idea that birth order influences personality and intelligence has not stood up under scrutiny. Moreover, the claim that large families make low-IQ children may be unfounded because researchers have found that low-IQ parents make large families. Smart people tend to have small families, but it is not small fami-lies per se that make people smart.

4. IQ is related to breast feeding. Even when researchers control for factors such as the sense of closeness mother and child experience through nursing, breast-fed children appear to have an IQ of 3 to 8 points higher by age 3.

5. IQ varies by birth date. State policies mandate the age of students entering school as well the age they may leave, typically 16 or 17. Those born in the final three months of the year are more likely to enter school a year later; thus, when they leave school, they have been attending one year less. For each year of school completed, there is an IQ gain of approximately 3.5 points. Unsurprisingly, as a group, those born later in the year show a lower IQ score.

6. IQ evens out with age. Imagine, suggests Ceci, two biological siblings adopted by two different middle-class families, at age 5 and again in early adulthood. Are their IQs more alike when younger and living in the homes of their adoptive parents or when they are older and living on their own? Contrary to expectation, as the siblings go out on their own, their IQ scores become more similar. The probable reason is that once they are away from the dictates of their adoptive parents, they are free to let their genotypes express themselves.

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Because they share about 50 percent of their genes, they will become more alike because they are like-ly to seek similar sorts of environments.

7. Intelligence is plural, not singular. Regardless of their views of so-called general intelligence, researchers agree that there are statistically inde-pendent mental abilities such as spatial, verbal, analytical, and practical intelligence. Howard Gardner is, of course, a primary proponent of mul-tiple intelligences theory.

8. IQ is correlated with head size. Modern neuroimag-ing techniques demonstrate that cranial volume is correlated with IQ. Evidence also comes from stud-ies of the helmet sizes of members of the Armed Forces whose IQs were measured during basic training. Correlations are quite small.

9. Intelligence scores are predictive of real-world out-comes. Even among those with comparable levels of schooling, the greater a person’s intellectual ability, the higher the person’s weekly earnings. Those with the lowest levels of intellectual abil-ity earn only two-thirds the amount workers at the highest level earn.

10. Intelligence depends on context. In visiting race-tracks, researchers found that some men were excellent handicappers while others were not. A complex mental algorithm that was used to con-vert racing data from the racing programs sold at the track distinguished experts from nonexperts. However, the use of the algorithm was unrelated to the men’s IQ scores. Some experts were dockwork-ers with IQs in the 80s, but they reasoned far more complexly at the track than all nonexperts, even those with IQs above 120. But, these experts per-formed very poorly at reasoning outside the track.

11. IQ is going up. IQ has risen about 20 points with every generation, an increase called the Flynn effect, after New Zealand political scientist James Flynn. The rise in IQ has been attributed to better nutrition, more schooling, and better-educated parents.

12. IQ may be influenced by the school cafeteria menu. In one large study, 1 million students enrolled in the New York City school system were examined before and after preservatives, dyes, colorings, and artificial flavors were removed from lunch offer-ings. The investigators found a 14 percent improve-ment in IQ after the removal. Improvement was greatest for the weakest students.

Ceci, S. (July/August, 2001). Intelligence: The surprising truth. Psychology Today, 46–53.

What Is Intelligence?

Lecture/Discussion Topic: Intelligence as the Capacity to Adapt

Robert J. Gregory provides an excellent illustration of intelligent behavior as reflecting the ability to learn from experience, to solve problems, and to use knowl-edge to adapt to new situations. You might retell it in introducing the topic of intelligence.

Gregory presents the case history of a moderately retarded 61-year-old newspaper vendor who, although well-known to community mental health profession-als, managed his own affairs with minimal supervision. Both eccentric and fiercely independent, he stored canned goods in his freezer and swore at case workers who stopped by to inquire into his well-being. He main-tained his fragile independence and tenuous adaptation to his environment by selling papers from a streetside newsstand. The papers cost a quarter, which he recog-nized as proper payment. He also had learned that three quarters were proper change for a dollar. He refused payment other than a quarter or a dollar—an arrange-ment his customers had learned to live with. However, one day the price of a newspaper increased to 35 cents. He now had to learn to deal with nickels and dimes as well as quarters and dollars. The amount of learning required to adapt to this new environmental demand exceeded his intellectual abilities and, sadly, he was soon out of business.

You may want to have your students come up with examples of people who have demonstrated the abili-ties that define intelligence. Encourage them to reflect on famous historical figures or people in the news who have made use of their prior experiences to solve problems and to adapt to new situations. Alternatively, assign your students the task of finding YouTube vid-eos showing young children or animals demonstrating these qualities. Select the best ones to show in class.

Gregory, R. (2007). Psychological testing: History, principles, and applications (5th ed.). Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

Is Intelligence One General Ability or Several Specific Abilities?

PsychSim 5: Get Smart

This activity explains the multidimensional nature of intelligence and demonstrates some tasks used to mea-sure intelligence. Students will perform those tasks and answer some typical test questions.

Classroom Exercise: The Factor Analysis Approach

Factor analysis is a statistical procedure that identifies clusters of related items on a test (any test, not just an intelligence test). It is used to identify the different dimensions of performance that underlie a person’s total score.

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Because this important statistical technique is dif-ficult for most students to understand, you may want to demonstrate its application with a specific example. Charles Potkay and Bem Allen use the Maudsley Personality Inventory, Handout 2, to illustrate fac-tor analysis. Distribute copies of the handout and ask students to answer all the items. Then ask, “Do the 12 statements measure 12 different aspects of personal-ity or do some of the statements go together? What dimensions might they have in common? What do they measure?” Have them try categorizing the questions into subgroups and then label each subgroup. Generally, students have little difficulty with this task, although their categories and labels may differ. (Having students form small groups to complete this part of the assign-ment will highlight these differences.)

Explain that factor analysis provides a more objec-tive approach to this task. The responses of many people to a large number of items are typically entered into a statistical program of multiple intercorrelations, yielding numerical indices for determining (a) whether

answers to certain items tend to form clusters; (b) which specific questions contribute to each cluster; (c) each item’s specific degree of correlation with each cluster; (d) how many clusters are in the data; and (e) the extent to which the clusters are independent of each other, thus forming clearly definable factors.

Finally, explain that when Hans Eysenck used fac-tor analysis with the Maudsley Personality Inventory, two major factors emerged. Items 1 to 6 formed a clus-ter of characteristics that define a “neuroticism” factor and items 7 to 12 describe an “extraversion” factor. The actual relationship of each item to each factor appears below. The larger the correlation, the greater is the item’s contribution to the factor. Thus, the neuroticism factor is best defined by questions 1 and 2, whereas the extraversion factor is best defined by questions 11 and 12. Point out that items clustering together to form one factor show little relationship to the second factor. How close were students’ subjective judgments to the results produced by factor analysis?

Correlations of 12 MPI Items to Neuroticism and Extraversion

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

N .75 .74 .71 .58 .58 .63 .01 .04 –.06 –.04 –.02 .09 E .01 –.06 –.09 .02 –.06 .09 .48 .59 .59 .49 .68 .64

Potkay, C. R., & Allen, B. P. (1986). Personality: Theory, research, and applications. Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole. © Charles R. Potkay.

Lecture/Discussion Topic: Savant Syndrome

Savant syndrome is a condition in which people with serious mental handicaps, either from retarda-tion or major mental illness (early infantile autism or schizophrenia), have spectacular islands of ability or brilliance. Some have skills that are remarkable in contrast to the handicap (talented savants or savant I); others have an ability that would be spectacular even in a normal person (prodigious savants or savant II). The syndrome is six times more common in men than women and occurs in a very narrow range of skills—calendar calculating, music (almost exclusively limited to the piano), lightning calculations and mathemat-ics, art, mechanical ability, prodigious memory, or, rarely, unusual sensory discrimination abilities (smell or touch). When the condition was first described in 1887, the person with the syndrome was called an “idiot savant,” with “idiot” referring to a level of intelligence below 25 and “savant” meaning a learned person. The term “idiot” was improper from the beginning simply because the savant’s intelligence is above 25, usually in the range of 40 to 70. Prodigious savant is the term reserved for those very rare persons whose special skill or ability is so outstanding that it would be spectacular

even if it were to occur in a nonhandicapped person. Researchers estimate that there are fewer than 50 pro-digious savants presently living who would meet this high threshold of special skill. Findings indicate that 50 percent of savants are autistic; the remaining 50 per-cent suffer some other developmental disability, mental retardation, brain disease, or injury.

Darold Treffert’s Extraordinary People is an excel-lent source of lecture material on savant syndrome. Among the remarkable case studies you can share with your students are the following:

George and his identical twin brother Charles can give you the day of the week for any date over a span of 80,000 years. Ask them to identify the years in the next two centuries in which Easter will fall on March 23 and they will give correct answers with lightning speed. The twin brothers can describe the weather on any day of their adult life. At the same time, they are unable to add or count to 30, and they cannot figure change from a $10 bill for a $6 purchase.

Kenneth can accurately cite the population of every U.S. city over 5000; the distance from each city or town to the largest city in its state; the names, number of rooms, and locations of 2000 leading hotels in the United States; and

statistics concerning 3000 mountains and rivers. Kenneth has a mental age of 11 years and a vocabulary of 58 words.

Upon hearing Tchaikovsky’s “Piano Concerto No. 1” for the first time in his teen years, Leslie played it back flawlessly and without hesitation. He can do the same with any other piece of music, no matter how long or complex. Leslie is severely mentally handicapped and blind, and he has cerebral palsy.

Ellen, also a musical genius, constructs complicated chords to accompany music she hears on the radio. She was able to repeat the soundtrack of the musical Evita after hearing it only once, transposing orchestra and chorus to her piano by using complex, precise chords, including intense dissonances, to reproduce mob and crowd noises. Like Leslie, Ellen is blind and has an intel-ligence score of less than 50.

Treffert’s latest book (Islands of Genius: The Bountiful Mind of the Autistic, Acquired, and Sudden Savant) was released in the United States in April 2010. According to the Wisconsin Medical Society, “This book provides an update on well-known savants Dr. Treffert has been following for years and explores new cases, particularly the ‘acquired savant’ in which neuro-typical persons demonstrate previously dormant savant skills, sometimes at a prodigious level following head injury or CNS disease. It also explores genetic mem-ory—how savants ‘know things they never learned’. Both the acquired savant and genetic memory have vast implications for accessing dormant potential—a little Rain Man perhaps—within us all. There is a color illus-tration section of savant art, and special section outlines techniques for ‘training the talent’ (art, music, math) in these special people.”

Although savants are aware of their talents, they cannot explain how they work. Alonzo Clemons, a retarded Denver man whose animal sculptures fetch upwards of $45,000, simply says God gave him his tal-ent. Robert Black, a “calendar calculator” who can fig-ure out the day of the week on which your birthday will fall in 3314, explains, “I got a good mind.” Bernard Rimland, director of the Institute for Child Behavior Research in San Diego, notes that “sometimes savants give explanations that are meaningful only to them—things like, ‘Because eleven.’ ”

Savant researchers have not been able to explain these unique abilities, although several theories have been advanced. For example, Rimland notes that underlying all savant abilities is a seemingly limitless memory. The savant’s musical ability is not in compo-sition but rather in an uncanny ability to play back, note for note, long passages heard just once. Savant art is not remarkable for its creativity but for its realism—exact copies of animals or people or scenes done from mem-

ory. Rimland theorizes, “The reason you and I can’t multiply four-digit numbers in our heads is that we get distracted. Nine times seven, carry the two—I won-der if the parking meter’s about to run out—and four sevens is—hey, how’d I get that stain on my shirt?” In contrast, savants do not have distractions; the brain is dedicated entirely to the task at hand. Treffert notes that savants possess memory that is “exceedingly deep, but very, very narrow.”

In a review of the literature on the savant syn-drome, Leon Miller concludes that the skills exhibited by savants are in many ways similar to those of experts not having a disability. This finding clearly challenges the notion that rote memory is the core savant skill. Furthermore, the specific skill of the savant is usu-ally accompanied by normative levels of performance on at least some subtest of standardized intelligence measures. For example, one study found significantly higher WAIS scores on digit span and block design in a sample of 11 calendar calculators. Different cogni-tive strengths may be associated with each savant skill, although the link between the strengths found on certain tasks and the exhibited skill is not clear. Finally, the case-history literature has long suggested that savants are highly motivated to perform their skill and, when given the opportunity, devote considerable time to it. Although no study has uncovered a motivational dimen-sion distinctive to all savants, it appears that motivation is part of a set of predisposing factors that promotes skill development.

Although the central purpose of savant research has been to find ways to treat or prevent the syndrome, Treffert notes that, “There’s so much these people can teach us about ourselves—about memory, about its relation to intelligence and creativity. . . . And when we understand savants, perhaps we’ll also have gained an avenue to the genius that, I believe, resides in all of us.”

Miller, L. K. (1999). The savant syndrome: Intellectual impairment and exceptional skill. Psychological Bulletin, 125, 31–46.

Roach, M. (1989). Extraordinary people: Understanding “idiot savants.” New York: Harper and Row.

Treffert, D. (2008). Savant syndrome: Islands of Genius. Retrieved September 16, 2008 from www. wisconsinmedicalsociety.org/savant_syndrome/ frequently_asked_questions.

Treffert, D. (2000). Extraordinary people. London: Beacon Press.

Wisconsin Medical Society. (2011). Savant syndrome: Islands of genius. Retrieved July 24, 2011, from www.wisconsinmedicalsociety.org/savant_syndrome.

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Feature Film: Rain Man and Savant Syndrome

Rain Man, starring Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise, provides wonderful clips to use in class for introducing savant syndrome and the questions it raises regarding the nature of intelligence. The film (which is available on DVD) traces the journey of two brothers, hustler Charlie Babbitt (Cruise) and Raymond (Hoffman), who has autism, as they travel from Cincinnati to Los Angeles to claim their deceased father’s estate. Raymond has been institutionalized for years as a resident of a home for the mentally challenged. In the course of their travels, Charlie learns that his older brother has an exceptional computational ability that stands in sharp contrast to his generally low level of intellectual functioning and verbal ability. Charlie eventually uses his brother’s unique talent to monetary advantage at a Las Vegas casino. Among the clips worth using are the following: (1) at 41:30 minutes into the film (running only 30 seconds), the brothers are in a restaurant and Raymond shows an amazing ability to count and compute the number of toothpicks that fall from a small box onto the floor. (2) At 60:50 minutes (running 90 seconds), a doctor asks Charlie whether his brother has any special abilities. Raymond proceeds to demonstrate an astounding capacity to multiply large numbers. At the same time, he cannot tell the price of a candy bar nor can he calculate change for a dollar. (3) At 83 minutes (running 9:15 minutes), while again eat-ing in a restaurant. Raymond shows an amazing ability to recall numbers arbitrarily paired with songs and to remember the playing cards in a half-dealt deck. The clip continues as the two brothers take Las Vegas by storm, utilizing Raymond’s computational ability to amass huge winnings.

Lecture/Discussion Topic: Kim Peek’s Brain

Kim Peek, a nonautistic savant who died on December 22, 2009, was the inspiration for the movie Rain Man. The Biology of Mind unit in these resources included a discussion of research on Kim Peek’s brain. If you did not use this material earlier, you may want to do so now.

Lecture/Discussion Topic: Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences

Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences suggests that intelligence comes in different packages.

Based on data from a variety of sources, but particu-larly from his own research in neuropsychology at the Boston Veterans Administration Medical Center, Gardner theorizes eight relatively independent areas of intellectual competence. The eight areas, the careers they might lead to, and a prominent person representa-tive of each category, according to Gardner, are shown in the table on the next page.

Although Gardner presents evidence from a variety of research sources to support his theory, perhaps his most intriguing argument is that separate neural centers underlie these various intelligences. For example, he provides numerous case studies of patients who have lost all language abilities because of damage to the speech centers in the left hemisphere of the brain, but who still retain the capacity to be musicians, visual artists, and engineers. Similarly, he describes patients who have difficulty with spatial representation and other visual tasks because of right-hemisphere damage, but who retain their linguistic abilities. Gardner even provides supporting neurological data for the personal intelligences. For example, a lobotomy may cause little impairment of linguistic or logical-mathematical intel-ligence, but it can be disastrous for self-understanding and interpersonal relationships.

Marie Winn describes the practical impact of Gardner’s theory. For example, in 1985, eight Indiana schoolteachers approached Gardner with a plan to start a public school based on his theory of multiple intel-ligences. They were intrigued by the idea, implicit in his theory, that while everyone is born with certain strengths and weaknesses in each of the cognitive areas, all people are capable of developing greater pro-ficiency in all of them. The Key School (now called Key Learning Community) teaches the traditional three Rs, but the daily schedule of every child also includes music, art, and physical education. In fact, students receive four times the exposure children usually get to these subjects. Every day, students also receive instruction in Spanish and computers. According to their principal, Teresa James, other theories also play an important role in their everyday operations: “Dr. Mihayl Csikszentmihalyi’s’s theory of Flow and Dr. David Feldman’s Developmental Continuum frame our daily work. Dr. Earnest Boyer’s Seven Virtues are the foundation of our interpersonal and intrapersonal cur-ricula, and his Human Commonalities play an important role in the structure of our secondary program.”

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Gardner’s Categories of Intelligence

Category Description Career Example

Linguistic The ability to use language, sensitivity poet, translator T. S. Eliot to the order of things. These people can argue, persuade, entertain, or instruct through the spoken word.

Logical-mathematical The ability to see the intelligence of mathematician, Einstein numbers and logic, ability to handle scientist chains of reasoning and to recognize patterns and order. These people think in terms of cause and effect and can create and test hypotheses.

Musical Sensitivity to pitch, melody, rhythm, composer, singer Stravinsky and tone. These people can sing in tune, keep time to music and listen to musical selections with discernment.

Bodily-kinesthetic The ability to use the body skillfully athlete, dancer, Martha Graham and handle objects adroitly. surgeon These are hands-on people with good tactile sensitivity.

Spatial The ability to perceive the world sculptor, architect, Picasso accurately and to recreate or surveyor transform aspects of that world. These people often have acute sensitivity to visual details, can draw their ideas graphically, and can orient themselves easily in 3-D space.

Interpersonal The ability to understand people and politician, Gandhi relationships. salesperson, These people can perceive and respond religious leader to moods, temperaments, intentions, and the desires of others.

Intrapersonal Access to one’s emotional life as a means therapist, social Freud of understanding oneself and others. worker These people can easily access their own feelings, discriminate among different emotional states, and use this to enrich and guide their own lives.

Naturalist The ability to understand, categorize, botanist, Charles Darwin and explain patterns encountered in farmer, the natural world. rancher These people observe, interpret, and construct meaning from the natural world.

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Classes are specifically geared to strengthen all eight intelligences, and a detailed report card provides a pro-file of the child’s progress in all abilities. Evaluations of the school’s program, particularly of students’ progress, have been overwhelmingly positive. The program has been expanded to include both middle and high school students. One of the unique features of the Key Learning Community is that students enjoy mentorships in the larger Indianapolis community. That is, after identifying students’ area of highest interest, the school matches them with an adult role model. For example, a student showing strength and intrinsic motivation in activities reflecting spatial intelligence might be matched with a mentor from the city planning department. Much more can be learned about the Key Learning Community at its website, www.616.ips.kl2.in.us.

