On Good Leadership: Reflections on Leading Minds after 25 years

By Howard Gardner

Once I had begun to write about the varieties of human intelligence (Gardner, 1983/2011), people frequently asked me about the intelligences that leaders have—as well as the ones that leaders lack or do not need. As I pondered this question—which I’ll return to below—I formulated ideas about how leaders function, what makes for an effective leader, which leaders I have admired and why. As a lifelong citizen of a democratic society, it seemed natural for me to focus on voluntary leaders—people who are able to get, to persuade, to inspire others to think and act differently without forcing them to do so.

In Leading Minds (Gardner, 1995/2011) I portrayed 11 leaders whom I admired—ranging from university presidents, to military leaders, to individuals who—despite lacking an ascribed platform—succeeded in changing the minds and behaviors of many individuals. According to the cognitive view that I proposed in that book, leadership takes place as an exchange between minds. The powerful vehicles that leaders wield are not tangible weapons—they are stories. Leaders create stories—and they embody these stories in the lives that they lead. These “lives of saints” (and of “sinners”) are “existence proofs” so to speak. The evocative stories told and exemplified by effective leaders affect people; and, in turn, the people come to behave and act differently as a result of encountering the stories.

Today, I still believe this account in general. But events of the past 25 years have given me considerable pause.

By 2010, some wrinkles or challenges to my account were already becoming clear. In an edition of Leading Minds published the following year, in a section called “Leadership in the era of truthiness, twaddle, and twitter”, I reflected:

No leader today can afford to ignore this powerful trio: The ease of promulgating false statements; the detritus that permeates the blogosphere; and the prominence of the ad line and the gag line. Indeed the challenge to the leader is to counter these forces when they are inimical to his or her goals and to put forth a powerful counter-story that highlights truth against truthiness, clarity against twaddle, and a developed and substantiated story as opposed to a twitter-length teaser. As I write these lines, US president Barack Obama clearly understands these challenges; but it is uncertain whether he—or, indeed any thoughtful leader capable of complex thought—can be heard and understood above the din. (Gardner 2011, p. xii)

Of course the threats to authentic stories, compellingly told, and actually “lived” have been exemplified by the persona and behavior of President Donald Trump. But I don’t want to focus unduly on Trump because we hear similar contrived stories, and encounter analogous faux embodiments around the world—consider the words and actions of contemporary leaders—Bolsonaro (Brazil), Duterte (Philippines), Orban (Hungary), Erdogan (Turkey), Xi (China), Putin (Russia)… and the list could be easily extended.

Nor are these threats limited to the early twenty-first century. My cautionary words of 2010-2011 could (and perhaps should) have been applicable in the 1930s—in the years leading up to World War II—and no doubt in earlier eras as well. It has long been tempting for leaders to create powerful myths—posing as heroic loners, arrayed against the forces of evil—and to persuade an impressively sizable cohort of followers that what they say is true and that, as a consequence, their edicts should be followed. (Niccolo Machiavelli would not have been surprised). And as I pointed out in Leading Minds, a simple or even simplistic story all too often prevails over one that may be more accurate and more appropriate and more truthful, but also more complex.

 An Approach to Good Leadership

In recent years, as part of what we call The Good Project (thegoodproject.org), my colleagues and I have shifted our focus from what makes for an effective leader to what makes for a good leader. And in this line of research, we have identified the three key features of a good leader:

Excellence: The good leader knows the field in which he occupies an influential role, keeps up with developments, and draws on his knowledge appropriately.

Engagement: The good leader cares about her work, finds it meaningful, looks forward to carrying it out effectively even at times when conditions are not favorable.

Ethics: The good leader ponders the ethical implication of contemplated words and actions, strives to do the right thing, reflects on consequences, and seeks to do better the next time.

It’s not always easy to determine whether someone is a good leader. With respect to excellence, many leaders rely on previous knowledge and/or do not know how to proceed when conditions change significantly. With respect to engagement, one may well be deeply engaged in carrying out work that is compromised or even malevolent (see Shakespeare’s histories and tragedies).

