About the five types of intelligence and why we need to develop comprehensive intelligence tests that measure all types of intelligence.
If in your teens you felt like an alien from another planet, felt like you couldn’t relate to people, felt like a social misfit, weird, out of place, never had many friends, felt lonely, felt like the world it’s too stupid for you to be a part of, and you still feel a bit out of place, my recommendation is that you go to the nearest psych lab and have your IQ measured. That’s what many young adults must do to avoid slipping into prolonged depression. Your IQ score, whether it is unusually high or genius level, will give you significant insight into your own emotional condition and the state of the world around you. Then you will stop feeling depressed or suicidal and just start looking at the world from a different perspective. You will also find the apparent stupidity of the world around you quite amusing.
Intelligence is a general cognitive ability to acquire and apply knowledge. It also refers to learning, self-awareness, creativity, and perception. Intelligence literally means to understand or perceive, and most Western philosophers, from Thomas Hobbes to David Hume, have referred to intelligence as “understanding.” Understanding and perception are terms used by philosophers, although the concept of intelligence is considered very important in psychology.
Psychologists largely agree that intelligence is the ability to understand complex ideas, adapt to the environment, and solve problems. A popular theory used by psychologists is the “two factor theory” of intelligence developed by Charles Spearman. Spearman used a statistical method called factor analysis to divide intelligence into the ‘g’ factor, which largely stands for general factor, and ‘s’ or specific factor that gives us unique or specific abilities to complete specific tasks.
The general or ‘g’ factor is very important as a person with high general intelligence will be able to do or learn anything without much difficulty. Logic, spatial ability, linguistic and mathematical ability are part of general intelligence. Academic achievement and job success are predicted by the g factor. According to this theory, the specific factor or ‘s’ could be musical or artistic ability or technical ability. Some people are more adept at using computers and technology and have a high ‘s’ factor related to technical ability. Psychologist Robert Sternberg identified three types of intelligence in his triarchic theory: analytical, creative, and practical. Analytical intelligence is the intelligence you use to write analytical essays and the problem-solving skills required for standardized tests. Creative intelligence consists of generating novel ideas and concepts and indicates the level of creativity of a person. Practical intelligence has to do with logic and is required to perform daily tasks.
In this exposition, I go beyond the theories of Intelligence in psychology and suggest that there are basically five types of intelligence:
General or Cognitive
emotional
Social
Creative
Technical
I’m inclined to add ‘spiritual intelligence’, but spiritual awareness is a combination of creative and emotional intelligence, so I won’t put it in a separate category.
General or cognitive intelligence is similar to the g factor and is related to general intelligence. This is the intelligence that is measured in intelligence tests and if you get a high IQ score it means that you have high general intelligence which makes you capable of handling all situations intelligently whether you are running a business, playing chess or training your child. Creative geniuses, as we know, have high general intelligence and high levels of creative intelligence, which is actually one’s ability to imagine or create things. If you have high creative intelligence, it means that you will be very creative in all situations, whether you are writing a book, cooking or making love. A poet or artist will tend to have high creative intelligence and high cognitive or general intelligence. A scientist will generally have a large amount of technical and theoretical knowledge and therefore have high technical intelligence and high general intelligence. Criminologists, psychologists, social workers, politicians deal with people all the time and these occupations require high general as well as social intelligence.
Psychologists, politicians, parents, teachers require high social and emotional intelligence along with common general intelligence because emotions are the central part of a child’s or adolescent’s growth and teacher-student or parent-child relationships. Firefighters, rescue workers, emergency workers need very high levels of emotional intelligence along with high general intelligence. Doctors, nurses, paramedics, mechanics, engineers need technical skills and high levels of technical and general intelligence. Entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs, and innovators need different levels of creative intelligence, general intelligence, and technical intelligence depending on the focus of their business or company. Professors and academics often have very high levels of general intelligence, although they must have the necessary technical knowledge in a specific subject or subjects and therefore tend to have high technical intelligence. Teachers are also teachers, so they must have social intelligence to successfully interact with their students. Journalists, diplomats, activists, they all have high levels of social intelligence along with general intelligence.
Traditional IQ tests tend to measure only general intelligence, and anyone with an IQ of 145 or higher is considered a genius. However, IQ scores do not adequately measure the other types of intelligence. IQ tests do not measure creative intelligence, yet highly creative people are considered geniuses. It is generally accepted that high creativity also indicates high intelligence. The logic is that when someone is very smart and can manipulate various concepts, they can also come up with unique or creative solutions and ideas. Traditional IQ tests also don’t measure social intelligence or emotional intelligence. So these IQ tests may be fundamentally incomplete in a certain way.
It has been argued that high IQ people are not always socially and emotionally adjusted. I will argue that geniuses are well liked in society and have a high level of social and emotional intelligence. They also have high creative intelligence and high technical intelligence as they are especially interested in complex issues. There may be some resistance to my argument that geniuses have high social and emotional intelligence because geniuses have more social and emotional problems than most people of average intelligence. They may not relate to people, have a self-control problem, and have a history of depression or addiction. However, they tend to have a strong sense of the appropriate social and emotional responses to situations. Very intelligent people know what the best social or emotional response would be in a specific situation. However, a person with a very high level of general intelligence or IQ may require some maturity or need to reach a certain age before developing very high levels of social or emotional intelligence. People with high IQs generally need more time to understand how social norms work or how people react in social situations. This is because geniuses or high IQ people tend to stay preoccupied with abstract concepts, they are generally not interested in interacting with people unless it is a very abstract intellectual discussion. The apparent stupidity of the world also seems quite unnerving, so they retreat to their own world. However, as I argued, people with high IQs tend to have a full understanding of appropriate social and emotional reactions and responses, but they may not always act that way.
Howard Gardner, a Harvard professor and psychologist, has recently proposed a theory of multiple intelligences. He has considered nine types of intelligence, including linguistic, musical, and existential intelligence. I would say that the musical and existential intelligences are part of a larger creative intelligence, according to my theory. Linguistic ability is almost a technical ability, as you tend to see the connections between words and concepts quickly. Learning to program computers can be similar to learning a language, so language skills are largely technical skills, and language skills require technical intelligence along with a high level of general intelligence. Gardner also proposed bodily intelligence, but I would think of it as sensitivity or sensory perception rather than intelligence. The pedagogical intelligence proposed by Gardner requires social, technical and general intelligence. So all of Gardner’s “intelligences” can be grouped into the five types of intelligence that I have presented.
As I already mentioned, we need to develop a comprehensive theory of intelligence, and intelligence tests need to measure all five types of intelligence, rather than just general intelligence, which largely defines IQ. Gardner’s theory of the nine types of intelligence is not a very convincing theory, despite its popularity. Developing a comprehensive intelligence test with these five types of intelligence will help us understand a person’s general abilities and will be of great help in occupational psychology, because all occupations seem to require high levels of general intelligence and one or two of the other four. Intelligence types.
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