Gardner suggests three ways in which multiple intelligences (MI) theory can have a positive impact on schools. First, MI theory encourages schools to culti-vate those capacities that are valued in the community and broader society. Some of these are likely to include specific intelligences that traditionally have been given short shrift in the schools. Second, MI theory helps schools to recognize that nearly every discipline, topic, and concept can be approached in a variety of ways. To promote effective learning, the same material must be taught from a number of perspectives. Third, MI theory encourages the personalization of education. It fosters the recognition that all individuals cannot be fitted into a single intellectual dimension and that these individual differences are to be taken seriously.

In his more recent book, Multiple Intelligences: New Horizons in Theory and Practice, Gardner reviews and expands on his 25-year-old theory. He also responds to his critics. Gardner’s answer to the ques-tion, “Can the theory be called scientific?” is “No.” He suggests that multiple intelligences theory has an intermediary status between philosophy and predic-tive science much like evolutionary theory. Designing assessments for the intelligences has proven more than challenging and he has given up the search for ways to assess them. In addition to effectively responding to frequently asked questions about multiple intelligences theory and practice, Gardner devotes considerable space to discussing the educational implications of his theory, including nurturing multiple intelligences in early child-hood and during the school years. He also considers global applications and discusses the importance of his theory in the workplace.

Gardner, H. (2006). Multiple intelligences: New horizons in theory and practice. New York: Basic Books.

Gardner, H. (1999). Multiple intelligences for the 21st century. New York: Basic Books.

Gardner, H. (1995, November). Reflections on multiple intelligences. Phi Delta Kappa, 200–203, 206–209.

Key Learning Community. (2011). Retrieved July 24, 2011, from www.616.ips.k12.in.us/index.php?id=9893.

Winn, M. (1990, April 29). New views of human intel-ligence. The Good Health Magazine, 17, 28–29.

Lecture/Discussion Topic: Successful Intelligence

Robert Sternberg has identified three aspects of intel-ligence: analytical, creative, and practical. Together, they make up what he calls “successful intelligence, the ability to adapt to, shape, and select environments to accomplish one’s goals and those of one’s society and culture.” He further suggests that successfully intel-ligent people discern their own pattern of strengths and weaknesses and then find ways to capitalize on their strengths and compensate for their weaknesses.

To illustrate his different aspects of intelligence, Sternberg used three graduate students:

Alice is a good student, always getting good grades until she reached graduate school. Required to come up with original ideas, Alice began to fall behind. Barbara is not such a good student, but she’s brimming over with ideas for research. Celia is neither a good nor a creative stu-dent, but she’s street smart; she knows how to play the game—how to get things done.

Sternberg summarizes: “So basically what I’ve said is there are different ways to be smart but ultimately what you want to do is take the components (Alice’s intelligence), apply them to your experience (Barbara), and use them to adapt to, select, and shape your environment (Celia). That is the triarchic theory of intelligence.”

Sternberg and James Kaufman reviewed evidence that demonstrates the importance of separating practical intelligence from traditional views of IQ. For example, in one study, experienced assemblers in a milk- processing plant used complex strategies for combin-ing partially filled cases in a manner that minimized the number of moves required to complete an order. Although these assemblers were the least-educated workers in the plant, they routinely outperformed the better-educated workers who substituted when the for-mer were absent. The skill involved a mental calcula-tion of quantities expressed in different base number terms and was unrelated to academic achievement or traditional intelligence test scores. Another study found that expert racetrack handicappers used a highly complex algorithm for predicting posttime odds that involved interactions among seven kinds of informa-tion. The use of a complex interaction term in their implicit equation was unrelated to their IQ scores. In yet another study, California grocery shoppers demon-strated an ability to choose which of several products

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represented the best buy, even though they did very poorly when the same kind of problems were presented in a paper-and-pencil arithmetic computation test. Similarly, Brazilian street children showed an ability to apply sophisticated mathematical strategies in their street vending but were unable to do the same in a classroom setting. Sternberg and Kaufman suggest that, although intelligence test scores may predict school and job performance, there are other important aspects of intelligence that are relatively independent of traditional IQ. They conclude, “A multiple-abilities prediction model of school or job performance would probably be most satisfactory.”

Goldman, B. (1992, May/June). The New IQ. Health, 64–70.

Sternberg, R. (1988). The triarchic mind. New York: Viking Penguin.

Sternberg, R. J., & Kaufman, J. C. (1998). Human abili-ties. In J. T. Spence, J. M. Darley, & D. J. Foss (Eds.), Annual Review of Psychology (Vol. 49, pp. 479–502). Palo Alto, CA: Annual Reviews.

Classroom Exercise: Questionnaire for Business Management

Robert Sternberg and Richard Wagner have developed a test of practical managerial intelligence. The ques-tions in Handout 3 assess our tacit knowledge—that is, the knowledge we pick up by osmosis from our experi-ence—that determines our ability to manage ourselves, to manage others, and to manage tasks. After students have completed the questionnaire, you can report the “solutions” below. A “+” indicates the item received a relatively high rating by individuals more advanced in the field. A “–” indicates the item received a relatively low rating by individuals more advanced in the field. Emphasize that the “+’s” and “–’s” are relative. There are no correct answers, per se, only trends distinguish-ing the more experienced from the less experienced. In some cases, the answers may be counterintuitive.

1. a. – 2. a. + 3. a. – b. – b. – b. – c. – c. + c. – d. + d. – d. + e. – e. + e. –

4. a. + 5. a. – b. + b. – c. + c. – d. – d. – e. – e. –

Your students also can get a sense of tacit knowl-edge by reflecting individually or in small groups on the following challenge:

Identify one or two things it takes to succeed at your school or at your work that you would never read in text-books or in your job description.

Tacit knowledge can be expressed in terms of “if–then” conditionals. For example, if you need to deliver bad news to your boss, and if the boss’s golf game were rained out the day before, and if the staff seems to be walking on eggshells, then it is better to wait until later to deliver the bad news to avoid spoiling the boss’s week.

Sternberg, R. J. (1996). Successful intelligence: How practical and creative intelligence determine success in life. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Sternberg, R., & Wagner, R. (1993). The g–ocentric view of intelligence and job performance is wrong. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 2, 1–5.

Classroom Exercise: The Autism-Spectrum Quotient

Discussing autism is an excellent way of introducing the idea that intelligence comes in different packages. As Steven Johnson notes, people with autism often have above-average IQs and their general logic skills may be impeccable, but they lack social intelligence. The history of mathematics and physics, notes Johnson, contains many borderline autistics. Some people have great numerical skills but limited social grace. Your students probably know bright people who perform poorly in social situations. Often they seem disengaged in conversation and fail to pick up nonverbal, emotional cues.

Handout 4 is the Autism-Spectrum Quotient, or AQ. It was designed by Simon Baron-Cohen and his colleagues at Cambridge’s Autism Research Centre as a measure of autistic traits in adults. “Definitely agree” or “Slightly agree” responses to questions 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 12, 13, 16, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 26, 33, 35, 39, 41, 42, 43, 45, and 46 score 1 point. “Definitely disagree” or “Slightly disagree” responses to questions 1, 3, 8, 10, 11, 14, 15, 17, 24, 25, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 34, 36, 37, 38, 40, 44, 47, 48, 49, and 50 score 1 point. In the first major trial of the test, the average score in the control group was 16.4. Eighty percent of those diagnosed with autism or a related disorder scored 32 or higher. The authors carefully note that the test is not a means for making a diagnosis; many who score about 32 and who even meet the diagnostic criteria for mild autism report no difficulty in everyday functioning.

Calling your students’ attention to some of the specific items on the test and how they are scored can highlight how multiple and distinct abilities can contrib-ute to life success. Specific items also introduce social

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intelligence and how it may be distinct from academic intelligence. For example, you might highlight items 29, “I am not very good at remembering phone num-bers,” and 30, “I don’t usually notice small changes in a situation or a person’s appearance.” Johnson notes that, to a person with a commonsense understanding of human psychology, these attributes hardly seem like opposites. A person with a good memory for phone numbers should also be more than likely to notice small changes in appearance. He or she is a detail person. Yet autism illustrates how these two traits may be inversely related; they are not simply the result of some general intelligence.

Baron-Cohen, S., Wheelwright, S., Skinner, R., Martin, J., & Clubley E. (2001). The Autism-Spectrum Quotient (AQ): Evidence from Asperger Syndrome/high- functioning autism, males and females, scientists and mathematicians. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 31, 5–17.

Lecture/Discussion Topic: The Psychology of Wisdom

You can extend your discussion of intelligence by intro-ducing the psychological research on wisdom. Paul B. Baltes and his colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development and Education in Berlin have attempted to move the study of wisdom from the theo-retical to the empirical. To elicit and measure wisdom-related knowledge and skills, they ask people to reason about difficult life dilemmas. You might introduce their dilemmas in class with the following examples:

“A 15-year-old girl wants to get married right away. What should one/she do and consider?” Or, “Imagine a good friend of yours calls you up and tells you that she can’t go on anymore and has decided to commit suicide. What would one/you be thinking about? How would one deal with this situation?” Or, “A 60-year-old widow has recently completed a college degree and opened a business, only to learn that her son has been left alone with two small children to care for. What should she do?”

Baltes defines wisdom as good judgment and advice in important but uncertain matters of life. It is a definition not far from that of Webster’s Dictionary: “understanding of what is true, right or lasting; good judgment.” Other psychologists contrast wisdom with intelligence. For example, Vivian Clayton defines intel-ligence as the ability that allows the individual to think logically, to conceptualize and abstract from reality; wisdom, he says, is the power to grasp human nature. Robert Sternberg offers the following simple distinc-tion: Intelligence enabled people to build a nuclear bomb. Wisdom keeps them from using it and even makes them consider the folly of building it in the first place.

Of course, Baltes’ hypothetical dilemmas have no obviously correct answers. However, some answers are

believed to show more wisdom than others. Responses receive scores in the following five categories.

1. Basic factual knowledge: Does the respondent show general knowledge about life matters, grasp the scope and depth of the issues involved in the dilemma, and understand emotions?

2. Strategic or procedural knowledge: Does the respondent consider various strategies of decision making, weigh the costs and benefits of certain actions as well as the timing and withholding of advice?

3. Life-span context: Does the respondent consider the past, current, and possible future context of life?

4. Value relativism: Does the respondent consider variations in values and life priorities, such as reli-gious differences?

5. Recognition and management of uncertainty: Does the respondent realize that there may be no perfect solution, and thus consider the inherent uncertain-ties of life?

Regarding the 15-year-old who wants to marry, a typical unwise response might be: “No way. Marrying at age 15 would be utterly wrong. One has to tell the girl that marriage is not possible. It would be irrespon-sible.” A wiser response, receiving a higher score, would be the following: “Well, on the surface, this seems like an easy problem. On average, marriage of 15-year-olds is not a good thing. I guess many girls might think about it when they fall in love for the first time. Perhaps, in this instance, special life circumstanc-es are involved, maybe the girl has a terminal illness. Or this girl may not be from this country or may live in another culture and historical period. So I would need more information.”

An interesting issue raised by Baltes and his col-leagues concerns possible age-related changes in wisdom. For example, in one study they found that middle age afforded some advantage over youth when participants were tested in pairs (tandems)—an interac-tive format that mimics everyday life in most cases. We perhaps solve many life problems in consultation with others. Roughly half the tandems were either married or lived together, and most of the others were long-time friends. Ages ranged from 20 to 70. The pairs discussed the hypothetical dilemmas for 10 minutes and were given 5 more minutes to reflect; members of each pair then were tested individually. Age clearly won out over youth when tandems were allowed to discuss their views together.

Baltes, P. B., & Staudinger, U. M. (1993). The search for a psychology of wisdom. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 2, 75–80.

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Baltes, P. B., Gück, J., & Kunzmann, U. (2002). Wis-dom: Its structure and function in regulating successful life span development. In C. R. Snyder & S. J. Lopez (Eds.), Handbook of positive psychology (pp. 327–347). New York: Oxford University Press.

Seppa, N. (1997, February). Wisdom: A quality that may defy age. APA Monitor, 1, 9.

Classroom Exercise: Sternberg’s Balance Theory of Wisdom

Handout 5 can be used to introduce Robert Sternberg’s balance theory of wisdom. Have students consider the dilemma in the handout individually or in small groups. Have them volunteer their answers to the full class.

In highlighting the difference between intelligence and wisdom, Sternberg notes that a cunning terrorist may be analytically intelligent in assessing the advan-tages and disadvantages of various targets and even practically intelligent in delivering his attacks, but he is not wise. An unscrupulous businesswoman may pos-sess sufficient emotional intelligence to sell a worthless product and thus betray a trusting public, but she is not wise. An evil tyrant may use his tacit knowledge to control land and resources that are not his own, but we would all agree that he is not wise.

The essential goal of wisdom, suggests Sternberg, is to serve a common good. Wise individuals have bal-anced (a) intrapersonal, (b) interpersonal, and (c) extra-personal interests. In short, wisdom is not simply about maximizing one’s own or someone else’s self-interest; rather, it is about balancing various self-interests (intra-personal) with the interests of others (interpersonal) and other aspects of the context in which one lives (extrap-ersonal), such as one’s city or country or environment or even one’s religion.

How is wisdom expressed in everyday life? Sternberg poses the example of a teacher who has been instructed by her principal to spend almost all her time teaching in a way that will maximize students’ scores on a statewide assessment test. The teacher believes that the principal is essentially forcing her to abandon the true education of her students. What are the critical factors in her choosing a wise course of action?

A. Balancing of goals and interests: People vary not only in the extent to which they seek a common good but also in what they view to be the com-mon good. The teacher may believe that it is not in the children’s best interests to engage only in rote memory tasks for a state-mandated test. The prin-cipal may see the children’s interests differently. Moreover, both teacher and principal see their own integrity and reputation at stake. Finally, what students learn has implications for their parents and their community. The teacher is left with the responsibility of deciding what is in the best inter-est of all parties concerned.

B. Balancing of short and long terms: People vary in their emphases. The teacher may believe that, in the long run, good education involves more than rote memorization but at the same time may recog-nize that performance on the state assessment test affects the students’ immediate well-being as well as that of the principal and school.

C. Balancing of responses to the environmental con-text: The teacher may adapt to the environment by doing what the principal has instructed. She may shape the environment by doing precisely what she believes she should do or by trying to find some balance that meets both the principal’s and her own goals. Finally, she may decide she cannot live with the principal’s teaching philosophy. She may select another teaching position elsewhere.

D. Acquisition and utilization of tacit knowledge: As we saw earlier, people vary in the extent to which they have acquired tacit knowledge and in how fully they use it. The teacher may have fairly sophisticated tacit knowledge of how to teach, or she may have virtually none and thus have no choice but to do what the principal says. Or, she may decide to teach in a way that represents a compromise between her own views and those of the principal. Clearly, her knowledge of how to balance the various interests of the involved parties will shape her course of action.

Does applying Sternberg’s balance theory of wis-dom to the dilemma in Handout 5 change your class’ answers? Here are some key questions:

1. Whose interests should Charles take into account? 2. How might the short- and long-term interests of

each party be different? 3. How might Charles’ actions reflect adaptation or

shaping of the environment? What would it mean for him to select a new environment?

4. How might tacit knowledge or emotional intel-ligence be relevant to understanding and resolving this difficult life situation?

In contrast to the problems posed on the typical intelligence test, this real-life dilemma has multiple solutions, each associated with liabilities and assets. Most important, as Sternberg observes, values are inte-gral to the balance theory of wisdom. Values penetrate the consideration of interests, the identification of the appropriate response to the environment (i.e., to adapt, shape, or select), and even one’s understanding of the common good. Obviously, opinions will differ greatly. Still, argues Sternberg, we can surely reach agreement on certain universal values, such as respect for human life, social justice, and enabling people to reach their full potential.

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Closely linked to Sternberg’s argument that the essential goal of wisdom is to serve the common good is Thao Le and Michael Levenson’s suggestion that wisdom reflects self-transcendence. They note that the centrality of self-transcendence to wisdom has its roots in philosophical, religious, and contemplative literature. Handout 6 is the self-transcendence inven-tory by Levenson and his colleagues. To obtain a total score, students add the numbers they give in response to the 10 items. Scores range from 10 to 40, with higher scores reflecting a greater tendency toward self-transcendence. A total of 164 undergraduate students scored a mean of 28.9. The authors of the scale suggest that self-transcendence includes “a decreasing reliance on externals for definition of the self, an increasing interiority and spirituality, and a greater sense of con-nectedness with past and future generations.”

Le and Levenson hypothesized that two key imped-iments to self-transcendence (and thus to wisdom) are competitive individualism and immature (or possessive) love. Their correlational findings were consistent with this analysis. They also found that an egalitarian cultural perspective was positively linked to self- transcendence among students. They called for future studies, particularly longitudinal ones, to establish the causal or reciprocal relationships among culture, love, and self-transcendence.

Le, T., & Levenson, M. (2005). Wisdom as self-tran-scendence: What’s love (and individualism) got to do with it? Journal of Research in Personality, 39, 443–457.

Levenson, M. R., Jennings, P. A., Aldwin, C. M., & Shiraishi, R. W. (2005). Self-transcendence: Conceptualization and measurement. International Journal of Aging and Human Development, 60, 127–143.

Sternberg, R. J. (2002, August). Wisdom, schooling, and society. Paper presented at the Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association, Chicago, IL.

Intelligence and Creativity

Classroom Exercise: Assessing Creativity

A variety of tests have been designed to assess creativi-ty. In the Unusual Uses Test, respondents are given two minutes to name as many uses as they can for a com-mon object such as a toothpick, a brick, or a paper cup. To illustrate, use Tony Buzan’s quick test: give students two minutes to write down all the different uses they can think of for an ordinary paper clip. Have them score their responses by adding up the total number of uses and dividing by two to give an average number per minute. This test, Buzan notes, is given in schools and business organizations to determine “inherent creative capacity.” An average score is 4, 8 is an unusually high score, 12 is very rare, and 16 makes you better than

one in a thousand. The Remote Associates Test (see Handout 12) is another popular test of creativity. Still a third, the Consequences Test, asks such questions as: What would happen if everyone in the world suddenly went blind?

Buzan, T. (1984). Make the most of your mind. New York: Linden Press.

To add a little fun to the lecture, read the follow-ing creative responses from Russell Baker, a columnist for the New York Times until he retired in 2004, when asked to think of four to eight things that might happen if we suddenly had three arms.

1. When asked by their wives to bring home a case of milk, a wheel of cheese, five gallons of paint, etc., men would say, “I’ve only got three hands.”

2. The millions of people unable to afford new three-armed wardrobes— dresses, shirts, suits, etc.—would have to wear their extra arms under their clothing. Thus, eventu-ally, everybody would become ashamed of having a third arm and women would be arrested for showing them on the beach.

3. The price of manicures would rise fifty percent. 4. Some embittered failure whose future was destroyed

because he failed to do well on a psychological test would immediately start eliminating America’s lead-ing research psychologists, always carrying the murder weapon in the new third hand which the F.B.I. would have had no time to fingerprint.

