How Am I Smart?

Howard Gardner

The topic in General Psychology this week is intelligence. While most people think of intelligence as “book smarts,” we’ve been discussing more up-to-date theories such as that of Howard Gardner.  He has proposed that there are actually multiple types of intelligences which traditional intelligence tests don’t measure. While the theory is a bit controversial (big surprise!), many components of it have merit.

Can we say that a person with a high degree of logical-mathematical intelligence who can’t keep a job is smarter than a person with a high level of interpersonal intelligence who has an average IQ? Is a person with a high degree of bodily-kinesthetic intelligence (like a dancer or athlete) “dumber” than someone with linguistic intelligence who can write short stories?

Here’s a list of Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences from your text (Lefton and Brannon, Vango Books, 403) with a brief description of each. After reading and thinking about these types, share whether you think Gardner’s theory has validity. You might also consider answer Gardner’s question: “How am I smart?” There’s a big difference between that and, “How smart am I?”

• Linguistic: Sensitivity to the sounds, rhythms, and meanings of words; sensitivity to the different functions of language.
• Logical-mathematical: Sensitivity to and capacity to discern logical or numerical patters; ability to handle long chains of reasons.
• Musical: Ability to produce and appreciate rhythm, pitch, and timber. Appreciation of the forms of musical expressiveness.
• Spatial: Capacity to perceive the visual-spatial world accurately and to perform transformation on initial perceptions.
• Bodily-kinesthetic: Ability to control bodily movements and to handle objects skillfully.
• Interpersonal: Capacity to discern and respond appropriately to the moods, temperaments, motivations, and desire of other people.
• Intrapersonal: Ability to access one’s own feelings and to discriminate among them and draw on them to guide behavior; acknowledge one’s own strengths, weaknesses, desires, and intelligence.
• Naturalistic: Ability to make fine discriminations among the flora and fauna of the natural word or the patterns and deigns of human artifacts.
• Spiritual: Ability to master abstract concepts about being and also the ability to attain a certain state of being.
• Existential: Capacity to understand one’s place in the universe and the nature of being in both physical and psychological terms.

I Want a Trophy Too!!

One of the pioneers in learning theories is B.F. Skinner, and yesterday’s class discussion about Dr. Skinner’s operant conditioning has provided some food for thought. Like Skinner, I believe that many of our behaviors are learned by events in our environment. Furthermore, I think that just about any type of behavior can be modified (even one’s own) with the administration with the appropriate reinforcement at the right time.

That said, let’s look at one of the examples that was bandied about in yesterday’s class. I shared an event in which a coach awarded a first prize trophy to the participant whom he perceived to be the best player at the end of a weeklong hockey camp. Sounds like a good idea, right? Apparently the “losers,” the 11-year-olds who didn’t go home with a trophy, thought it was a horrible idea. They got angry and acted out in disrespectful, childish ways, whining and yelling and demanding an award. The onlooker who reported this scene with me was aghast, especially since the parents did nothing to quell the loud protests.

In class, some people agreed with the parents. After all, they reasoned, shouldn’t everyone get a trophy for participating? Someone else spoke up and said that was poor preparation for life, especially in the job arena. Everyone can’t be boss. Everyone can’t be employee of the month or teacher of the year.

Others agreed with this line of thinking, and then someone said that maybe employers should just abolish that sort of completion. We need workplaces where everyone’s a winner, not just the ones who excel in their jobs, put in overtime, take on extra projects, and truly extend themselves far beyond those who put in their standard eight hours.

Can you see where this is going? Within minutes, the subject of entitlement had come up. Somehow people in our society have developed a sense of entitlement, a feeling that just because they show up on a regular basis, they deserve a trophy, a raise, a prize, or even an A. If everyone wins, what’s the incentive to excel?

The hockey camp scenario is typical for many of life’s tricky situations. Choose at least one of these questions and respond to it:

• Is there another approach the coach might have considered?
• Should there be one winner, or should all the children go home with trophies?
• What’s the lesson learned? That we’re all equally mediocre?
• When everyone gets the gold star, is that fair to the truly best player, student, or employee?
• Is there a situation in your life that can be compared to this one?

Donkey Story

A couple of things I witnessed this past weekend reminded me of the trend in psychology known as positive psychology, a mindset that emphasizes optimism, personal choice, and happiness in human development and overall mental health. Generally, the so-called lay person thinks of psychology as a field in which people with mental and emotional disorders are helped by talk therapy, drugs, or ECT, and while those things happen, psychology is much, much more.

On Saturday afternoon, I was in one of my favorite retail establishments in Myrtle Beach when I heard a loud, angry voice. It was coming from a man standing in the aisle who was evidently upset with the way the young woman he was with had disciplined a child. He used the f-word a couple of times and then added the b-word to it. By this time, the small child was crying, and the woman was talking back. Actually, they seemed pretty evenly matched as far as their yelling obscenities skills were concerned. Neither seemed aware of the sobbing child, and as they walked away towards the door, both were still hurling insults and threats.

What does this have to do with positive psychology? Read on.

On Sunday, someone told a story about an old donkey who fell in a deep, dried-up well. His owner tried to get him out, but his efforts were in vain. Finally, he realized that nothing he did was going to get the donkey out of the well, so he came up with an alternate plan. He called his neighbors and asked them to bring their shovels so that they could help him fill in the well. After all, it was dry and useless, and the donkey was old anyway.

At first, the donkey brayed and carried on something fierce. He was scared and angry. Still, the men persisted in their dirt shoveling. Suddenly, they realized that the donkey was quiet, and when they looked down into the well to see what was going on, they saw something remarkable. Every time someone hurled a shovel of dirt on him, the donkey shook it off and then stepped up on it. The men continued shoveling, and the donkey continued climbing until eventually he was above ground.

You don’t have to be a psychoanalyst to see the moral of the story. When life throws dirt on you, shake it off and keep stepping up. You don’t have to get buried by dirt. You don’t have to stay trapped at the bottom of a well. No matter how many people are actively involved in shoveling dirt on you, you have a choice to shake it off and step up…or not.

How can this be applied to the fighting couple?