My colleagues and I have been particularly concerned with the ethical dimension. In almost any position of leadership, there are certain well-established norms and rules which can and should be followed. In following such norms, one does not need to exercise one’s ethical muscles. 

The “ethical test” occurs when challenges arise for which the standard procedures are not adequate or appropriate, and when the leader recognizes this conundrum. I’ve termed this recognition the ethical “A-ha.” Indeed, if you don’t recognize and then attempt to deal with the new situation, there is no possibility of an “A-ha” nor, accordingly, for pursuing a better course of actions. 

In such challenging situations, leaders need to reflect on intentions or motives, the means at their disposal, and the necessity of dealing with the consequences of the actions that they undertake or choose deliberately not to undertake (Nye, 2020). Accordingly, we judge the “goodness” of leaders in terms of recognition, action, consequences, and lessons learned. And of course, the cycle continues throughout the tenure of the leader.

Here’s  a rough metric that one can apply in an evaluation of whether leaders qualify as good leaders:

1. They seek to determine the truth and tell the truth; and when they have made errors, they admit it and try to make amends.

2. They recognize the existing norms and abide by them, or are willing to challenge them openly and bear the consequences (which might entail civil disobedience).

3. When the norms are not adequate, or new issues arise, they publicly acknowledge this situation—I call this awareness The ethical “A-ha”.

4. They articulate and ponder the dilemma—they don’t claim to have all the answers.

5. They search for the best input—expert and political—including advice from a “team of rivals’’.

6. They make a decision openly, anticipate the consequences, are poised to change course as necessary, and to revisit the consequences of actions taken or not taken.

7. They indicate their willingness to repeat this cycle and, ultimately, help to bring about a new or revised norm of ethical awareness and reflectiveness with respect to the conditions with which they have been dealing.

A Word on Intelligences

As mentioned, once I began to carry out scholarly work on leadership, I was asked about the kinds of intelligences that leaders had. I formulated an answer to this question: Leaders need linguistic intelligence, because they are essentially story tellers; and they need interpersonal intelligence, because they have  to put themselves in the place of audience members or followers and appeal to their better angels. It is helpful as well if they have intrapersonal intelligence—though, as illustrated by the case of President Ronald Reagan, one can be an effective leader even if one has little inclination toward introspection. Other intelligences (musical, spatial, etc.) are fine, but they are optional.

When asked about Donald Trump’s intelligences, I was initially stumped—because he has modest gifts in language (several commentators have suggested that he is dyslexic, and his vocabulary seems to be quite limited); and clearly he has not an inkling of intrapersonal intelligence. This is not a new story at all—the long-standing saga of populism in the US.

Perhaps we should postulate a new intelligence—media intelligence. Because even if one wants to castigate Trump, one must concede that he mastered the medium of television via his long-running show The Apprentice and has used Twitter in a way which is astoundingly successful (Trump 2020). Media intelligence might be a form or strand of interpersonal intelligence, but one entirely devoid of empathy or of understanding of particular individuals (as contrasted with an appreciation of “the crowd”). And indeed, in the past, successful leaders have displayed mastery of the new media—Franklin Roosevelt (and, alas Adolf Hitler) with respect to radio, John F Kennedy with respect to television, Ronald Reagan with respect to movies, and so on.

It’s also been suggested that Trump has the ability to read the “spirit of the times”, a more significant achievement. That may be so. On the other hand, it’s equally possible that he has long had a litany of complaints and proposals over the decades and—for reasons unconnected to his persona—the spirit of the time intersected with his program.

Concluding Note

My goal in this essay is not to denigrate Trump or to raise other leaders to a higher status. Rather, I have sought to revisit my initial conception of leadership. Specifically, I have emphasized the need to take into account a fast-changing landscape; and the pressures to master the most popular media of communication. Also, I no longer take for granted a democratic society with clear standards of right and wrong and with a faith in the importance of the truth. Rather I have focused on what it means to be a good leader and on the properties and processes that a good leader needs when faced with challenging dilemmas. In a phrase, we don’t need more leaders—we need better ones; and we need to help those with leadership potential to deploy their gifts in pro-social ways. 