When asked to think of 8 to 12 uses for each one of the following objects: a rubber ball, a brick, a wire clothes hanger, and a one-foot ruler, his responses were as follows:

Uses for rubber ball: (1) Games. (2) Plug up rainspouts. (3) Throw at neighbors’ dogs when they start sniffing around your boxwood.Uses for a brick: (1) Construction. (2) Destruction. (3) Place under short movie actors during love scenes to put them in kissing range of leading ladies. (4) Hold in hand when greet-ing encyclopedia salespeople at front door.Uses for a wire clothes hanger: (1) Hang clothes on. (2) Unbend and use curled end to jab ineffectually at rubber ball plugging up rainspout. (3) When visiting an enemy, place wire hanger in one of his closets containing other wire hang-ers, thus triggering wire hangers’ well-known propensity to tangle with other wire hangers and inducing nervous break-down in enemy when he goes to closet.Uses for a one-foot ruler: (1) Prop windows open. (2) Snap in two to relieve nervous tension. For this purpose, keep one foot ruler in closet containing wire hangers.

Russell Baker, “Observer: Three Arms and a Wire Hanger,” New York Times, December 12, 1965. Copyright © 1965 by The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission.

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Lecture/Discussion Topic: Creative People—Ten Antithetical Traits

In his book Creativity: The Work and Lives of 91 Eminent People, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi describes creative people as having the unusual capacity to adapt to almost any situation and to make do with whatever is at hand to reach their goals. According to Csikszentmihalyi, “complexity” is the one word that best expresses how their personalities differ from those of others. Creative people tend to integrate certain thoughts and actions that are segregated in most people. They are a conglomerate of contradictory extremes; instead of being an “individual” each of them is a “mul-titude.” Csikszentmihalyi identifies 10 antithetical traits that creative people integrate in dialectical tension. The traits are described as follows:

1. Creative people demonstrate a great deal of physi-cal energy but they also rest often and sleep a lot. In short, they control their energy. They view peri-ods of reflection and idleness as important for the success of their work.

2. Creative people are smart and naive at the same time. They demonstrate both wisdom and childlike-ness. In his study of the major creative geniuses of this century, Howard Gardner noted that a certain immaturity, both emotional and mental, can go hand in hand with the deepest insights.

3. Creative people manage to combine playfulness with discipline, responsibility with irresponsibility. A playfully light attitude is accompanied by a qual-ity of doggedness, endurance, and perseverance.

4. Creative people alternate between imagination and a rooted sense of reality. Csikszentmihalyi notes that new ideas are often viewed as fantasies unre-lated to current reality. This is useful because the whole point of art and science is to go beyond what we now consider real in order to create a new real-ity. What makes a novel idea creative is that when we have conceived it, sooner or later we recognize that, strange as it is, it is true.

5. Creative people tend to be both introverted and extraverted. Most of us tend to prefer either being alone or with others. Creative people like to be both, depending on the time and the situation.

6. Creative people are simultaneously humble and proud. They know that they have accomplished a great deal and yet are aware that they “stand on the shoulders of giants.” Moreover, they are usually so focused on future challenges that past accomplish-ments are quickly forgotten.

7. Creative people escape rigid gender stereotyping. They tend to be androgynous, both aggressive and nurturant, sensitive and rigid, dominant and submissive.

8. Creative people are both traditional and rebel-lious. Being only traditional leaves one unchanged. However, taking chances without regard to what has been valued in the past rarely leads to novelty that is recognized as an improvement.

9. Creative people are passionate about their work but extremely objective as well. Without passion we quickly lose interest in a difficult task. Without being objective, our work often is not very good and lacks credibility.

10. Creative people are sensitive, which often exposes them to suffering and pain, yet also leads them to experience a great deal of enjoyment. Being alone at the forefront can expose one to vicious attack and ridicule. At the same time, when one is work-ing in his or her area of expertise, worries and cares are often replaced by a sense of bliss.

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1996). Creativity: The work and lives of 91 eminent people. New York: HarperCollins.

Classroom Exercise: Coding Intelligent/Creative Behavior

As a fun way to introduce or reinforce the concept that intelligence reflects learning from prior experiences, adapting to new situations, and processing information quickly, choose a brief video clip from MacGyver, a series that originally aired between 1985 and 1992 (see www.youtube.com/show/macgyver). The program fol-lowed the adventures of secret agent Angus MacGyver as he set about solving problems or getting out of life-and-death situations by fashioning complex devices in mere minutes out of ordinary objects and household materials. He relied heavily on duct tape and his Swiss Army Knife. Ask students to analyze how MacGyver’s intelligence is portrayed by the actor (Richard Dean Anderson).

The more recent USA show Burn Notice is about Michael Westen (Jeffrey Donovan), a former CIA agent who has been “burned” (“fired” in the spy business, but more serious because he is now the target of other CIA operatives and has had all of his bank accounts frozen). The focuses on the ability of Michael and his cohorts (Gabrielle Anwar as Fiona Glenanne, Bruce Campbell as Sam Axe, Coby Bell as Jesse Porter) to use common household items to create deadly explosives or other devices that will help solve their clients “unsolvable” problems. Challenge students to go to the show’s web-site (www.usanetwork.com/series/burnnotice), where you can try your hand at figuring out which common objects might be used to make different “spy” gadgets.

If you have time, you can ask your students to develop a coding scheme for different kinds of intel-ligent behavior and then have them actually code either MacGyver’s behavior while they watch the video clip

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or Michael Westen’s behavior during a single show. They can do this individually or in small groups. Once the clip has been coded, you can review the results. Use the exercise as an opportunity to discuss definitions of intelligence and general principles of operational definitions, observational research strategies, frequency counts, interrater reliability, and other aspects of research methodology.

Emotional Intelligence

Classroom Exercise: Ten Facets of Emotional Intelligence

Handout 7 provides a good opportunity to introduce your students to the topic of emotional intelligence. The handout contains sample items from Robert Tett, Kevin Fox, and Alvin Wang’s self-report measure of emotional intelligence (the Multidimensional Emotional Intelligence [MEIA]). The entire scale is available for purchase from Sigma Assessment System, P.O. Box 610757, Port Huron, MI 48061-0757 Phone: 1-800-265-1285.

Each item of Handout 7 assesses one facet of Peter Salovey and John Mayer’s original 1990 model of emo-tional intelligence, including the following:

1. Emotion in the self: Verbal—Being in touch with one’s feelings and describing those feelings in words.

2. Emotion in the self: Nonverbal—Communicating one’s feelings to others through bodily (nonverbal) expression.

3. Emotions in others: Nonverbal—Attending to others’ nonverbal emotional cues, such as facial expressions and tone of voice.

4. Emotions in others: Empathy—Understanding others’ emotions by relating them to one’s own experiences.

5. Regulation of emotion in the self—Controlling one’s own emotional states, particularly in emo-tionally arousing situations.

6. Regulation of emotion in others—Managing oth-ers’ emotional states, particularly in emotionally arousing situations.

7. Flexible planning—Using emotions in the pursuit of life goals; basing decisions on feelings rather than logic.

8. Creative thinking—Using emotions to facilitate divergent thinking.

9. Mood redirected attention—Interpreting strong, usually negative, emotions in a positive light.

10. Motivating emotions—Pursuing one’s goals with drive, perseverance, and optimism.

Scores on these sample items can range from 10 to 60, with higher scores presumably reflecting higher emotional intelligence. Emphasize that the handout is intended to introduce one model of emotional intelli-gence; it does not provide a valid or reliable measure of the construct.

Salovey, P., & Mayer, J. D. (1990). Emotional intel-ligence. Imagination, Cognition, and Personality, 9, 185–211.

Tett, R. P., Fox, K. E., & Wang, A. (2005). Development and validation of a self-report measure of emo-tional intelligence as a multidimensional trait domain. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 31, 859–888.

Classroom Exercise: Emotional Intelligence Scale

Handout 8 is Nicola Schutte and her colleagues’ self-report measure of emotional intelligence (EI). Based on Peter Salovey and John Mayer’s model of emotional intelligence, the scale items are designed to assess (1) the appraisal and expression of emotion in self and oth-ers, (2) the regulation of emotion in self and others, and (3) the utilization of emotion in solving problems.

Although self-report scales are useful in the class-room for introducing the concept of emotional intel-ligence, make it very clear to students that, as John Mayer and his colleagues state, they may be appropriate only as measures of self-perceived EI, not actual EI ability. Some self-report scales might even be bet-ter viewed as personality assessments rather than as self-estimates of EI. Gerald Matthews and his col-leagues (see L/D topic on the next page) note that self-perceptions of EI can be inaccurate because they are vulnerable to a range of response sets, deception, and impression management. In addition, they note that past research has reported rather modest associa-tions between self-rated and actual ability measures. Matthews and his colleagues conclude that question-naire measures tend to be deficient in both convergent and divergent validity. That is, their correlations with other intelligence factors are too low (failure of con-vergent validity) and their correlations with personality factors are too high (failure of divergent validity).

In scoring their scale, students should first reverse the numbers (1 = 5, 2 = 4, 3 = 3, 4 = 2, 5 = 1) that they placed in response to items 5, 28, and 33, and then add the numbers in front of all 33 items. The authors report-ed means of 135 and 120 for therapists and prisoners, respectively, and means of 131 and 125 for females and males, respectively.

Schutte and her colleagues note that, like most self-report measures, the scale is susceptible to fak-ing good and thus should not be used as a method of selecting individuals for employment or other highly

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desired opportunities. However, the scale may be useful for individuals who (a) wish to understand their own personal characteristics, so they can better set goals and work toward these goals; (b) experience problems in areas related to emotional intelligence, such as difficul-ties in impulse control; or (c) are considering entering settings or careers in which emotional intelligence is important.

Research has indicated that high scale scores are associated with greater optimism, less depression, and less impulsivity. Scores also predicted first-year college grades and were positively associated with the “open-ness to experience” trait of the Big Five personality dimensions, but were unrelated to cognitive ability.

Schutte, N. S., Malouff, J. M., Hall, L. E., Haggerty, D. J., Cooper, J. T., Golden, C. J., & Dornheim, L. (1998). Development and validation of a measure of emotional intelligence. Personality and Individual Differences, 25, 167–177.

Classroom Exercise: “Reading the Mind in the Eyes” Test: Sample Items

The Developing Through the Life Span unit in these resources included sample items from Simon Baron-Cohen and his colleagues’ “Reading the Mind in the Eyes” Test. If you did not use the exercise earlier, you may want to do so now in connection with your class discussion of emotional intelligence. A key component of emotional intelligence is the ability to recognize emotions in others’ faces.

Lecture/Discussion Topic: Myths About Emotional Intelligence

In a review of the literature, Gerald Matthews and his colleagues identify what they regard as “seven myths about emotional intelligence” and, in each case, the prospects for future progress in solving the research question. They state, “Our aim is not to dismiss work on EI out of hand, but to examine where the first wave of research on the construct is meeting barriers to prog-ress, and whether those barriers can be overcome.” The myths and prospects follow.

Myth 1: Definitions of EI are conceptually coherent. They note that there are several different and even conflicting definitions of the construct in the literature. Prospects for progress are fair. Researchers need to reach consensus on what EI actually is, with closer ties to theories of emotion and intelligence.

Myth 2: Measures of EI meet standard psychometric criteria. Although test reliabilities are often good, the conceptual problems lead to questionable content valid-ity. Predictive and construct validities are also limited. Prospects for progress are good. Normal test develop-

ment may improve predictive validity. Problems of content and construct validity will be more challenging due to the uncertain conceptual and theoretical bases of EI.

Myth 3: Self-report EI is distinct from existing person-ality constructs. There is much overlap with the Big Five and narrower constructs such as empathy and opti-mism. The prospect for progress is poor. At best, these self-report scales may add further primary or mid-level personality traits that contribute to contemporary per-sonality models.

Myth 4: Ability tests for EI meet criteria for a cogni-tive intelligence. It is still unclear whether ability tests measure intelligence. Prospects for progress are fair. It may or may not prove true that current tests measure an ability. Future work needs to validate test scores against behavioral indices of competence.

Myth 5: EI relates to emotion as IQ relates to cognition. The idea of separate cognitive and emotional states that each has its own “intelligence” is confusing and conflicts with many current theories of emotion and self-regulation. Prospects for progress are poor. Models of self-regulation and executive function that integrate cognitive, emotional, and motivational functioning appear to be more likely to explain empirical data.

Myth 6: EI predicts adaptive coping. EI tests may at times correlate with coping scales and outcome mea-sures. Nonetheless, it is simplistic to think such findings establish a single continuum of individual differences in adaptation. Prospects for progress are good. Future research should be informative about how various com-ponents of EI affect outcomes and processes.

Myth 7: EI is critical for real-world success. Thus far, studies provide an insufficient basis for supposing that either EI is strongly predictive of outcomes in real-world settings or that interventions to increase EI will be cost-effective. The prospects for future progress are fair. At present, there are much better validated person-ality and ability measures. In the longer term, however, we can expect tests for emotional skills and knowledge to have greater utility.

Matthews, G., Roberts, R. D., & Zeidner, M. (2004). Seven myths about emotional intelligence. Psychological Inquiry, 15, 179–196.

Lecture/Discussion Topic: Emotional Intelligence: An Ability or Collection of Eclectic Traits?

John Mayer, Peter Salovey, and David Caruso have expressed concern over the variety of ways in which emotional intelligence (EI) has been conceptualized. They call for a return to their original understanding of EI as “the ability to monitor one’s own and others’

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feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them, and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and actions.”

Mayer, Salovey, and Caruso specifically note how Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence began with this early version of EI but then “mixed in other per-sonality traits, including persistence, zeal, self-control, character as a whole, and other positive attributes.” The best-selling book received extensive press cover-age, and because it included reference to Mayer et al.’s theory, some investigators wrongly assumed that the authors of the theory endorsed this expanded under-standing of EI. The enormous claims that accompanied the popularizing of IE—for example, that it accounted for 90 percent of the difference between star perform-ers at work and average ones, and that EI accounted for 85 percent of success—were never endorsed by Mayer, Salovey, and Caruso.

The Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT) consists of eight tasks, two assessing each of the four branches of their original EI model, namely, (1) managing emotions so as to attain specific goals, (2) understanding emotions, emotional language, and the signals conveyed by emotions, (3) using emo-tions to facilitate thinking, and (4) perceiving emotions accurately in oneself and others. Although the authors admit that MSCEIT has important limitations, they note that it predicts a variety of outcomes, most specifically, better social relations and less deviant behavior.

Mayer, Salovey, and Caruso make five specific recommendations regarding the future of EI:

1. Researchers and practitioners should rely on the scientific literature on emotions, intelligence, and emotional intelligence to guide their thinking. “Simply put,” suggest the authors, “researchers need to cite the research literature rather than jour-nalistic renderings of scientific concepts, which serve a different purpose.”

2. The term emotional intelligence should be limited to abilities at the intersection between emotions and intelligence. More specifically, it should be limited to the set of abilities involved in reasoning about emotions and using emotions to enhance reasoning.

3. Those interested in EI should refocus research that is relevant to the ability conception of EI. This includes studies using emotional knowledge mea-sures, emotional facial recognition ability, levels of emotional awareness, and emotional self- regulation.

4. Personality and emotional traits, including the need for achievement, self-control, happiness, and asser-tiveness, should not be renamed or considered part of EI.

5. Research on EI as conceptualized in items 2 and 3 should continue, particularly because much remains

unknown. Greater attention should be paid to issues of gender and culture, as well as the valid measure-ment of EI. Applications of EI must be conducted with much greater attention to the research litera-ture, be grounded in good theory, and must reject outlandish claims.

Mayer, J. D., Salovey, P., & Caruso, D. R. (2008). Emotional intelligence: New ability or eclectic traits. American Psychologist, 63, 503–517.

Classroom Exercise: Ego-Resiliency

Research indicates that the most central qualities of social intelligence may be the following: understanding people, being good at dealing with people, being warm and caring, being open to new experiences and ideas, having perspective-taking ability, knowing social rules and norms, and having social adaptability. Jack Block and Adam M. Kremen believe that these various aspects of social intelligence may be subsumed under their concept of ego-resiliency.

To be adaptively attuned to the environment, a person must learn to regulate his or her impulses. Adaptability in the long term is not simply replacing unbridled impulsivity with rigid impulse control, how-ever. According to Block and Kremen, adaptability calls for a resourceful regulation and equilibration of both impulses and inhibitions. When one is more under-controlled than is adaptively effective or more overcon-trolled than is adaptively required, one is not resilient. Ego-resiliency, then, is the capacity to adapt one’s level of control temporarily up or down as circumstances dic-tate. Presumably, ego-resilient people are less anxious and more open to experience than other people are.

In research in which respondents completed both the WAIS and their Ego-Resiliency Scale, Block and Kremen found that people who are ego-resilient tend to be more competent and comfortable in the “fuzzier” interpersonal world, whereas people high only in raw IQ tend to be effective in the “clearer” world of struc-tured work. The latter, however, also tend to be uneasy with affect and are less able to realize satisfying human connections. Resilient individuals (as described by acquaintances, clinician-interviewers, and self-report) have a wide range of interests and a high aspiration level, and are both socially skilled and cheerful.

More specifically, correlates of ego-resilience in women included having social poise and presence, being assertive, lacking self-concern, being talkative, showing warmth, and valuing independence and autonomy. Correlates of intelligence in women included having a wide range of interests, being concerned with philosophical problems, being introspective, and hav-ing high aspirations. Correlates of ego-resilience in men included being dependable and responsible and straightforward and candid, capable of forming close

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relationships, and being productive. Correlates of intel-ligence in men included having high aspirations, valu-ing intellectual and cognitive matters, having a wide range of interests, and being critical, skeptical, and not easily impressed.

Block, J., & Kremen, A. M. (1996). IQ and ego- resiliency. Conceptual and empirical connections and separateness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70, 349–361.

Letzring, T. D., Block, J., & Funder, D. C. (2005). Ego-control and ego-resilience: Generalizations of self-report scales based on personality descriptions from acquain-tances, clinicians, and the self. Journal of Research in Personality, 39, 395–422.

Lecture/Discussion Topic: Fostering Children’s Emotional Intelligence

Given Mayer, Salovey, and Caruso’s critique on page 562, you may want to include some reference to Daniel Goleman’s bestseller, Emotional Intelligence. Daniel Goleman suggests that no psychological skill is more fundamental than impulse control. He cites the marshmallow challenge used by psychologist Walter Mischel during the 1960s at a preschool on the Stanford University campus.

Mischel invited 4-year-olds into a small room and offered them a marshmallow. They were told, however, that if they were willing to wait while he ran an errand, they could have two marshmallows on his return. Some children grabbed the single treat the minute he was out the door. Some lasted a few minutes before they gave in. Others were determined to wait. In the seemingly endless 15-to-20-minute interval, they resisted tempta-tion in a variety of ways. They covered their eyes, they sang to themselves, they played games with their hands and feet, and some even tried to go to sleep.

The importance of how children reacted to the marshmallow challenge became clear some 12 to 14 years later. Those who resisted temptation at age 4 were, as adolescents, more socially competent, person-ally effective, and self-assertive. They were less likely to freeze under stress and pursued challenges even in the face of difficulties. They were more self-reliant, confident, trustworthy, and dependable.

Even more remarkable was that when again evalu-ated as high school graduates, those who resisted were far superior students to those who acted on whim. They were better able to put their ideas into words, to use and respond to reason, and to concentrate, and they were more eager to learn. They also had dramatically higher scores on their SAT tests. The one-third of children who at 4 grabbed for the marshmallow most eagerly had an average verbal score of 524 and a quantitative score of 528. The one-third who waited the longest had

average scores of 610 and 652, respectively, a total score that was 210 points higher than the scores of those without self-control. Walter Mischel suggested that the “goal-directed self-imposed delay of gratifica-tion” is the essence of emotional self-regulation. It represents the ability to deny impulse in the service of a goal, whether it be building a business, solving an alge-braic equation, or pursuing the Stanley Cup.

