Intro to Intelligence

Why study intelligence?

• - assessment: you wouldn't want to give a kid an adult's job
• - assessing equal peers not ethical
• - influences stereotypes
• - self-fulfilling prophecies: believe someone's smart -> person is successful
• - in case of teachers, teachers usually assess child before believing they're intelligent, so may not be a self-fulfilling prophecy

Types of theories

• - Implicit (non-experts, pop psychology)
• - inspire and inform explicit theories (explicit theories arise from implicit)
• - Explicit (experts)
• - shape implicit theories

Western implicit theories value:

• Behaviours:
• - practical problem-solving, verbal ability, social competence
• Traits:
• - goal-orientation, multi-tasking ideas, pattern perception (make sense of things quickly), adaption to environment
• Emphasises
• - mental speed, spontaneous adaptability, individualism, self-assertion
• Bound cognition: YOUR intelligence

Implicit theories in East Asia value...

• - interpersonal skills (interact well with community)
• - intrapersonal awareness (self-understanding)
• - traditional wisdom
• Emphasises
• - collectivism
• - humility
• - harmony
• Shared cognition: emphasis on the physical/social environment in which you learn, not your own cognitive processes

Effect of age

• - norms are specific to age
• - percpetions of what intelligence is changes with age
• - kids: social characterisitics
• - don't appreciate that you can have diff skill levels in diff things
• - adults: cognitive characteristics

Effect of professional discipline

• - you define intelligence in terms of what's important to you
• - philosophy -> logical thinking
• - business -> focus on essential issues
• - arts -> weighing up alternatives
• - physics -> precise mathematical thinking

Effect of your own abilities

• - self-enhancement function (studied by David Dunning)
• - Dunning-Kruger effect: lack skill -> don't recognise you lack it -> overestimate skill
• - opposite can happen, don't recognise that you have skill

Explicit definitions of intelligence

• - Wechsler: act purposefully, think rationally, deal with environment
• - Simonton: cognitive capabilities allowing adaption and success in any environment
• - Kurzweil: efficiency
• - Gardner: solve/create problems relevant to cultural setting
• - Boring: "Intelligence is what is measured by intelligence tests"
• 52 experts: reasoning, planning, solving, abstract thinking, learn quickly & from experience, comprehend surroundings, figuring out what to do

Folie 9