 ©Howard Gardner 2020

References

Gardner, H. (1983/2011). Frames of mind: The theory of multiple intelligences. New York: Basic Books.

Gardner, H. (1993) 1993). Creating Minds. New York: Basic Books.

Gardner. H (1995/ 2011). Leading Minds. New York: Basic Books.

Gardner, H. (2011). Truth, Beauty and Goodness Reframed. New York: Basic Books.

Gardner H. Ed. (2010). Good Work; Theory and Practice. Available at: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5c5b569c01232cccdc227b9c/t/5e7e1b520a5e5d2a3e0677fc/1585322850147/GoodWork-Theory_and_Practice-with_covers.pdf

Nye, J. (2020). Do Morals Matter? New York: Oxford University Press.

Trump, M. (2020). Too Much and Never Enough. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Alanis Morrisette on MI Theory

In this recent interview with the LA Times, the singer, songwriter, record producer, and actress, Alanis Morrisette, explained how she uses MI theory with her children.

“My husband and I loosely use Howard Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences in unschooling our kids. The theory holds that there are different types of intelligences, not just one. You could have musical intelligence, verbal intelligence, naturalistic intelligence ... or intrapersonal intelligence, which is the ability to go within yourself. I was never taught about that in school. I was barely taught that at home.”

Alanis Morrisette has written about her take on the theory of multiple intelligences on her website and in 2017, she invited Howard Gardner to appear on her podcast. You can learn more here.

The LA Times interview is reproduced in full below:

By LIZ PHAIR | JULY 29, 2020

Alanis Morissette wants to change your mind. She’ll do it too. Spend an hour talking to her and you’ll realize that you like yourself more than you did before your interaction. She makes gifts of her observations. She never lets you over-share alone. Your life path might diverge from hers, but you’ll come away from a conversation with her feeling strengthened and understood. She listens; maybe that’s the rare thing.

Her breakthrough album, “Jagged Little Pill,” turns 25 this year. She was only 21 when she rocketed to stardom on that, in 1995. I am struck by how fearlessly she tackled taboo subjects in those early songs, how she remained unwavering in her conviction. She became a spokesmodel for a generation of young women hoping to claim their power when she’d barely advanced beyond her teens. In 2019, those same songs became the backbone of a critically acclaimed Broadway musical, and Alanis reasserted her status as a household name. You can’t think of anything ironic without thinking of Alanis.

We were supposed to tour together this summer, before the emergence of COVID-19. I was slated to open for Alanis and Garbage on their sold-out North American run. I can vividly imagine how epic it would have been: the balmy night air in the amphitheater, cellphone lights swaying in the crowd, Alanis belting out the soulful and stunning songs off her new album, out Friday, “Such Pretty Forks in the Road.” I feel cheated.

“But we’re going to do it next summer,” she reminds me. “There’s a lot of important work going on right now that we need to make space for.” Damn it. She’s younger than me. But so wise beyond her years.

Liz Phair: We were supposed to be touring right now.

Alanis Morissette: I know. I was having a moment of silence for that.

Phair: When was your last gig? I saw on Instagram you’d been in Europe.

Morissette: Yes, we were in Europe doing shows and interviews, and right as we were heading back to California, everyone started going into lockdown. What about you?

Phair: Check this out: I was supposed to be on a cruise ship. I am a lifelong avoider of cruise ships. I’ve always thought that the plague that would end the world would start on a cruise ship. But this was run by my friend, Jonathan Coulton. It’s called the JoCo Cruise, and a bunch of nerds and indie people take over the ship. We ended up flying to Santo Domingo on March 11th and flying right back home on the 12th. I have a picture of me on March 11th with this big-ass cruise ship in the background, like, exactly where not to be. It’s a photo I’ll treasure and be horrified by.

Morissette: The thought of touring with you is very healing for me because you were one of the only people — I’m going to start crying — who just felt really sane to me, even though of course you probably felt insane.

Phair: I did feel insane, Alanis. I still feel insane half the time. At the beginning of the pandemic, I was voracious and I was literally reading medical abstracts about the original SARS. My father was an infectious disease specialist, so I grew up with this kind of crazy ... this is right in the wheelhouse of both my paranoia and my expertise. In my crazy brain, I was like, “I will solve this.”