Psychologist John Gottman suggests that helping a child master his or her emotional world is crucial to success in adult life. His research team, supported by NIMH, studied 119 children in two, 10-year investiga-tions and found that those who thrived had parents who understood their own emotions and could transmit this knowledge to their children.

In defining emotional intelligence, Gottman sug-gests that (1) a person must know his or her own emo-tions and how to manage them, including the ability to delay gratification and how to deal with life’s peaks and valleys; (2) a person must be able to recognize emo-tions in others and to respond to them empathetically; (3) a person must be able to handle relationships with others well; and (4) a person must be confident of his or her feelings and abilities and thus able to motivate him- or herself in an optimistic fashion.

Gottman and his colleagues find that in handling their children’s emotions, parents fall into one of four parenting styles. Dismissing parents attempt to distract the child and typically treat their children’s emotions as trivial. Because they view their children’s strong emo-tions as reflecting badly on their own parenting, they try to shut them down. Disapproving parents tend to judge and criticize their child’s emotional expression. They view children who show strong negative emotions as difficult and manipulative. Laissez-faire parents accept all emotional expression but offer no guidance. When parents fail to set limits, their children are typically out of control.

Emotion coaches view their children’s emotions as an opportunity for intimacy and teaching. They are sen-sitive to even subtle emotional states. They listen empa-thetically and validate their children’s emotions, but they do not dictate how a child should feel. By helping their children label their fear, anger, and sadness, they help them to transform what is often amorphous and uncomfortable into something that is definable, has boundaries, and is a normal part of life. Finally, they help the child to identify goals, to set limits, and to problem solve, but they do not take over.

Gottman argues that emotional intelligence is a significant predictor of children’s success in life. Their academic achievement is greater even when standard IQ scores are controlled for. In addition, they have fewer behavior problems and better physical health. Their relationships with others are more meaningful. Emo-

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tional intelligence seems to provide a buffer against stress if there is marital conflict or even divorce.

Goleman, D. (1995). Emotional intelligence. New York: Bantam Books.

Gottman, J. (1997). The heart of parenting: Raising an emotionally intelligent child. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

Gottman, J. (2001). Meta-emotion, children’s emotional intelligence, and buffering children from marital conflict. In C. D. Ryff & B. H. Singer (Eds.), Emotion, social relationships, and health, Series in affective science (pp. 23-40). New York, NY, US: Oxford University Press.

Lecture/Discussion Topic: Intelligence, Self-Discipline, and Academic Performance

Ask your students, “Is intelligence or self-discipline more important in predicting academic success?”

Angela Duckworth and Martin Seligman asked the question in two longitudinal studies of adolescents. In their first study of 140 eighth graders, they found that highly self-disciplined students outperformed their less-disciplined peers on various academic performance variables, including report card grades, standardized achievement test scores, and admission to a competitive high school. Self-discipline was assessed by self- report, parent report, teacher report, and a delay-of- gratification questionnaire. Interestingly, self-discipline in the fall semester better predicted academic perfor-mance variances than did IQ. And, unlike IQ, self- discipline predicted gains in academic performance over the course of the school year.

In their second study of 164 eighth-graders, Duckworth and Seligman added a behavioral delay-of-gratification task, a questionnaire on study habits, and a group-administered intelligence test. The results indi-cated that self-discipline, again as measured in the fall semester, accounted for more than twice as much vari-ance as did IQ, in final grades, high school selection, hours spent doing homework, hours watching televi-sion (inversely), and even the time of day that students began their homework. The authors conclude that a major reason for students falling short of their intellec-tual potential is a failure to exercise self-discipline.

The results of these two studies are consistent with other research findings summarized by Duckworth and Seligman.

• Of32personalityvariables(includingself-esteem,extraversion, energy level) measured in students, self-discipline was the best predictor of GPA. In fact, it was the only variable that predicted aca-demic success more robustly than SAT scores.

• Self-disciplinedistinguishedPhiBetaKappaundergraduates from non–Phi Beta Kappa students of equal intellectual ability.

• Intwolargesamplesofundergraduates,researchers

reported that self-discipline correlated positively not only with grades but with a wide array of other personal and interpersonal strengths.

Duckworth, A. L., & Seligman, M. E. P. (2005). Self- discipline outdoes IQ in predicting academic per-formance of adolescents. Psychological Science, 12, 939–944.

Is Intelligence Neurologically Measurable?

Lecture/Discussion Topic: Reaction Time, Intelligence, and Longevity

Some research has indicated that intelligence predicts longevity. In one study, Ian Deary and Geoff Der report that reaction time may explain why lower IQ is associ-ated with earlier death.

The researchers followed a sample of 898 adults from age 56 until age 70. They measured general intel-ligence and simple and choice reaction times and identi-fied a variety of demographic and lifestyle factors and, of course, survival. By the end of the study, 185 (99 men, 86 women) had died. The results indicated that intelligence tested at age 56 was significantly related to being alive or dead 14 years later. This association remained after adjusting for differences in smoking, education, and social class as possible confounding variables.

Simple and choice reaction times assessed at age 56 were also significantly associated with mortality in the following 14 years. And once again, smoking, education, and social class had little effect on the strength of this relationship. Reaction times were actu-ally stronger predictors of mortality than was intel-ligence; perhaps, most important, the effect of IQ on mortality was no longer significant after adjusting for reaction time. Deary and Der conclude that these results suggest that a reduced efficiency in information pro-cessing may be the crucial link between lower mental ability and death.

The investigators indicate that future research may help us better understand the relationships between IQ, reaction time, and longevity. For example, is the relationship between IQ and longevity one that appears only in middle age and actually as a precursor of physi-ological decline? Or is this relationship one that is char-acteristic of healthy people throughout life, for instance, showing itself even in young, healthy adults? Studies that answer this question (by examining these relation-ships in younger age groups) may help in formulating effective interventions that promote health and longevity.

Deary, I. J., & Der, G. (2005). Reaction time explains IQ’s association with death. Psychological Science, 16, 64–69.

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Assessing Intelligence

Classroom Exercise/Student Project: Designing and Administering an Intelligence Test

Before your students read the section on intelligence, ask them to construct an intelligence test. Divide the class into small work groups (a total of six or seven groups is ideal) and instruct each group to design a simple measure that they believe might be indicative of intellectual functioning.

The assignment will stimulate students to reflect on the nature of intelligence, as well as its possible assess-ment. You might suggest that ease of administration and production of a simple numerical score should be among the criteria used to select the measure. In case groups have difficulty getting started, suggest some measure for them to evaluate—for example, the correct number of U.S. presidents named in backward order, the correct naming of quarterbacks in the National Football League, the measurement in inches of head circumference, the number of seconds taken to com-plete a simple puzzle or maze.

When each group has devised a simple measure, have students present and defend it before the rest of the class. Again, discussion will focus on the definition and nature of intelligence, as well as on the validity of the suggested measures.

Depending on time constraints, you can also have students design a procedure for administering their measures. They might specify, for instance, the appropriate order of all the groups’ measures. Prepare instructions, keeping ethical considerations in mind; and design a way to calculate an overall score.

Students can then administer the “intelligence test” to several subjects and bring their data to the next class session. Most students will not anticipate any of the problems that occur in measurement (for example, practice effects of the assessor, order effects among subjects, reliable measurement). The resulting data can lead to questions of interpretation and the importance of norms, as well as the introduction of elementary statistical concepts.

Halonen, J. (1986). Teaching critical thinking in psychol-ogy. Milwaukee: Alverno Productions.

Classroom Exercise: A World War I IQ Test

The world’s first mass administration of an IQ test occurred during World War I. With the aid of Lewis Terman, the U.S. government developed tests to evalu-ate new immigrants and 1.7 million World War I army recruits. “There is nothing about an individual as important as his IQ,” stated Terman. The army’s use of intelligence tests boosted the credibility of psychology as a profession but at the same time stimulated public debate about the validity of the tests and their implica-tions for American democracy.

Handout 9 provides some sample items from those tests. Here are the correct answers as reported by histo-rymatters@gmu.edu.

1. C. tobacco 2. B. cards 3. B. sheep 4. A. flour 5. D. red 6. A. fowl 7. D. author 8. A. B. T. Babbitt 9. C. writer 10. C. Franklin 11. B. it is more comfortable 12. A. it makes a man more useful and happy 13. C. tell him of his mistake 14. A. it is better for the health 15. B. signal the engineer to stop the train 16. C. use the sun or a compass for a guide 17. B. it is more honorable 18. A. it prepares them for adult life 19. C. they can make more by investing the money the house would cost 20. B. it is more nourishing

Many doubted the broad claims of those who promoted army intelligence tests. You might read the “The March of the Psychos” to your students. This mock of psy-chologists appeared in the April 1918 issue of the army post newspaper Camplife Chickamauga.

“The March of the Psychos”

The valiant, bespectacled psychos are wePrepared to assign every man his degreeAnd the place he’s best fitted for in the armeeBy psychologee, psychologee.Bill Kaiser will shake in this throne ’cross the seaWhen he feels the earthquake of our efficiencyPencils up! Forward march! to the great victoryOf psychologee in the Army.

Source: “The March of the Psychos,” Camplife Chickamauga, April 1918. Reprinted in Joanne Brown, The Definition of a Profession: The Authority of Metaphor in the History of Intelligence Testing, 1890–1930. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992.

Student Project: Joining Mensa

Mensa, an organization of intellectually superior indi-viduals, was founded in 1946 by two British barristers who thought it might be an interesting experiment to gather together people of exceptionally high intel-ligence. Mensa is a Latin word meaning “table” and symbolizes the coming together of equals. Its original agenda was to discuss and arrive at ways of preserving world peace. While the organization has been accused of elitism, its membership, which now numbers about 100,000, in 100 countries, contends that it is no more elite than any organization with a requirement for admission. In the United States, there are more than 50,000 members belonging to 138 local groups. It is estimated that 5 million are eligible. Their activities range from parties to museum trips. Each chapter is headed by a local secretary, and almost every group publishes its own newsletter. Truck drivers, profes-sors, housewives, bartenders, janitors, and priests are all represented. Mensa has a gifted-children’s program,

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a scholarship fund, a research foundation, a national magazine, and a program in which members work with prison inmates. There are more than 150 “SIGs”—spe-cial interest groups—through which Mensans can get together by mail or in person to share a common interest. You can find the website for Mensa International at www.mensa.org.

To qualify for membership in Mensa, you must score in the top 2 percent of any standard intelligence test, which means a minimum score of 132 on the Stanford-Binet or 130 on the most current Wechsler scales. Each year about 30,000 people apply for mem-bership; only about 1 of every 25 applicants is admitted.

Students interested in joining Mensa can learn more by writing American Mensa, Ltd., 1229 Corporate Drive West, Arlington, TX 76006-6103 or by e-mailing them at NationalOffice@americanmensa.org. The orga-nization provides information on how to qualify for membership either by taking an intelligence test or by submitting “prior evidence” if such a test has already been taken.

Handout 10, provided by Abbie F. Salny, will tell students whether they are likely candidates for Mensa. Or, they can try the Mensa Workout available at www.mensa.org/workout.php.

Answers to Handout 10 are 1. Friday 2. a. P Y The alternate letters starting with S spell

“silver anniversar,” and this sequence completes the phrase “silver anniversary.”

3. 25 4. ANNIVERSARY 5. MENSA 6. b 7. b 8. b 9. TOM 10. HOUSE 11. JANE 12. 9 p.m. 13. b. Both grow in the ground. 14. a. Alternate numbers go up by 2 and down by 1,

starting with 1, and 10. 15. e is the only one that is not an artistic work made

by humans. 16. PARACHUTE 17. 5 18. c 19. LAND 20. c. The number of lines goes down opposite the

stick, up on the side with the stick, and the stick alternates from lower left to top right.

Respondents score one point for each correct answer. They should add 5 points if they finished in less than 20 minutes, and 3 points if in less than 30

minutes. Scores range from 0 to 25. On the basis of the scores of some Mensa members who took the test, Salny provides the following interpretation of scores.

25 You’re an excellent Mensa candidate. 25–24 You can almost surely pass the Mensa

supervised test. 14–19 A very good candidate for Mensa. 10–13 A fair candidate. Below 10 Everyone has an off day!

Mensa members Marvin Grosswirth and Salny also have provided good advice in interpreting scores of any intelligence test. While performing well is to a degree predictive of school success, they state:

An intelligence test does not measure drive, persistence, creativity or any of the myriad other skills that often count for more in achieving success out of school. A low score on an I.Q. test does not mean probable failure in life. All it means is that the person taking the test did poorly on that particular test. Most of us do not spend our lives in situations that can be measured by paper-and-pencil tests. Since this is so, scores obtained on such tests should be viewed with some restraint if they are high and with some skepticism if they are low. They measure only one aspect of a total life pattern.

Martin Grossworth MENSA GENIUS QUIZBOOK Copyright © 1981. Reprinted by permission of Da Capo Press, a member of Perseus Books Group.

Salny, A. (1988). The Mensa books of words, word games, puzzles, and oddities. New York: HarperCollins.

Classroom Exercise/Critical Thinking Activity/ Homework Assignment: Evaluating “Free” Intelligence Tests on the Internet

To help students understand what makes a “good” test—one that has been standardized and is valid and reliable—have them use the Internet to find a free intellgence test they can take. A Google search for the general term intelligence test turned up about 2,620,000 results in 0.13 seconds, so they should have no problem finding something. But, they need to remember that not all the information available at our virtual fingertips is accurate, up-to-date, or scientifically verifiable. For this reason, students need to learn to be savvy consumers of the information they come across while surfing the Net. They need to understand and master the ability to examine the sources of information, as well as analyze the validity of that information.

This exercise will require your students to integrate what they learn about the psychometric properties of good intelligence testing with information literacy skills and communication skills. Students also will need to reflect on the applied value of psychological research to the public, as well as the relevance of intelligence

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theory and research to the population at large. You can assign this task to be completed by individual students or small groups. You can make this exercise into a one-time written homework assignment, a critical thinking short paper, or an end-of-semester group presentation.

Instruct students to go online and search for a free intelligence test. Have the students take the test they have selected at least twice and note how they score each time. Then, have the students consider and thoughtfully respond to the following questions.

1. Name of test? Please also provide a formal citation of the website.

2. Who developed the test, and what does the test developer claim to measure with this test?

3. What type(s) of people do you believe this test is intended to reach or to serve? What type(s) of peo-ple do you believe would use this test? For what purposes?

4. Is there any information on the website about the validity or reliability of the test? Is any scientific context for the test, or what it purports to measure, provided?

5. Does the site tell you how to interpret your score(s)? Does it provide you with information about a normative sample/comparison group that was used to establish the meaningfulness of scores?

6. Based on what you have read in your text and learned about in class, do you feel that the test is a good one (from a scientific psychological stand-point)? In your opinion, is it a good, scientifically valid measure of the aspect of intelligence its developer claims to assess with it? Why or why not? What is the basis for your evaluation?

7. How can this test benefit those who take it? How can it harm those who take it?

Classroom Exercise: Issues in Testing

Richard A. Griggs uses a one-minute “intelligence” test to stimulate class discussion of many important aspects of testing. In addition, the exercise allows you to review elements of problem-solving presented earlier in the text.

Prepare transparencies of Handouts 11a and 11b or make enough copies for each student to have one of each. (Students should not know there are two tests so avoid numbering them.) Distribute the first “intel-ligence” test, then instruct students to number 1 through 24 on a separate sheet of paper for their answers. Make sure students understand that this is not an accepted intelligence test but only an informal exercise devised for a classroom activity. Reiterate this again at the end of the activity.

Instruct the class as follows: “There are 24 items on the test. Each item is made up of letters,

words, geometric shapes, and lines. Convert each to a verbal equivalent word or phrase. An example is STTHEORY” (write this sample item on the chalk-board). Ask your class for answers. If the correct response is not forthcoming, indicate that the answer is “the inside story” (the word the is inside the word story).

Allow one minute for the test. To protect student anonymity, you may want to collect the answers with-out names and redistribute to the class for tallying (although Griggs has never had a problem with students worrying about anonymity). To get approximate esti-mates of measures of central tendency and variance, have all the students raise their hands and then put them down after counting one past their total number of responses on the test. The range is typically large (4 to 13, or so, with a median of 6 or 7). In reviewing these basic statistical concepts, you might note problems raised with skewed distributions (distributions for the test are usually skewed by a few high scores).

Review the answers by having students volunteer their own responses. Pause especially with some of the harder items (e.g., items 11, 12, 19, 21, 22, 23). Ask students who did solve these items to provide cues for the rest of the class. These problems nicely illustrate fixation and the “aha” of insight.

Ask students if they believe the test is a good mea-sure of intelligence. Because the test is relatively easy, they are likely to suggest that performance is more a function of time and writing speed than of intelligence. Ask, “How might psychologists decide whether this test or any test is valid?” After a brief discussion, announce that the first test was only a “warm-up” and distribute the second test. Again have students provide answers to numbers from 1 through 24 on a separate sheet of paper.

After a minute has passed, announce that you will give them additional time for this more difficult test. Clearly, they will recognize that more than time and motor speed are required. Allow a total of about 5 min-utes and then tally their responses. Check central ten-dencies and range again. Have students provide answers for the first few items and explain that at the end of the activity you will distribute a complete answer sheet so as not to deprive anyone of the pleasure of insight and solution.

If time allows, you can extend the discussion of statistics by noting the need for variance in the calcula-tion of correlations assessing validity and reliability. In discussing validity, note the importance of establishing some criterion, an independent measure of what the test claims to measure. Aptitude tests must have predictive or criterion-related validity, which means they predict future achievement.

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Finally, relate predictive validity to the question of bias. Note that everyone acknowledges that intelligence tests are usually biased in requiring certain cultural experiences for optimal performance. Contrast this intu-itive sense of bias with bias in the statistical sense, that is that it has different predictive validity for different ethnic groups. Griggs suggests the following hypotheti-cal: Assume that performance on this test is strongly related to performance on intelligence tests and equally so for various ethnic groups. Given this assumption, what can you conclude about the validity and possible bias of the test? Clearly, bias has multiple meanings and a test can be biased in one sense but not in another.

Answers to test a 1. Sandbox 2. Man overboard 3. I understand 4. Reading between the lines 5. Long underwear 6. Crossroads 7. Downtown 8. Tricycle 9. Split-level 10. Three degrees below zero 11. Neon lights 12. Circles under the eyes 13. Highchair 14. Paradise 15. Touchdown 16. Six feet underground 17. Mind over matter 18. He’s beside himself 19. Backward glance 20. Life after death 21. GI overseas 22. Space program 23. See-through blouse 24. Just between you and me Answers to Test b 1. Split-second timing 2. A long letter from home 3. All between us is over now 4. Six of one, half a dozen of another 5. It’s a small world after all 6. Unfinished symphony 7. Blood is thicker than water 8. Seven-up 9. Condescending 10. Scrambled eggs 11. No two ways about it 12. Line up in alphabetical order 13. A gross injustice 14. The odds are overwhelming

15. He’s an exponent of capitalism 16. Astronaut 17. Ambiguous 18. A wolf in sheep’s clothing 19. Sailing, sailing, over the seven seas 20. Assassinate 21. For no apparent reason whatsoever 22. A little misunderstanding between friends 23. A bad spell of weather 24. He came out of nowhere

Griggs, R. A. (2000). A one-minute “intelligence” test. Teaching of Psychology, 27, 132–135. In Morris, S. (1983). Omni games: The best brain teasers from Omni magazine (p. 49). New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston.

Classroom Exercise/Student Project: Understanding Predictive Validity

Richard Wesp and Sussie Eshun provide a great class-room exercise that illustrates how psychologists estab-lish the predictive validity of a test. Begin by asking your students to identify a characteristic of class mem-bers that differs dichotomously. You might suggest ath-lete versus nonathlete or players of musical instruments versus nonplayers. Test out student proposals to identify one dimension for which the class shows a 50/50 split. (In their own class, Wesep and Eshun found a relatively equal split between first-borns and later-borns.)

Next, form groups of three to five students each and tell them they have 5 minutes to construct a “ques-tion” with a dichotomous answer that would discrimi-nate between first- and later-borns (that is, a question that elicits different answers from first- and later-born students). It can be a statement that requires an opinion as an answer (e.g., I like music: agree or disagree). It may be presented in a forced choice format (e.g., I pre-fer movies or concerts: movies or concerts). It may not, of course, directly answer the crucial question (I am a first-born: yes or no) nor should it be embarrassing or highly confidential.

When a group has formulated a question that you approve, they should write it on the chalkboard with the two alternative answers clearly identified. For example, one of the authors’ groups asked: “Did your parents give you a lot of responsibilities? (a) yes (b) no.”

When all the questions are written on the board, number them and have all class members write their answer to each question. Next, by a show of hands, have all first-borns (or whatever your dichotomous vari-able is) indicate their answer to each question. Write the results on the board. Do the same for all later-borns. Finally, ask students to identify which questions are good predictors of birth order. The questions that show significant differences between the two groups are use-ful and have predictive validity. For example, if 9 of 18 first-borns agree that their parents gave them a lot of

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responsibilities but only 4 of 20 later-borns indicated this to be true, the question is probably a question to include in the final test. (As the authors suggest, you may want to calculate percentage differences for each question.) In this case, 50 percent “yes” for first-borns and 20 percent “yes” for later-borns yields a difference of 30 percent. Identify the best and poorest discrimina-tors in the list of questions.

In your concluding discussion, you might ask stu-dents to speculate why some questions are better than others in predicting membership in one group or the other. Note that because none of the questions are per-fect discriminators, we use multiple questions that are moderately good predictors. Explain how this same pro-cedure can be used with different types of tests.

Wesp, R., & Eshun, S. (2005). Teaching the principles of test validation in introductory psychology. Teaching of Psychology, 32, 234–236.

Classroom Exercise: Reliability and Validity

Ed Morris provides a simple yet compelling exercise to highlight the distinction between validity and reli-ability. He introduces his class to the Morris Shoe-Size Intelligence Test: IQ = shoe size x 10. After class laughter subsides, Morris argues that his test is much more reliable than most IQ tests on the market. Met with disbelief, he explains the important distinction between reliability and validity. “Retests” of his shoe-size intelligence test obviously produce highly consistent results (reliability); however, the test does not measure or predict what it is supposed to (validity). Jon Mueller’s “head circumference” IQ measure illus-trates the same point. Ask your students if measuring the circumference of a person’s head would provide an IQ test that is reliable, valid, both, or neither. Such a measure would certainly produce consistent scores.

Jane Halonen passes along (from an unknown source) the “t-test” measure of intelligence. Tell stu-dents to take out pencil and paper and on the signal “go” to write as many of the letter “t” as they can in 15 seconds. Ask students to report their results, placing them in a frequency distribution on the board (also a good way to review descriptive statistics). Ask, “Is this a good measure of intelligence?” A lively discussion will follow as some students report simple strategies that maximized their scores (e.g., drawing a horizontal line across the page and then quickly intersecting it with short vertical lines). Clearly, the t-test measures something but not the construct of intelligence. Repeat the t-test. Scores are likely to increase dramatically. The test not only lacks validity, it shows little test-retest reliability. If you like, you can extend the discussion to the effect of nonstandard test conditions, interrater reli-ability (what constitutes an acceptable “t”?), etc.

Halonen, J. (2002, September 10). Reliability and validity. Message posted to PSYCHTEACHER@list. kennesaw.edu.

Morris, E. (2002, September 12). Reliability and validity. Message posted to PSYCHTEACHER@list.kennesaw. edu.

Mueller, J. (2002, September 10). Reliability and validity. Message posted to PSYCHTEACHER@list. kennesaw.edu.

Classroom Exercise: Remote Associates Test

You can best introduce principles of sound test con-struction in the context of a specific test. Handout 12, an analog of the Remote Associates Test (RAT) devised by Sarnoff and Martha Mednick to assess creativity, provides one opportunity to do this. The Mednicks sug-gest that creativity involves the ability to see relation-ships between ideas that are re mote from each other. They quote Albert Einstein: “The psychical entities which seem to serve as elements in thought are certain signs and more or less clear images which can be com-bined.” Similarly, the mathematician Poincaré stated, “Ideas rose in crowds; I felt them collide until pairs interlocked so to speak, making a stable com bination. By morning I had established the existence of a class of Fuchsian functions.”

The commercial RAT test (published by Houghton Mifflin Company) consists of 40 items, which respon-dents are given 40 minutes to answer; 25 to 30 minutes should be sufficient for Handout 12. Have students complete it in class or take it home and time them-selves. The answers are at the top of the next column.

After students have completed the test, review the general concepts of standardization, reliability, and validity, and ask students how they would apply to this test.

1. phone 11. green 21. lead 2. book 12. floor 22. top 3. fire 13. stone 23. tack 4. pin 14. bar 24. watch 5. cheese 15. fountain 25. cat 6. chair 16. ball 26. stop 7. slow 17. go 27. mail 8. foot 18. cover 28. bubble 9. party 19. type 29. black 10. hard 20. chair 30. end

In standardizing their test, the Mednicks administered it to a variety of college and professional groups reporting means, standard deviations, and the percentile equiva-lents of raw scores. Both internal (odd-even) and test-retest (alternative forms) reliability were assessed, with the former producing a coefficient of .92, and the lat-ter, .81. Finally, the authors report a number of studies demonstrating the test’s validity. Psychology graduate

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students who had high test scores tended to be rated as highly creative by their research advisors. IBM techni-cians who had high scores were more likely to make award-winning suggestions for company improvements.

Mednick, S. A., & Mednick, M. T. (1967). Remote asso-ciates test. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

The Dynamics of Intelligence

Lecture/Discussion Topic: Why Do Intelligent People Fail?

Intelligent people sometimes make a mess of their lives. Why? Robert Sternberg describes 20 stumbling blocks that can get in the way of even the brightest people. They also help explain why even the best measures of intelligence may account for only small proportions of the variance in real-world performance. The stumbling blocks are worth listing in class and may even help stu-dents understand discrepancies between their scholastic aptitude scores and academic performance.

1. Lack of motivation. A talent is irrelevant if a per-son is not motivated to use it. Motivation may be external (for example, social approval) or internal (satisfaction from a job well-done, for instance). External sources tend to be transient, while internal sources tend to produce more consistent performance.

2. Lack of impulse control. Habitual impulsiveness gets in the way of optimal performance. Some people do not bring their full intellectual resources to bear on a problem but go with the first solution that pops into their heads.

3. Lack of perseverance and perseveration. Some people give up too easily; others are unable to stop even when the quest will clearly be fruitless.

4. Using the wrong abilities. People may not be using the right abilities for the tasks in which they are engaged.

5. Inability to translate thought into action. Some people seem buried in thought. They have good ideas but rarely seem able to do anything about them.

6. Lack of product orientation. Some people seem more concerned about the process than the result of ac tivity.

7. Inability to complete tasks. For some people, noth-ing ever draws to a close. Perhaps it’s fear of what they would do next or fear of becoming hopelessly enmeshed in detail.

8. Failure to initiate. Still others are unwilling or unable to initiate a project. It may be indecision or fear of commitment.

9. Fear of failure. People may not reach peak per-formance because they avoid the really important challenges in life.

10. Procrastination. Some people are unable to act without pressure. They may also look for little things to do in order to put off the big ones.

11. Misattribution of blame. Some people always blame themselves for even the slightest mishap. Some always blame others.

12. Excessive self-pity. Some people spend more time feeling sorry for themselves than expending the effort necessary to overcome the problem.

13. Excessive dependency. Some people expect others to do for them what they ought to be doing themselves.

14. Wallowing in personal difficulties. Some people let their personal difficulties interfere grossly with their work. During the course of life, one can expect some real joys and some real sorrows. Maintaining a proper perspective is often difficult.

15. Distractibility and lack of concentration. Even some very intelligent people have very short atten-tion spans.

16. Spreading oneself too thin or too thick. Undertaking too many activities may result in none being completed on time. Undertaking too few can also result in missed opportunities and reduced lev-els of accomplishment.

17. Inability to delay gratification. Some people reward themselves and are rewarded by others for finishing small tasks, while avoiding bigger tasks that would earn them larger rewards.

18. Inability to see the forest for the trees. Some people become obsessed with details and are either unwilling or unable to see or deal with the larger picture in the projects they undertake.

19. Lack of balance between critical, analytical think-ing and creative, synthetic thinking. It is important for people to learn what kind of thinking is expect-ed of them in each situation.

20. Too little or too much self-confidence. Lack of self-confidence can gnaw away at a person’s abil-ity to get things done and become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Conversely, individuals with too much self-confidence may not know when to admit they are wrong or in need of self-improvement.

Robert Sternberg’s Why Smart People Can Be So Stupid more fully examines why intelligent people sometimes think and behave in such stupid ways that they end up destroying their livelihood and even their own lives. Contributors to the volume—scholars from diverse research areas of human intelligence—discuss the nature and theory of stupidity, whether stupidity is measurable, and, most importantly, how stupidity con-tributes to stupid behavior.

Sternberg, R. J. (Ed.). (2002). Why smart people can be so stupid. New York: Oxford University Press.

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Sternberg, R. J. (1986). Intelligence applied. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

Lecture/Discussion Topic: Are Intelligent People Happier?

Ask your class: “Are intelligent people happier? Why or why not?”

Your students will likely be interested in the results of a study by Alan Gow and his research team. The University of Edinburg researchers examined a group of 416 senior citizens born in 1921 who took intelligence tests at the ages of 11 and 79. At the age of 80, the group also completed a life satisfaction scale assessing their current level of happiness.

The findings showed no association between levels of mental ability and reported happiness. Neither child-hood IQ, IQ at 79, or any change in IQ over a lifetime was related to how satisfied respondents were with how their lives turned out. Gow suggested that the results are surprising because intelligence is highly valued in society. He speculated that, despite having a much valued quality, intelligent people may worry more about achievement and possibly compare themselves with others and the wiser choices that might have been made.

The researchers plan to continue studying these senior citizens to examine possible relationships between changes in cognitive function and happiness in advancing old age. (The discussion of emotion in the text and these resources will more closely examine important correlates of life satisfaction.)

Gow, A. J., Whiteman, M. C., Pattie, A., Whalley, L., Starr, J., & Deary, I. J. (2005). Lifetime intellectual func-tion and satisfaction with life in old age: Longitudinal cohort study. British Medical Journal, 331, 141–142.

Lecture/Discussion Topic: Giftedness

Ellen Winner provides a helpful review of current theory and research on giftedness. She notes that since Terman’s longitudinal study of children with high IQs, consensus has emerged that giftedness is not captured by unidimensional IQ measures. Some researchers have differentiated mathematical and verbal gifted-ness. Others have made more specific distinctions. Winner suggests that our understanding is most likely to advance if we define giftedness as unusually high ability in any area—for example, music, spatial abil-ity, interpersonal sensitivity, and global IQ—and then attempt to identify the correlates (e.g., drive, creativity) and the developmental path.

Are gifted individuals qualitatively or quantitative-ly different? Do gifted individuals stand out primarily in the speed with which their abilities develop and with which they process information or do they develop and process information qualitatively differently from the

way most people do? Winner notes that clinical obser-vations suggest a qualitative difference. For example, high-IQ children consider many possible interpretations of a question, grasp the essential elements of a complex problem, and often pose deep philosophical questions. Gifted children also seem to display an intense drive or “rage to master.” They typically work with no external prodding or reinforcement, make discoveries on their own, and appear to teach themselves. Winner argues, however, that we need controlled studies that move beyond anecdotal evidence to determine whether high ability is always accompanied by such qualitative cog-nitive and motivational differences.

Is giftedness a matter of nature or nurture? Both laypersons and some researchers, particularly those who study IQ-gifted children, have viewed giftedness as an innate ability. Those psychologists who focus on the study of specific talent or expertise often provide a contrasting environmental perspective. The role of nur-ture is suggested in early research on eminent scientists who differed from their less eminent colleagues not in intelligence but in the capacity to concentrate and work hard. Persons who excel in the arts, mathematics, or athletics testify to the importance of strong family sup-port and years of training. The best musicians in one study had engaged in twice as many hours of deliberate practice as had the least successful ones. Such findings, argues Winner, do not rule out the importance of innate talent. Those who are extremely talented in a specific area are likely to have a strong drive to master that area. Parental accounts of child prodigies suggest that they showed very early signs of talent that often seemed to emerge from nowhere. The most eminent classical com-posers began to compose and made lasting contribu-tions after fewer years of formal training than did their less eminent peers. Winner concludes that “whether nature or nurture accounts for more of the variance in giftedness remains to be determined, and the answer to this question is likely to differ across different domains of giftedness.”

How uneven are the cognitive profiles of gifted individuals? Dean Simonton argued that achievement in any domain requires various innate components, with some domains requiring far more than others. Moreover, components develop independently over time, with level of ability determined by a multiplica-tive composite of these components. This analysis sug-gests that profiles may be uneven. Indeed, adults with high IQs show lower correlations among IQ subtests than do those with ordinary IQs. Similarly, the cogni-tive profiles of academically gifted children are often quite uneven with mathematical ability far outstripping verbal ability, or vice versa. Individuals gifted in art or music may have only an average IQ. Savants provide the most striking cases of unevenness as extraordinary ability coexists with a subnormal IQ.

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Among unanswered questions are the following: Does the role of practice and its interaction with innate talent differ across domains? What forms of early pro-digiousness do and do not predict creative eminence in adulthood? Can brain imaging demonstrate differences in the brain organization and functioning of savant and nonsavant gifted individuals working in the same domain? Finally, how should gifted children be edu-cated, a question of enormous practical importance?

Winner, E. (2000). Giftedness: Current theory and research. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 5, 153–156.

Lecture/Discussion Topic: Achievement in Later Life

Is there a steady intellectual decline after early adult-hood? While cross-sectional studies suggested a decline, longitudinal studies indicate intellectual stability into old age. (Although the text may not explain cross-sectional and longitudinal research, this lecture might provide an opportunity to introduce these research methods.) Still other research (cross-sequential, which combines the two methods by study-ing different age groups over a long time) shows that while fluid intelligence declines in later life, crystal-lized intelligence does not.

You might introduce this topic by noting some remarkable achievements that have come late in life. For example, Sophocles wrote Oedipus Rex at the age of 75; Benjamin Franklin invented the bifocal lens at 78; Bertrand Russell formed the Committee of 100, a radical organization devoted to nuclear disarmament, at 88; Frank Lloyd Wright completed the Guggenheim Museum at 91; Paul Spangler completed his fourteenth marathon at 92; Dr. Benjamin Spock published A Better World for Our Children at 91; Cecil B. DeMille produced and directed The Ten Commandments at 75; Claude Monet began his Water Lily series at 73; Doris Lessing won the Nobel Prize for Literature at 88. Other world leaders besides Ronald Reagan have served in later life, including the following: Pope John XXIII was elected at 77, Konrad Adenauer won the election that allowed him to lead West Germany to reconstruction at 72, Charles de Gaulle returned to power in France at the age of 68, and Strom Thurmond served in the U.S Senate until he was 100. Now in their 80s, Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh continue to main-tain a busy work schedule. Finally, you might note that George Burns launched a new movie career and won an Oscar for Sunshine Boys at age 80 (and at 94 performed at Proctor’s Theater in Schenectady, New York, 63 years after he first played there). Clearly, some indi-viduals remain creative and productive throughout the life span.

Is it possible that our society’s negative view of the aging person stifles creativity? Do stereotypes of

the elderly become a self-fulfilling prophecy? Judith Stevens-Long notes that Thomas Jefferson was con-vinced that he was becoming an imbecile at the age of 68, although he seemed to function as well as ever. In writing to Benjamin Rush, Jefferson stated, “Had not a conviction of the danger to which an unlimited occupa-tion of the executive chair would expose the republican constitution of government made it conscientiously a duty to retire when I did, the fear of becoming a dotard and of being insensible to it would of itself have resist-ed all solicitations to remain.”

Stevens-Long, J., & Commons, M. (1992). Adult life: Developmental processes (4th ed.). Mountain View, CA: Mayfield Publishing Co.

Genetic and Environmental Influences on Intelligence

Classroom Exercise: Incremental Versus Entity Theories of Intelligence

Relative to the nature–nurture argument is the important distinction between incremental and entity theorists (see p. 8 in these resources). Entity theorists tend to think that human characteristics are fixed. Incre mental theo-rists are inclined to believe that characteristics are mal-leable. Handout 13, designed by Carol Dweck (1999), assesses the degree to which respondents believe that their own intelligence is changeable. To obtain a total score, students should first reverse the numbers they placed in front of statements 3, 5, 7, and 8 (change 1 to 6, 2 to 5, 3 to 4, 4 to 3, 5 to 2, and 6 to 1). Then they should add up the numbers in front of all eight state-ments. Scores range from 8 to 48. Scores below the midpoint of 28 reflect the belief that one’s intelligence is fixed (entity theorists); scores above 28 indicate the belief that one’s intelligence is malleable (incremental theorists).

These two theories profoundly affect motivation. “If my traits are fixed, then I can’t do much to change. I’m stuck with who I am. The best I can do is to vali-date what strengths I might already have and hope that they will help me win approval and avoid rejection. There is no sense in trying to promote growth in others either, as they will remain who they are despite my best efforts. On the other hand, if my traits are malleable, I have the potential to improve.” This mindset encourag-es us to look for ways to grow, to solve our problems, and to remedy our weaknesses. It also encourages us to look for potential in others and help them to grow.

Carol Dweck has specifically studied how these two different theories play out in the domain of intel-ligence. To illustrate, you might pose the following problems in class:

Imagine the following: You see a puzzle in a science magazine and it’s labeled “Test Your IQ!” You work on

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it for a very long time, get confused, and start over. You make very slow progress but finally solve it. How do you feel? Do you feel sort of dumb because it required so much effort? Or do you feel smart because you worked hard and mastered it?

Or, consider this challenge:

Imagine a child you know who keeps getting lots and lots wrong on his or her schoolwork and asks you for help. What would you say or do?

[Source: Both problems from Dweck, C. S. (1999). Self-theories: Their role in motivation, personality, develop-ment (pp. 39, 84). Philadelphia: Psychology Press.]

Entity and incremental theorists think about effort differently. Entity theorists view the effort necessary to solve the science magazine’s IQ puzzle as evidence of low intelligence. They agree with the statements, “If you have to work hard on some problems, you’re prob-ably not very good at them,” and “Things come easily to people who are true geniuses.” Incrementalists, on the other hand, see effort as something that activates people’s intelligence and allows them to use it to full advantage. They are more likely to believe, “When you are good at something, working hard allows you to really understand it” and “Even geniuses have to work hard for their discoveries.”

Entity and incremental theorists also respond dif-ferently to the child who is doing poorly on his or her schoolwork. Entity theorists tend to be stumped. They often have little advice because “it either comes natural-ly or it doesn’t come.” At best, they express sympathy. Those who believe that achievement comes only after a long, effortful process have lots of advice. One incre-mental theorist responded (Dweck, 1999):

Do you quit a lot? Do you think for a minute and then stop? If you do, you should think for a long time—two minutes maybe and if you can’t get it you should read the problem again. If you can’t get it then, you should raise your hand and ask the teacher. (p. 84)

People with a fixed view of intelligence see their poor performance on a task as meaning that they are dumb. In fact, many indicate that when they fail, they feel “worthless” or “like a complete loser.” They also conclude, “If I didn’t do as well in school as I hoped, I’d think less of myself as a person.” In short, they generalize from academic performance to intelligence to personal worth. Those with a malleable view of intelligence see failure as indicating that in order to suc-ceed, they have to do something different in the future. Most important, they intend to do it. For these people, a specific performance may reflect something about skill level at the moment, but it says nothing about broader intellectual abilities. And it certainly suggests nothing about the individual’s worth as a person.

Dweck notes that most famous geniuses worked extraordinarily hard, and many of them had very ordi-nary beginnings. Charles Darwin, Leo Tolstoy, William James, John Stuart Mill, and Norbert Weiner were not exceptional children. Brilliant musicians, too, are more often made than born. Researchers find that, as kids, these musicians put in thousands of hours of practice. Those who study creativity have proposed the “10-year” rule: no truly great creative contributions come without at least 10 years of intense effort and prepara-tion. Mozart’s earliest compositions were neither origi-nal nor particularly noteworthy.

None of this means that people only pull them-selves up by their own bootstraps. Social support is important. It can be foolish, cautions Dweck, to believe that a person continuing in the same environment will change without any educational or psychological help. Our personal strivings are vital but so are external sup-ports. Parents and teachers play a particularly important role. When students do well, adults should praise their efforts, not their ability. In dealing with a student’s failure, parents and teachers should avoid any global statements and should instead give specific feedback on what the student did wrong and what he or she might try next.

Parents and teachers can also teach students to rel-ish a challenge. Doing easy tasks is often a waste of time. The fun comes in confronting something difficult and finding strategies that work. Finally, adults should help children value learning, advises Dweck, more than grades. Too often kids rely on grades to prove their worth. Sure, grades are important. But they are not as significant as learning.

Dweck, C. S. (1999). Self-theories: Their role in motiva-tion, personality, development. Philadelphia: Psychology Press.

Lecture/Discussion Topic: Genes and Intelligence

While virtually everyone agrees that both genes and environment influence intelligence scores, Sandra Scarr proposes that differences among people can be best explained as genotype-environment effects. That is, the genotype is the driving force behind develop-ment, determining how responsive people are to various opportunities in their en vironments. Genetic differences cause people to experience different environments, and thus to develop different levels and profiles of intelli-gence. Scarr describes three kinds of genotype- environment effects that account for the way intel-ligence develops: a passive effect, whereby the geneti-cally related parents provide an environment that is correlated with the genotype of the child; an evocative effect, in which the child’s genotype influences the responses elicited from others; and an active effect, in which the genotype influences the child’s selection of

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experiences. Presumably, the passive influence declines from infancy to adolescence, while the active influence increases over this same period.

Scarr uses the theory to explain three important findings from research on twins and families: first, that iden tical twins come to be more similar than fraternal twins, and biological siblings come to be more similar than adopted siblings; second, that similarities between fraternal twins and between siblings decline from infan-cy to adolescence; third, that identical twins reared in different homes have unexpected similarities.

Scarr’s theory accounts for these findings both in terms of the degree of genetic similarity of twins and sib lings and the degree of similarity between their envi-ronments. Assuming that individuals’ environments are equal ly influenced by their genotypes, the similarity in the environments of two individuals becomes a function of their genetic similarity. For identical twins, the home environments provided by the parents, the responses the pair evoke from others, and the active choices the twins make in their environments lead to striking simi-larities in their learning histories. For fraternal twins, a somewhat lower genotype-environment correlation is found, and thus their environments are moderately similar. Since the genotypes of adopted siblings are not correlated, neither will be the environments they choose as they grow older. Actually, the correlation of 0.60 to 0.75 for intelligence between in fant fraternal twins is higher than genetic theory would allow. For older fra-ternal twins, the correlation is the usual 0.55. Similarly, the intelligence correlation of 0.25 to 0.39 for adopted siblings in early childhood declines to zero in late adolescence.

How does this theory explain the declining simi-larities of fraternal twins and adopted siblings? It does so by noting that the relatively passive influence, which is created by parents, declines with age, while the active influence, related more to genotype, increases with age. As fraternal twins grow older, they choose less similar environments, whereas their early home environment was intensely similar. Adopted siblings move from an early, similar envi ronment created by their adoptive parents to environments of their own choosing. Because their genotypes are not related, neither are the chosen environments.

The high degree of resemblance between identi-cal twins reared apart is also explained in terms of genotype-environment effects. Given opportunities to choose from varied opportunities, identical genotypes are expected to make similar choices. They can also be expected to evoke similar responses from others. Differences in their environment would arise only if their opportunities were restricted so that similar choic-es could not have been made.

Scarr, S. (1984). Intelligence. In A. Rogers and C. Scheirer (Eds.), The G. Stanley Hall lecture series, Vol. 4. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association.

Lecture/Discussion Topic: Misunderstanding Heritability

Heritability is one of the most misunderstood concepts in psychology. You will want to review the concept slowly and carefully and attempt to correct common misconceptions. It may be best to begin with definitions of heritability and environmentality.

Heritability refers to the proportion of phenotypic variance (say, the observed individual differences in height, weight, or intelligence within a group) that is attributable to genotypic variance (individual dif-ferences in the total collection of genes possessed by each person). Thus, a heritability of 0.50 means that 50 percent of the phenotypic variation is attributable to genotypic variation. Environmentality refers to the percentage of observed variation in a group of individu-als that can be attributed to environmental (nongenetic) influences. In the simplest scenario (where there would be no interaction between genetic and environmental factors), heritability of 0.30 means environmentality of 0.70.

Randy Larsen and David Buss attempt to correct three common misconceptions about heritability. First, heritability never refers to a single individual. It makes no sense to say, “Tracey’s height is 90 percent heri-table.” For any individual, genes and environment are inextricably interwoven. Heritability refers only to dif-ferences in a sample or population and never to a given individual.

Second, heritability is not constant. Heritability, explain Larsen and Buss, is a statistic that only applies to a population at one point in time and in a particu-lar array of environments. Thus, heritability does not always generalize across persons and places. For exam-ple, it is possible for heritability to be high in one group (say, Swedes) but low in another (say, Nigerians). Moreover, heritability can be low at one time and high at another. It always depends on the range of genetic and environmental differences in the population.

Finally, heritability is not an absolutely precise sta-tistic in part because it is generally computed using cor-relations, which fluctuate from one sample to another. This and measurement errors make these statistics unre-liable and easily subject to error. Thus, heritability is best thought of as merely an estimate of the percentage of phenotypic differences due to genetic differences.

You might remind your students (as Larsen and Buss remind their readers) that at the level of the indi-vidual there is no nature–nurture debate. Each person is a product of an inseparable intertwining of genes and environment. It is nonsense for anyone to ask, “Are

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genes or environment more important in accounting for Andrew?” Baking a cake provides a good analogy. Each cake consists of flour, sugar, eggs, and water. It is nonsense to ask whether the finished cake is “caused” more by the flour or the sugar. Both are necessary ingredients, inextricably combined and thus inseparable in the baked cake.

At the level of a population we can begin to sort out the influence of genes and environment. We may ask, “Which is more important in accounting for indi-vidual differences in intelligence—genetic differences or environmental differences?” It is comparable to ask-ing, “If you bake 50 cakes and these turn out to taste a little different from one another, what accounts for the differences among the cakes? It is appropriate to ask “Are differences in sweetness between the cakes caused by differences in the amount of flour used or by differ-ences in the amount of sugar used?”

Similarly, it makes sense to talk about differences in heritability for various physical differences among people. Individual differences in height show a herita-bility of about 0.90, individual differences in weight a heritability of about 0.50, and individual differences in mate preferences (what we look for in a marriage part-ner) a heritability of roughly 0.10. Therefore, it is cor-rect to say that genetic differences are more important than environmental differences when it comes to height and roughly the same when it comes to weight. In con-trast, environmental differences are overwhelmingly important when it comes to mate preferences.

Larsen, R., & Buss, D. (2008). Personality psychology: Domains of knowledge about human nature (3rd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.

Group Differences in Intelligence Test Scores

Classroom Exercise: Blacks as a “Castelike” Minority

You can introduce John Ogbu’s “caste” point of view to extend a discussion of how most expert psychologists agree that the racial gap in intelligence scores is envi-ronmentally determined. Begin by distributing a copy of Handout 14, from “Tom the Dancing Bug.”

Ogbu, a Nigerian anthropologist, suggests that most Blacks in the United States are in a social position strikingly similar to other “castelike” minorities, such as the Harijans of India, the Maoris of New Zealand, and the Burakumi of Japan. The gap in intelligence scores between the privileged in these countries and their respective minority groups is about the same (10 to 15 points) as it is between Whites and Blacks in the United States.

In brief, Ogbu argues that the Black–White intel-ligence-score gap and controversy is not a uniquely American issue. The same gap and debate occur wher-ever there are castelike divisions. Being a castelike

minority means being a victim of prejudice, which, as we know, has a number of disastrous psychological consequences. Most minority children grow up believ-ing that life will be restricted to a small and unreward-ing set of options. They are convinced that it will be difficult, if not impossible, to advance in mainstream society. As a result, Black children turn their back on school as a possible avenue to a better future. In addi-tion, teachers come to expect less of Black children and tacitly treat them in ways that make the expectation come true. “Too many educators underestimate the abil-ity of poor kids generally, and castelike minorities in particular,” writes Frederick Erikson of the University of Pennsyl vania. “One of the most powerful influences on a Black child is the beliefs of his teachers about his academic performance.” Poor school performance and low intelligence scores are sometimes the product of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The poverty that inevitably comes with castelike status also worsens the chances of educational success. These impoverished children experience stresses from which their more privileged classmates are insulated. When something goes wrong in the family, they are much more likely to carry their problems into their school life and it affects their performance.

Perhaps most surprising is Ogbu’s study comparing two groups of Black high school students, one doing well in school and the other failing. The group who fared poorly saw being studious as betraying their racial identity—by “acting White” in the students’ words. “It’s not that the black children can’t do the work, but they don’t make the effort,” said Ogbu. “The underly-ing issue for them is one of racial identity. They see doing well and getting a high-status job as selling out. You see the same dynamic among Mexican-American children. They identify achievement with betraying their roots.”

The power of the environment to shape intel-ligence scores becomes most evident when castelike minorities emigrate. Once they become acclimated in a country where they are free of social discrimination, their children’s intelligence scores and school perfor-mance match those of other children in the new coun-try. For example, the intelligence-score gap between the Burakumi and other Japanese is about as large as that between Blacks and Whites in the United States. However, when the Burakumi come to this country, where they are treated like any other Japanese, their children do as well on intelligence tests and in school as do other Japanese.

Goleman, D. (1991). An emerging theory on blacks’ IQ scores. In D. Goleman (Ed.), Psychology updates. New York: HarperCollins.

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Lecture/Discussion Topic: Environmental Explanation of Group Differences

The existence of hereditary variation within a group does not necessitate a hereditary explanation for the differences between groups. An example of this is provided by Stephen Jay Gould. He argues that even if intelligence were 70 percent heritable, this would not prove that racial or cultural differences were genetic. For example, height is about 95 percent heritable. Imag-ine now, he says, a group of malnourished Africans whose average height is several inches less than that of North Americans. The Africans would not remain shorter if they were properly fed. Similarly, the aver-age height in Japan has increased several inches since World War II, but no one argues that the Japanese gene pool has changed.

Gould, S. J. (1981). The mismeasure of man. New York: Norton.

Classroom Exercise: Culture-Biased and Culture-Fair Tests

In response to the criticism that tests are culturally biased, several psychologists have attempted to devise instruments that are culture-fair. The Culture Fair Intelligence Test (CFIT) assesses individual intelligence in a manner designed to reduce, as much as possible, the influence of verbal fluency, cultural climate, and educational level. Presumably, the test permits a cleaner separation of natural ability from specific learning and thus enables a better analysis and prediction of the indi-vidual’s ultimate potential.

Handout 15 contains four sample items from Scale 2, Form A of the CFIT. These items are used to intro-duce each of the four tests that comprise the scale. Instruct students to examine the thinking processes they use to arrive at the correct answers. Read the following instructions for each item.

1. “Look at the first item. See how the black part moves. It begins at the top and moves around the circle. Look at the five choices for the right answer. Which one is it? (Pause.) Yes, it’s number ‘1.’ Put ‘1’ in the empty box.”

2. “Look at the second item. There are five figures in a row. Four are the same and one is different in some way from all the others. Which one is it? (Pause.) Yes, it’s the first one. It’s black and all the others are white. Put ‘1’ in the empty box.”

3. “Look at the third item. There are four small boxes in the large square at the left. (Point.) One of them is dotted and empty. Which one of the five boxes on the right (point) is the correct one to fill in the dotted empty box? (Pause.) Yes, it’s ‘4.’ Put ‘4’ in the empty box.”

4. “Look at the fourth item. In the separate box at the left (point) the dot is inside the egg-shaped figure,

but under the line. Now we have to find another box where we can do just the same. Which one is it? (Pause.) Yes, the second. That’s the only right one. Put ‘2’ in the empty box.”

Lecture/Discussion Topic: Intelligence as Culturally DefinedIntelligence is a socially constructed concept. Cultures deem “intelligent” whatever attributes enable success in their culture. Psychologists who view intelligence as the successful adaptation to the environment are skeptical about the prospects for a “culture-free” test of intelli-gence. They maintain that tests designed for one culture are notoriously faulty when applied to another. Joseph Glick’s study of Liberia’s Kpelle tribesmen provides a classic and amusing example. Glick asked the tribes-men to sort a group of objects sensibly. To his puzzle-ment, they insisted on grouping the objects by function (for example, placing a potato with a hoe) rather than by taxonomy (placing the potato with other foods). On the basis of Western standards, this indicated an infe-rior style of sorting and lower intelligence. After Glick demonstrated the “correct” answer, one of the tribesmen remarked that only a stupid person would sort things that way. When Glick thereafter asked tribesmen to sort items the way a stupid person would, they sorted them taxonomically without hesitation or difficulty.

Robert Sternberg and James Kaufman show how, in contrast to Western cultures, African and Asian cul-tures are much more likely to emphasize social skills in their conception of intelligence. For example, in Africa, intelligence includes skills that help to establish and maintain harmonious and stable intergroup relations. Chewa adults in Zambia emphasize social responsibil-ity, cooperation, and obedience as important to intelli-gence. Intelligent children are expected to be respectful to adults. Simi larly Kenyan parents emphasize respon-sible participation in family and social life as important aspects of intelligence. In Zimbabwe, the word for intelligence, ngware, means to be prudent and cautious, particularly in social relationships.

McKean, K. (1985, October). Intelligence: New ways to measure the wisdom of man. Discover, 25–41.

Sternberg, R. J., & Kaufman, J. C. (1998). Human abili-ties. In J. T. Spence, J. M. Darley, & D. J. Foss (Eds.), Annual Review of Psychology (Vol. 49, pp. 479–502). Palo Alto, CA: Annual Reviews.

Lecture/Discussion Topic: The SAT Reasoning Test: A Case Study in Testing

The history of the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), now referred to as the SAT Reasoning Test, a test used in college admissions, provides a wonderful case study for discussing the controversy that has surrounded intel-ligence testing. It provides the opportunity to introduce

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the distinction between aptitude and achievement tests, the concepts of reliability and validity, and the ques-tion of bias in testing. You might either introduce or conclude your discussion of this material with the topic. Richard C. Atkinson’s personal perspective on the his-tory of this test provides an excellent source of material for classroom lecture and discussion. You might begin the discussion by asking students whether they believe SAT scores should be used in college admissions or the awarding of scholarships. Why or why not?

Atkinson notes that after World War II, U.S. col-leges and universities gradually adopted standardized tests as part of their admissions process. Most schools used the SAT; some used the American College Testing Program (ACT).

The College Board, which owns the SAT, has made a series of changes in the test since its beginnings. The original SAT became the SAT I—a 3-hour test that emphasized verbal aptitude but added a section on math skills typically taught in grades one through eight. The College Board also added 20 one-hour SAT II tests to measure a students’ achievement in specific subjects, including history, chemistry, and the foreign languages. As Atkinson explains, most colleges required only the SAT I, although some also required two or three SAT II tests. Typically, when the SAT has been mentioned in the media, the reference has been to the SAT I.

Throughout its history, the SAT has been sur-rounded by controversy. Carl Brigham, a Princeton psy-chologist who created the original SAT, modeled the test after earlier IQ tests and regarded it as a measure of innate mental ability. Even Alfred Binet, who thought such tests could be useful in a clinical setting, rejected the notion that they provided a meaningful measure of mental ability that could be used to rank individuals of normal intelligence.

In serving on the Board on Testing and Assessment (a board of the National Research Council that advises the federal government on testing issues), Atkinson was distressed that members of the College Board touted the SAT as a true measure of intelligence and seemed oblivious to research suggesting that achievement tests were a better predictor of college success than aptitude tests. Also troubled by what he thought was his grand-daughter’s waste of study time preparing for the SAT, Atkinson drafted a paper arguing that admissions tests should not try to measure “innate intelligence” but should focus on achievement, that is, what the student had actually learned in high school. In addition, he argued that such tests should include an essay compo-nent and should cover more advanced mathematics. Finally, he argued that a crucial aspect of admissions tests was to convey to students, teachers, and parents the importance of learning to write and the necessity

of mastering at least eighth- through tenth-grade mathematics.

In 2001, the unpublished paper became the basis for Atkinson’s famous speech. As president of the University of California, he announced that he would recommend that the University of California, one of the largest public educational systems in the country, no longer use the SAT in its admissions process. Once a distinguished visiting scholar at Educational Testing Service (ETS), Atkinson himself took several SAT sample tests, hoping to find some value in them. His conclusion? “America’s overemphasis on the SAT is compromising our educational system.” He argues that when students do poorly, neither parents nor teachers can point to specific concepts they need to work on. At a time when states are stressing standards and account-ability, the SAT seems tied to neither. He proposes new standardized tests linked to state standards so that any-one who masters the curriculum can succeed.

Research findings at the University of California lended support to Atkinson’s claims. A study that examined the effectiveness of high school grades and various combinations of SAT I and SAT II scores in predicting college success found that the SAT II was a far better predictor of college grades than the SAT I. The data also indicated that the predictive validity of the SAT II is much less affected by differences in socioeconomic background than is the SAT I. Finally, the data indicated that the best single predictor of stu-dent performance was the SAT II writing test. Atkinson notes that, given the importance of writing ability at the college level, it should not have been surprising that a test of actual writing correlates strongly with college grades.

Largely in response to Atkinson’s criticisms, the trustees of the College Board announced in late June 2002 major changes to the SAT I. Beginning in spring 2005, the revised SAT I, the SAT Reasoning Test, includes a 25-minute essay requiring students to produce an actual writing sample, a more substantial mathematics section, and a reading comprehension section that does not include verbal analogies. The scoring categories are now critical reading, math, and writing. The writing section has two subscores, one for multiple-choice questions and the other for essays. Many observers concluded that the College Board met Atkinson’s challenge by recasting the SAT Reasoning Test as an out-and-out achievement test of reading, writing, and math. Atkinson himself states, “I believe this is an ideal solution that reflects the changes called for in my speech.”

There seems little doubt that the College Board (a powerful group of 5200 educational institutions) is using the new SAT to mold the U.S. secondary system.

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By requiring an essay, it is telling schools to produce better writers. By including advanced algebra, it is call-ing for a curriculum that emphasizes mathematics. The SAT, some observers (e.g., Cloud, 2003) note, could help produce a national curriculum without the passage of a single law.

The College Board’s 2008 SAT Validity Studies were the first to reveal information about the students who have taken the SAT since the 2005 addition of a required writing section. Data from 150,000 students in 110 four-year colleges and universities suggest that the SAT is an excellent predictor of academic performance in the first year of college. Interestingly, the new writ-ing section was shown to be the single best predictive section of the test. “Writing as a college-level skill is a crucial asset for student success, an important message reinforced by colleges that require admissions tests with a writing section,” said College Board Presi dent Gaston Caperton. “Colleges not requiring an admissions test with writing are overlooking one of the best predictors of college success to which they have access. Writing should not be optional.”

Among the most significant College Board findings were the following:

• TheSATprovedtobeabetterpredictorthanhighschool grades for all minority groups (African American, Hispanic, American Indian, and Asian).

• WritingwasthemostpredictivesectionoftheSATfor every group of students except ESL students.

• Forallstudents,theSATwasalmostaspredictiveas four years of high school grades.

• Thebestpredictoroffirst-yearcollegeGPAwasacombination of high school GPA along with SAT scores.

• Gradeswereslightlybetterpredictorsofacademicsuccess at public or less-selective colleges; SAT scores were slightly better predictors at private col-leges or more-selective colleges.

Atkinson, R. C. (2005, May). College admissions and the SAT. APS Observer, 15–22.

Cloud, J. (2003, October 27). Inside the new SAT. Time, 48–56.

College Board (June 18, 2008). SAT Studies Show Test’s Strength in Predicting College Success. Retrieved on September 17, 2008, from www.collegeboard.com/press/ releases/197359.html.

Goldstein, A. (2001, February 26). Is this the end for the SAT? Time, 62–63.

Markheim, M. B. (1999, September 1). Students to get SAT credit for “striving.” USA Today, p. 1A.

Markheim, M. B. (2002, June 26). SAT exam up for big revision, USA Today, p. 1A.

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Artificial Intelligence

Lecture/Discussion Topic: Artificial Intelligence

The following dialogue by Terry Bisson is sure to increase your students’ interest in the topic of intelligence. It was included in a series of stories titled “Alien/Nation” in the April 1991 issue of OMNI (a science/science fiction magazine published in the United States between 1978 and 1995). The conversation between two aliens turns the concept of artificial intelligence on its head both literally and figuratively. It challenges us to consider what intelligent behavior is, and to take notice of some of our biases and stereo-types about who possesses intelligence and how it is displayed.

“They’re made out of meat.” “Meat?”“Meat. They’re made out of meat.” “Meat?”“There’s no doubt about it. We picked several from different parts of the planet, took them aboard our recon vessels, probed them all the way through. They’re completely meat.” “That’s impossible. What about the radio signals? The messages to the

stars.”“They use the radio waves to talk, but the signals don’t come from them. The signals come from machines.” “So who made the machines? That’s who we want to contact.”

“They made the machines. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Meat made the machines.” “That’s ridiculous. How can meat make a machine? You’re asking me to

believe in sentient meat.”“I’m not asking you, I’m telling you. These creatures are the only sentient race in the sector and they’re made out of meat.” “Maybe they’re like the Orfolei. You know, a carbon-based intelligence

that goes through a meat stage.”“Nope. They’re born meat and they die meat. We studied them for several of their life spans, which didn’t take too long. Do you have any idea the life span of meat?” “Spare me. Okay, maybe they’re only part meat. You know, like the

Weddilei. A meat head with an electron plasma brain inside.”“Nope. We thought of that, since they do have meat heads like the Weddilei. But I told you, we probed them. They’re meat all the way through.” “No brain?”“Oh, there is a brain all right. It’s just that the brain is made out of meat!” “So... what does the thinking?”“You’re not understanding, are you? The brain does the thinking. The meat.” “Thinking meat! You’re asking me to believe in thinking meat!”“Yes, thinking meat! Conscious meat! Loving meat. Dreaming meat. The meat is the whole deal! Are you getting the picture?” “Omigod. You’re serious then. They’re made out of meat.”“Finally. Yes. They are indeed made out meat. And they’ve been trying to get in touch with us for almost a hundred of their years.” “So what does the meat have in mind.”“First it wants to talk to us. Then I imagine it wants to explore the universe, contact other sentients, swap ideas and information. The usual.” “We’re supposed to talk to meat?”“That’s the idea. That’s the message they’re sending out by radio. ‘Hello. Anyone out there? Anyone home?’ That sort of thing.” “They actually do talk, then. They use words, ideas, concepts?”“Oh, yes. Except they do it with meat.” “I thought you just told me they used radio.”“They do, but what do you think is on the radio? Meat sounds. You know how when you slap or flap meat it makes a noise? They talk by flapping their meat

580 Intelligence

at each other. They can even sing by squirting air through their meat.” “Omigod. Singing meat. This is altogether too much. So what do you

advise?”“Officially or unofficially?” “Both.”“Officially, we are required to contact, welcome, and log in any and all sentient races or multibeings in the quadrant, without prejudice, fear, or favour. Unofficially, I advise that we erase the records and forget the whole thing.” “I was hoping you would say that.”“It seems harsh, but there is a limit. Do we really want to make contact with meat?” “I agree one hundred percent. What’s there to say?” `Hello, meat. How’s

it going?’ But will this work? How many planets are we dealing with here?”

“Just one. They can travel to other planets in special meat containers, but they can’t live on them. And being meat, they only travel through C space, which limits them to the speed of light and makes the possibility of their ever making contact pretty slim. Infinitesimal, in fact.” “So we just pretend there’s no one home in the universe.”“That’s it.” “Cruel. But you said it yourself, who wants to meet meat? And the ones

who have been aboard our vessels, the ones you have probed? You’re sure they won’t remember?”

“They’ll be considered crackpots if they do. We went into their heads and smoothed out their meat so that we’re just a dream to them.” “A dream to meat! How strangely appropriate, that we should be meat’s

dream.”“And we can mark this sector unoccupied.” “Good. Agreed, officially and unofficially. Case closed.”

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Source: Adapted from Bison, T. (1991, April). Alien/nation. OMNI.

Classroom Exercise: Computers, Robots, Machines: Simulating Intelligence and other Human Traits

The possibility that we may someday produce artificial life forms or simulate human intelligence, sentience, or empathy in man-made machines has intrigued human-kind for quite some time. At one time, this subject was relegated to the realm of mere science fiction. This is no longer the case. Technological advances in com-

puter engineering, coupled with gains in the scientific understanding of human cognition and neuropsychol-ogy, have brought these dreams closer to reality. Your students may be interested to learn about how these developments are progressing.

“RadioLab” is a radio show and podcast produced by WNYC with the purpose of presenting interest-ing and enigmatic scientific issues. Hosted by Robert Krulwich and Jad Abumrad, the program has the feel of a radio documentary and often features interviews, case studies, and (sometimes) dramatizations of scientific principles, discoveries, and research. Each episode is an

hour in total and typically broken up into three or more segments.

The RadioLab episode that aired May 31, 2011 (Season 10, Episode 1) dealt with human-computer interactions. It included three segments highlight-ing some amazing advances in attempts to develop machines that mimic human intelligence, empathy, and consciousness. The first segment, “Clever Bots,” covers the design and development of a simulated “therapist.” The second segment is about “Furbies,” one of the first mass-produced interactive toys on the market in the late 1990s. The final segment, “Everyone Has a Solar,” is about the purportedly first “sentient” robot, Bina48, which was modeled after a real woman named Bina Rothblatt.

Your students might find it interesting to search the Internet for interactive AI demonstrations or simu-lations. For example, students can “chat” with the Cleverbot program described above at http://cleverbot.com. They can also try their hand at a “Rock-Paper-Scissors” game with a computer hosted by the New York Times website: www.nytimes.com/ interactive/science/rock-paper-scissors.html. In this

game, users can set the parameters to have the computer learn from them as a novice, or they can play against an “expert” computer that makes use of the information it has gleaned from more than 200,000 rounds of the game with other users.

Fans of the Star Trek: The Next Generation televi-sion series may recall an episode in which the android Data grapples with the question of what defines life and sentience as he works with a series of small robotic machines. Called “Exocomps,” the machines were cre-ated to assist in the repair and maintenance of a mining tunnel; they were designed to dynamically adapt to the conditions in which they are working. Titled “The Quality of Life” (Season 6, Episode 9), the episode centers on the issue of whether self-protective behaviors and decision making are minimum criteria for entities (whether living or artificial) to be afforded the oppor-tunity to decide for themselves what they will do, and how and when they do so. The content of this episode would provide good fodder for discussion about the nature of AI; the moral, ethical, and legal implications of simulation work; and speculation about what future developments in AI may bring.

582 Intelligence

HANDOUT 1

Behavioral Checklist

Rate each of the following in terms of how characteristic it is of you. Write a number from 1 to 9 in the blank before each item, with “1” meaning “extremely uncharacteristic of me” and “9” meaning “extremely characteristic of me.”

I. Practical problem-solving ability 1. Reasons logically and well 2. Identifies connections among ideas 3. Sees all aspects of a problem 4. Keeps an open mind 5. Responds thoughtfully to others’ ideas 6. Sizes up situations well 7. Gets to the heart of the problem 8. Interprets information accurately 9. Makes good decisions 10. Goes to original sources for basic information 11. Poses problems in an optimal way 12. Is a good source of ideas 13. Perceives implied assumptions and conclusions 14. Listens to all sides of an argument 15. Deals with problems resourcefully

II. Verbal ability 16. Speaks clearly and articulately 17. Is verbally fluent 18. Converses well 19. Is knowledgeable about a particular area of subject matter 20. Studies hard 21. Reads with high comprehension 22. Reads widely 23. Writes without difficulty 24. Sets aside time for reading 25. Displays good vocabulary

III. Social competence 26. Accepts others for what they are 27. Admits mistakes 28. Displays interest in the world at large 29. Is on time for appointments 30. Has social conscience 31. Thinks before speaking and doing 32. Displays curiosity 33. Does not make snap judgments 34. Makes fair judgments 35. Assesses well the relevance of information to a problem at hand 36. Is sensitive to other people’s needs and desires 37. Is frank and honest with self and others 38. Displays interest in the immediate environment

Source: Excerpt from INTELLIGENCE APPLIED by Robert J. Sternberg. Copyright © 1986. Reprinted by permission.

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HANDOUT 2

Maudsley Personality Inventory, Short Form

Instructions: The following questions pertain to the way people behave, feel, and act. Decide whether the items repre-sent your usual way of acting or feeling, and circle either “Yes” or “No” for each. If you find it absolutely impossible to decide, circle the “?,” but use this answer sparingly.

1. Do you sometimes feel happy, sometimes depressed, without any apparent reason?

YES ? NO

2. Do you have frequent ups and downs in mood, either with or without apparent cause?

YES ? NO

3. Are you inclined to be moody?

YES ? NO

4. Does your mind often wander while you are trying to concentrate?

YES ? NO

5. Are you frequently “lost in thought” even when supposed to be taking part in a conversation?

YES ? NO

6. Are you sometimes bubbling over with energy and sometimes very sluggish?

YES ? NO

7. Do you prefer action to planning for action?

YES ? NO

8. Are you happiest when you get involved in some project that calls for rapid action?

YES ? NO

9. Do you usually take the initiative in making new friends?

YES ? NO

10. Are you inclined to be quick and sure in your actions?

YES ? NO

11. Would you rate yourself as a lively individual?

YES ? NO

12. Would you be very unhappy if you were prevented from making numerous social contacts?

YES ? NO

Source: Eysenck, H. J. (1970). The structure of human personality. Copyright © 1970 H. J. Eysenck. Reprinted by per-mission of Thomson Publishers, Ltd.

584 Intelligence

HANDOUT 3

Questionnaire for Business Management

This task asks you about your views on matters pertaining to the work of a manager. The questions ask you to rate the importance you would assign to various items in making work-related decisions and judgments. Use a 1 to 7 rating scale, with 1 signifying “not important,” 4 signifying “moderately important,” and 7 signifying “extremely important.” 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 not moderately extremely important important important

Try to use the entire scale when responding, although not necessarily for each question. For example, you may decide that none of the items listed for a particular question are important, or that they all are. There are, of course, no “cor-rect” answers. You are encouraged to scan briefly the items of a given question before responding, to get some idea of the range of importance for the items. Remember, you are being asked to rate the importance you personally would assign each item in making the judgment or decision mentioned in the question stem.

1. It is your second year as a mid-level manager in a company in the communications industry. You head a depart-ment of about 30 people. The evaluation of your first year on the job has been generally favorable. Performance ratings for your department are at least as good as they were before you took over, and perhaps even a little bet-ter. You have two assistants. One is quite capable, but the other just seems to go through the motions without being of much real help.

You believe that, although you are well-liked, there is little that would distinguish you in the eyes of your superiors from the nine other managers at a comparable level in the company.

Your goal is rapid promotion to the top of the company. The following is a list of things you are consider-ing doing in the next two months. You obviously cannot do them all. Rate the importance of each as a means of reaching your goal.

a. Participate in a series of panel discussions to be shown on the local public television station. b. Find ways to make sure your superiors are aware of your important accomplishments. c. As a means of being noticed, propose a solution to a problem outside the scope of your imme-

diate department that you would be willing to take charge of. d. When making decisions, give a great deal of weight to the way your superior likes things to be

done. e. Accept a friend’s invitation to join the exclusive country club that many higher-level executives

belong to.

2. Your company has sent you to a university to recruit and interview potential trainees for management positions. You have been considering characteristics of students that are important to later success in business. Rate the importance of the following student characteristics by the extent to which they may lead to later success in business.

a. ability to set priorities according to the importance of the task b. motivation c. ability to follow through and complete tasks d. ability to promote one’s ideas, to convince others of the worth of one’s work e. the need to win at everything no matter what the cost

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HANDOUT 3 (continued)

3. A number of factors enter into the establishment of a good reputation in a company as a manager. Consider the following factors and rate their importance.

a. critical thinking ability b. speaking ability c. extent of college education and the prestige of the school attended d. no hesitancy to take extraordinarily risky courses of action e. a keen sense of what superiors can be sold on

4. Rate the following strategies of working according to how important you believe them to be for doing well at the day-to-day work of a business manager.

a. Think in terms of tasks accomplished rather than hours spent working. b. Be in charge of all phases of every task or project you are involved with. c. Use a daily list of goals arranged according to your priorities. d. Carefully consider the optimal strategy before beginning a task. e. Reward yourself upon completion of important tasks.

5. You are looking for several new projects to tackle. You have a list of possible projects and desire to pick the best two or three. Rate the importance of the following considerations when selecting projects.

a. Doing the project should prove to be fun. b. The project should attract the attention of the local media. c. The project is of special importance to me personally. d. The risk of making a mistake is virtually nonexistent. e. The project will require working directly with several senior executives.

Source: Excerpt from INTELLIGENCE APPLIED by Robert J. Sternberg. Copyright © 1986. Reprinted by permission.

586 Intelligence

HANDOUT 4

Autism-Spectrum Quotient

For each statement, indicate your agreement or disagreement by circling the appropriate alternative.

1. I prefer to do things with others rather than on my own.

Definitely Slightly Slightly Definitely agree agree disagree disagree

2. I prefer to do things the same way over and over again.

Definitely Slightly Slightly Definitely agree agree disagree disagree

3. If I try to imagine something, I find it very easy to create a picture in my mind.

Definitely Slightly Slightly Definitely agree agree disagree disagree

4. I frequently get so strongly absorbed in one thing that I lose sight of other things.

Definitely Slightly Slightly Definitely agree agree disagree disagree

5. I often notice small sounds when others do not.

Definitely Slightly Slightly Definitely agree agree disagree disagree

6. I usually notice car number plates or similar strings of information.

Definitely Slightly Slightly Definitely agree agree disagree disagree

7. Other people frequently tell me that what I’ve said is impolite, even though I think it is polite.

Definitely Slightly Slightly Definitely agree agree disagree disagree

8. When I’m reading a story, I can easily imagine what the characters might look like.

Definitely Slightly Slightly Definitely agree agree disagree disagree

9. I am fascinated by dates.

Definitely Slightly Slightly Definitely agree agree disagree disagree

10. In a social group, I can easily keep track of several different people’s conversations.

Definitely Slightly Slightly Definitely agree agree disagree disagree

Intelligence 587

HANDOUT 4 (continued)

11. I find social situations easy.

Definitely Slightly Slightly Definitely agree agree disagree disagree

12. I tend to notice details that others do not.

Definitely Slightly Slightly Definitely agree agree disagree disagree

13. I would rather go to a library than to a party.

Definitely Slightly Slightly Definitely agree agree disagree disagree

14. I find making up stories easy.

Definitely Slightly Slightly Definitely agree agree disagree disagree

15. I find myself drawn more strongly to people than to things.

Definitely Slightly Slightly Definitely agree agree disagree disagree

16. I tend to have very strong interests, which I get upset about if I can’t pursue.

Definitely Slightly Slightly Definitely agree agree disagree disagree

17. I enjoy social chitchat.

Definitely Slightly Slightly Definitely agree agree disagree disagree

18. When I talk, it isn’t always easy for others to get a word in edgewise.

Definitely Slightly Slightly Definitely agree agree disagree disagree

19. I am fascinated by numbers.

Definitely Slightly Slightly Definitely agree agree disagree disagree

20. When I’m reading a story, I find it difficult to work out the characters’ intentions.

Definitely Slightly Slightly Definitely agree agree disagree disagree

21. I don’t particularly enjoy reading fiction.

Definitely Slightly Slightly Definitely agree agree disagree disagree

588 Intelligence

HANDOUT 4 (continued)

22. I find it hard to make new friends.

Definitely Slightly Slightly Definitely agree agree disagree disagree 23. I notice patterns in things all the time.

Definitely Slightly Slightly Definitely agree agree disagree disagree

24. I would rather go to the theater than to a museum.

Definitely Slightly Slightly Definitely agree agree disagree disagree

25. It does not upset me if my daily routine is disturbed.

Definitely Slightly Slightly Definitely agree agree disagree disagree

26. I frequently find that I don’t know how to keep a conversation going.

Definitely Slightly Slightly Definitely agree agree disagree disagree

27. I find it easy to ‘read between the lines’ when someone is talking to me.

Definitely Slightly Slightly Definitely agree agree disagree disagree

28. I usually concentrate more on the whole picture, rather than on the small details.

Definitely Slightly Slightly Definitely agree agree disagree disagree

29. I am not very good at remembering phone numbers.

Definitely Slightly Slightly Definitely agree agree disagree disagree

30. I don’t usually notice small changes in a situation or a person’s appearance.

Definitely Slightly Slightly Definitely agree agree disagree disagree

31. I know how to tell if someone listening to me is getting bored.

Definitely Slightly Slightly Definitely agree agree disagree disagree

32. I find it easy to do more than one thing at once.

Definitely Slightly Slightly Definitely agree agree disagree disagree

Intelligence 589

HANDOUT 4 (continued)

33. When I talk on the phone, I’m not sure when it’s my turn to speak.

Definitely Slightly Slightly Definitely agree agree disagree disagree

34. I enjoy doing things spontaneously.

Definitely Slightly Slightly Definitely agree agree disagree disagree

35. I am often the last to understand the point of a joke.

Definitely Slightly Slightly Definitely agree agree disagree disagree

36. I find it easy to work out what someone is thinking or feeling just by looking at their face.

Definitely Slightly Slightly Definitely agree agree disagree disagree

37. If there is an interruption, I can switch back to what I was doing very quickly.

Definitely Slightly Slightly Definitely agree agree disagree disagree

38. I am good at social chitchat.

Definitely Slightly Slightly Definitely agree agree disagree disagree

39. People often tell me that I keep going on and on about the same thing.

Definitely Slightly Slightly Definitely agree agree disagree disagree

40. When I was young, I used to enjoy playing games involving pretending with other children.

Definitely Slightly Slightly Definitely agree agree disagree disagree

41. I like to collect information about categories of things (e.g., types of cars, birds, trains, plants).

Definitely Slightly Slightly Definitely agree agree disagree disagree

42. I find it difficult to imagine what it would be like to be someone else.

Definitely Slightly Slightly Definitely agree agree disagree disagree

43. I like to carefully plan any activities I participate in.

Definitely Slightly Slightly Definitely agree agree disagree disagree

590 Intelligence

HANDOUT 4 (continued)

44. I enjoy social occasions.

Definitely Slightly Slightly Definitely agree agree disagree disagree

45. I find it difficult to work out people’s intentions.

Definitely Slightly Slightly Definitely agree agree disagree disagree

46. New situations make me anxious.

Definitely Slightly Slightly Definitely agree agree disagree disagree

47. I enjoy meeting new people.

Definitely Slightly Slightly Definitely agree agree disagree disagree

48. I am a good diplomat.

Definitely Slightly Slightly Definitely agree agree disagree disagree

49. I am not very good at remembering people’s date of birth.

Definitely Slightly Slightly Definitely agree agree disagree disagree

50. I find it very easy to play games with children that involve pretending.

Definitely Slightly Slightly Definitely agree agree disagree disagree

Source: Baron-Cohen, et al. (2001). The Autism-Spectrum Quotient (AQ): Evidence from Asperger Syndrome/high- functioning autism, males and females, scientists and mathematicians. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 31, 5–17. (Test items appear in Appendix 1: The AQ.) Copyright © 2001. Reprinted by permission.

Intelligence 591

HANDOUT 5

Charles and Margaret are both engineers and have been married for 5 years. Three years ago, Charles was offered a job in Europe. Margaret agreed to quit her job in the United States and move to Europe with Charles. The job was an excellent career move for Charles. Soon after the move they had a baby. After the birth, Margaret decided to start working again and, with effort, found a very exciting job that paid well and promised real security. Meanwhile, Charles was offered a transfer back to the United States. Margaret feels she needs another year or two in her new job to meaningfully advance her career. She is also tired of mov-ing. She has already given up a lot of time following Charles around. Charles knows that his wife’s job is as important as his own but he thinks returning to the United States would help both their careers in the end. What should Charles do?

Source: R. J. Sternberg, Wisdom, schooling, and society. Paper presented at the Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association, Chicago, IL. Copyright © 2002. Reprinted by permission of Dr. Robert Sternberg.

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HANDOUT 6

Self-Transcendence Inventory

We would like to know whether your view of life is different today than it was five years ago. We would appreciate your reading the statements listed below and indicating the extent to which you agree with each one. Use the following scale:

1 = disagree strongly 2 = disagree somewhat 3 = agree somewhat 4 = agree strongly

1. My peace of mind is not so easily upset as it used to be.

2. Material things mean less to me.

3. I do not become angry as easily.

4. My sense of self is less dependent on other people and things.

5. I feel much more compassionate, even toward my enemies.

6. I find more joy in life.

7. I am more likely to engage in quiet contemplation.

8. I feel a greater state of belonging with both earlier and future generations

9. I feel that my individual life is a part of a greater whole.

10. I have become less concerned about other people’s opinions of me.

Source: Michael R. Levenson, PhD. “Self-Transcendence Inventory” originally published in Levinson, et al. International Journal of Aging and Human Development. Copyright 2005. Reprinted by permission.

Intelligence 593

HANDOUT 7

Please indicate your degree of agreement with each of the following statements by using a number from 1 = strongly disagree to 6 = strongly agree:

1. If I am upset, I know the cause of it.

2. I like to hug those who are emotionally close to me.

3. I can tell how people are feeling even if they never tell me.

4. I am sensitive to the feelings of other people.

5. I can keep myself calm even in highly stressful situations.

6. Usually, I know what it takes to turn someone else’s boredom into excitement.

7. I often use my intuition in planning for the future.

8. People think my ideas are daring.

9. Having strong emotions forces me to understand myself.

10. I believe I can do almost anything I set out to do.

Source: Sample items 1–10 from Table 1 from “Development and Validation of a Self-Report Measure of Emotional Intelligence as a Multidimensional Trait Domain” in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 859–888.

Reproduced by permission of SIGMA Assessment Systems, Inc., P.O. Box 610984, Port Huron, MI 48061-0984.

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HANDOUT 8

Emotional Intelligence Scale

Instructions: Indicate the extent to which each item applies to you using the following scale:

1 = strongly disagree 2 = disagree3 = neither disagree nor agree4 = agree5 = strongly agree

1. I know when to speak about my personal problems to others. 2. When I am faced with obstacles, I remember times I faced similar obstacles and overcame them. 3. I expect that I will do well on most things I try. 4. Other people find it easy to confide in me. 5. I find it hard to understand the nonverbal messages of other people. 6. Some of the major events of my life have led me to re-evaluate what is important and not important. 7. When my mood changes, I see new possibilities. 8. Emotions are some of the things that make my life worth living. 9. I am aware of my emotions as I experience them. 10. I expect good things to happen. 11. I like to share my emotions with others. 12. When I experience a positive emotion, I know how to make it last. 13. I arrange events others enjoy. 14. I seek out activities that make me happy. 15. I am aware of the nonverbal messages I send to others. 16. I present myself in a way that makes a good impression on others. 17. When I am in a positive mood, solving problems is easy for me. 18. By looking at their facial expressions, I recognize the emotions people are experiencing. 19. I know why my emotions change. 20. When I am in a positive mood, I am able to come up with new ideas. 21. I have control over my emotions. 22. I easily recognize my emotions as I experience them. 23. I motivate myself by imagining a good outcome to tasks I take on. 24. I compliment others when they have done something well. 25. I am aware of the nonverbal messages other people send. 26. When another person tells me about an important event in his or her life, I almost feel as though I have

experienced this event myself. 27. When I feel a change in emotions, I tend to come up with new ideas. 28. When I am faced with a challenge, I give up because I believe I will fail. 29. I know what other people are feeling just by looking at them. 30. I help other people feel better when they are down. 31. I use good moods to help myself keep trying in the face of obstacles. 32. I can tell how people are feeling by listening to the tone of their voice. 33. It is difficult for me to understand why people feel the way they do.

Source: Reprinted from Personality and Individual Differences, 25, N. S. Schutte et al. “Development and validation of a measure of emotional intelligence,” 167–177. Copyright 1998, with permission from Elsevier.

Intelligence 595

HANDOUT 9

World War I Intelligence Test

Match your wits with World War I–era recruits with the following questions from actual army intelligence tests. Circle the letter in front of the correct answer.

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1. Bull Durham is the name of a A. chewing gum B. aluminum ware C. tobacco D. clothing 2. Seven-up is played with A. rackets B. cards C. pins D. dice 3. The Merino is a kind of A. horse B. sheep C. goat D. cow

4. The most prominent industry of Minneapolis is A. flour B. packing C. automobiles D. brewing

5. Garnets are usually A. yellow B. blue C. green D. red 6. The Orpington is a kind of A. fowl B. horse C. granite D. cattle 7. George Ade is famous as a A. baseball player B. comic artist C. actor D. author

8. Soap is made by A. B. T. Babbitt B. Smith & Wesson C. W. L. Douglas D. Swift & Co. 9. Laura Jean Libby is known as a A. singer B. suffragist C. writer D. army nurse 10. An air-cooled engine is used in the A. Buick B. Packard C. Franklin D. Ford 11. A house is better than a tent, because A. it costs more B. it is more comfortable C. it is made of wood 12. Why does it pay to get a good education? A. it makes a man more useful and happy B. it makes work for teachers C. it makes demand for buildings for schools and

colleges 13. If the grocer should give you too much money in

making change, what is the right thing to do? A. buy some candy off him with it B. give it to the first poor man you meet C. tell him of his mistake 14. Why should food be chewed before swallowing? A. it is better for the health B. it is bad manners to swallow without chewing C. chewing keeps the teeth in condition

HANDOUT 9 (continued)

15. If you saw a train approaching a broken track, you should

A. telephone for an ambulance B. signal the engineer to stop the train C. look for a piece of rail to fit in 16. If you are lost in a forest in the daytime, what is

the thing to do? A. hurry to the nearest house you know of B. look for something to eat C. use the sun or a compass for a guide 17. It is better to fight than to run, because A. cowards are shot B. it is more honorable C. if you run you may get shot in the back

18. Why should all parents be made to send their chil-dren to school? Because

A. it prepares them for adult life B. it keeps them out of mischief C. they are too young to work 19. Why do some men who could afford to own a

house live in a rented one? Because A. they don’t have to pay taxes B. they don’t have to buy a rented house C. they can make more by investing the money

the house would cost 20. Why is beef better food than cabbage? Because A. it tastes better B. it is more nourishing C. it is harder to obtain

Intelligence 597

Source: Reprinted by permission of the American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning. The Graduate Center. CUNY. historymatters@gmu.edu.

HANDOUT 10

How Smart Are You?

The following twenty questions represent what you may encounter on an intelligence test, although we tried to make them a little more amusing than the average IQ-type question. Take the twenty questions and mark your answers care-fully. Time yourself very carefully and work as quickly as you can.

Time Started:

1. The day before two days after the day before tomorrow is SATURDAY. What day is it today? 2. What comes next, most logically, in the following sequence? S A I B L C V D E E R F A G N H N I I J V K E L R M S N A O R a. P Y b. B Q c. R R d. B R 3. What is one twentieth of one half of one tenth of 10,000? 4. What is the following scrambled word? NNREAIVARYS 5. In the following examples, each set of symbols stands for a word. Study all three words given and the symbol

equivalent and translate the fourth line into a word.

Cricket Software

GREEN

GRASS

MARKS

6. Which of the sentences given below means approximately the same as: “beauty is only skin deep”? a. Some actresses are made up by the studios so that you cannot tell what they really look like. b. Don’t judge a book by its cover. c. Some people have prettier appearances than others. d. Good looks don’t matter that much.

598 Intelligence

HANDOUT 10 (continued)

7. Which of the figures shown below the line of drawings best continues the sequence?

Cricket Software

a b c d

8. Canoe is to ocean liner as glider is to: a. kite b. airplane c. balloon d. car 9. Everyone at the Mensa party contest won prizes. Tom won more than Sally; Ann won less than Jane; Jane won

less than Sally but more than Walter. Walter won fewer prizes than Ann. Who won the most prizes? 10. There is one five-letter word which can be inserted in each of the two blanks below. When you have put in the

right word, you will have four new words, two on each line. (Example: Place WORK on the line between HAND PLACE, giving HANDWORK and

WORKPLACE.) BOAT WORK DOG HOLD 11. Tom, Jim, Peter, Susan, and Jane all took the Mensa test. Jane scored higher than Tom, Jim scored lower than

Peter but higher than Susan, and Peter scored lower than Tom. All of them are eligible to join Mensa, but who had the highest score?

12. If it were two hours later, it would be half as long until midnight as it would be if it were an hour later. What time is it now?

13. Pear is to apple as potato is to: a. banana b. radish c. strawberry d. lettuce 14. Continue the following number series below with the group of numbers which best continues the series. 1 10 3 9 5 8 7 7 9 6 ? ? a. 11 5 b. 10 5 c. 10 4 d. 11 6 15. Which of the following is least like the others? a. poem b. novel c. painting d. statue e. flower 16. What is the following word when it is unscrambled? H C P R A A T E U 17. What is the number that is one half of one quarter of one tenth of four hundred? 18. Which of the sentences given below means approximately the same as the proverb: “Don’t count your chickens

until they are hatched”? a. Some eggs have double yolks so you can’t really count eggs and chickens. b. You can’t walk around the henhouse to count the eggs because it will disturb the hens and they won’t lay

eggs. c. It is not really sensible to rely on something that has not yet happened and may not ever happen. d. Since eggs break so easily, you may not be accurate in your count of future chickens. 19. The same four-letter word can be placed on the blank lines below to make two new words from each of those

shown. Put in the correct four-letter word to make four new words from those shown below. (Example: HAND could be placed between BACK WORK to make BACKHAND AND HANDWORK.) HEAD MARK DREAM FALL

Intelligence 599

HANDOUT 10 (continued)

20. Which of the figures shown below the line of drawings best completes the series?

Cricket Software

a b c d

Time finished:

Source: Intelligence test from The Mensa book of words, word games, puzzles, and oddities (pp. 145–149) by Victor Serebriakoff and Abbie F. Salny. Copyright © 1988 by Abbie F. Salny. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

600 Intelligence

HANDOUT 11a

Source: Griggs, R. A. (2000). A one-minute “intelligence” test. Teaching of Psychology, 27, 132–135. From: Morris, S. (1983). Omni games: The best brain teasers from Omni magazine (p. 49). Copyright © 2000. Reprinted by permission of Richard A. Griggs.

Intelligence 601

1 2 3 4

5 6 7 8

9 10 11 12

13 14 15 16

17 18 19 20

21 22 23 24

SAND MANBOARD

STANDI R E A D I N G

WEAR LONG

R A DROAD

TOWN

CYCLECYCLECYCLE

LE VEL

OM.DPh.DB.S.

LIGHTSKNEE

CHAIR DICEDICE

TOUCH

GROUNDFEETFEETFEETFEETFEETFEET

MINDMATTER HE'S/HIMSELF ECNALG DEATH/LIFE

GIC C CC CC

PROGRAMBLOUSE

JUST

YOU ME

HANDOUT 11b

Source: Griggs, R. A. (2000). A one-minute “intelligence” test. Teaching of Psychology, 27, 132–135. From: Morris, S. (1983). Omni games: The best brain teasers from Omni magazine (p. 49). Copyright © 2000. Reprinted by permission of Richard A. Griggs.

602 Intelligence

1 2 3 4

5 6 7 8

9 10 11 12

13 14 15 16

17 18 19 20

21 22 23 24

TIMINGTIM ING

HOM UALLSNOW

ALL World

NEVES

CNO WAYS IT WAYS

JUS 144 TICE 1 3 5 7 9

WHELMING (CAPITALISM) ASTRO ∅

AM U OUS WWOOIOfLNaCI - H2ONaCI - H2O

No No No NoRENT RENT

REASWHATSOEVER

WHEATHER

E ONE ANOTHERONE ANOTHERONE ANOTHERONE ANOTHERONE ANOTHERONE ANOTHER

SYMPHON BLOOD WATER

ON SGEG EILN PU

HE'S

CCCCCCC

A

SAS

FRIEND FRIENDS

STAND

NOW REHE

HANDOUT 12

Remote Associates Test

Instructions: In this test you are presented with three words and asked to find a fourth word that is related to all three. Write this word in the space to the right.

For example, what word do you think is related to these three?

paint doll cat ...........................

The answer in this case is “house”: House paint, doll house, and house cat.

1. call pay line _________________ 1

2. end burning blue _________________ 2

3. man hot sure _________________ 3

4. stick hair ball _________________ 4

5. blue cake cottage _________________ 5

6. man wheel high _________________ 6

7. motion poke down _________________ 7

8. stool powder ball _________________ 8

9. line birthday surprise _________________ 9

10. wood liquor luck _________________ 10

11. house village golf _________________ 11

12. plan show walker _________________ 12

13. key wall precious _________________ 13

14. bell iron tender _________________ 14

15. water pen soda _________________ 15

16. base snow dance _________________ 16

17. steady cart slow _________________ 17

18. up book charge _________________ 18

19. tin writer my _________________ 19

20. leg arm person _________________ 20

21. weight pipe pencil _________________ 21

22. spin tip shape _________________ 22

23. sharp thumb tie _________________ 23

24. out band night _________________ 24

25. cool house fat _________________ 25

26. back short light _________________ 26

27. man order air _________________ 27

28. bath up gum _________________ 28

29. ball out jack _________________ 29

30. up deep rear _________________ 30

Source: Gardner, R. (1980). Exercises for general psychology (pp. 115–116). Minneapolis: Burgess. Reprinted with per-mission from PSYCHOLOGY TODAY MAGAZINE. Copyright © 1980 (Sussex Publishers, Inc.).

Intelligence 603

HANDOUT 13

Theories of Intelligence Scale

This questionnaire has been designed to investigate the ideas about intelligence. There are no right or wrong answers. We are interested in your ideas.

Using the scale below, please indicate the extent to which you agree or disagree with each of the following statements by writing the number that corresponds to your opinion in the space next to each statement.

1 2 3 4 5 6 Strongly Agree Mostly Mostly Disagree Strongly Agree Agree Disagree Disagree

1. You have a certain amount of intelligence, and you can’t really do much to change it.

2. Your intelligence is something about you that you can’t change very much.

3. No matter who you are, you can significantly change your intelligence.

4. To be honest, you can’t really change how intelligent you are.

5. You can always substantially change how intelligent you are.

6. You can learn new things, but you can’t really change your basic intelligence.

7. No matter how much intelligence you have, you can always change it quite a bit.

8. You can change even your basic intelligence level considerably.

Source: C. S. Dweck. (1999). Self-theories: Their role in motivation, personality, and development (p. 178). (Philadelphia: Psychology Press).

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HANDOUT 14

Source: By Reuben Bolling, from his weekly comic strip, “Tom the Dancing Bug.” Distributed by Quaternary Features, 110 East End Avenue, New York, NY 10028. © 1991 R. Bolling. E-mail: tomdbug@aol.com

Intelligence 605

HANDOUT 15

Culture Fair Intelligence Test

Source: Sample Tests from Scale 2 of the Culture Fair Intelligence Test. Copyright © 1949, 1960 by the Institute for Personality and Ability Testing, Inc., Champaign, Illinois, USA. All rights reserved. Reproduced with permission.

606 Intelligence