Morissette: We like our answers, we like our control. But this is a really great time to look at the idea of faith, the idea of trust, the idea of not knowing, and living in that kind of limbo grief, limbo fear.

Phair: But it’s hard to get back to being an artist in all this. That’s the maelstrom that I find difficult to create within. Hyper-vigilance and intimacy with self are ...

Morissette: They’re not bedfellows.

Phair: Right. Not many people can sit with themselves and go inward and investigate. A lot of people avoid it. But the pandemic has certainly forced people to do that.

Morissette: But for introverts and empaths, the internal world is heaven. It’s rich. Oh, my God, it’s so juicy in there. For artists and writers and I think moms too, it’s kind of a normal process to be like, “I need a few hours alone to get inside.” These days, I basically get it at 4 in the morning. When do you get your alone time?

Phair: In the middle of the night. It’s like some little spirit comes out of me, and the genie is out of the bottle. When the world is asleep, I have more room. During the beginning of the pandemic, I did this weird thing. I live two blocks from the beach and there was a bioluminescent bloom going on in L.A., and it was spectacular. We weren’t supposed to go down to the water, but I would sneak down with my mask and gloves. During the pandemic, I do my functioning things in the daytime, but my artist self has become a night-timer. There were other night-timers out there in the darkness; I passed a surfer coming up at 3 in the morning, wet from the ocean, who’d just done a session. I have all my big ideas late at night. I have all of my big moments of understanding.

How about you? How are you navigating through the pandemic?

Morissette: I’m so maxed out right now, with three kids [Ed. Ever, 9; Onyx, 4; and Winter, 11 months, with husband Mario Treadway] and a new album, that I’m accepting that overwhelmed feeling. If I resist it, I just create massive suffering for myself.

As a society, though, we’re being crunched into this corner of potential awakening, which I love. We’re being asked what matters the most, what do we value, what do we care about? Because in America, it’s always been like, “I want to look 20 forever, I want to be a millionaire” — or these days billionaire — “I want to be famous.” Now, everyone’s asking, “What’s the new value system? What matters now?”

We have to change everything: Systemic racism, systemic misogyny, systemic fricking everything has got to be dismantled. In business, education, everywhere.

I talk to a lot of people who are freaked out about having to home-school their kids. Parents need to cut themselves some slack. Because no parent is going to re-create what conventional school offers. My oldest son is 9, and we’ve always unschooled him. [Ed. Unschooling is a branch of home-schooling that promotes nonstructured, child-led learning.]

Phair: There is something really troubling about this drive to get our kids back into the classroom. It’s like we’re just training people for the capitalist machine.

Morissette: There are just so many different ways to go about educating kids. God bless Americans, we’re so ethnocentric.

My husband and I loosely use Howard Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences in unschooling our kids. The theory holds that there are different types of intelligences, not just one. You could have musical intelligence, verbal intelligence, naturalistic intelligence ... or intrapersonal intelligence, which is the ability to go within yourself. I was never taught about that in school. I was barely taught that at home. How does one go within and cultivate a world of interiority? For those of us who are highly sensitive and artistic, we go, “Yeah, yeah. Of course.” But going within comes with a lot of negative messaging: “If I go within, I’m going to be filled with fear and pain.”

Phair: My mental health relies on my ability to go within and write songs. That’s an essential part of how I ground myself. I almost don’t know what I’m feeling until I write the song. I find that the older I get, the more I end up weeping when I’m writing because there’s something unblocking. And I also find — word to the wise — that if I want to say something to someone, rather than writing an email or text that I regret, when I write the song, it just settles everything. Somehow, the universe needed to hear it more than that person did.

Morissette: I used to think that I could write songs and never have to deal with human beings. I’d be like, “I’m really angry at that person, so I’m going to go over here in a room and write about it and then never talk to them. It’s perfect.” But turned out, if that person walked into a room, there’d still be some unrest. People are like, “Oh, it must be so healing to write these songs.” It’s clarifying, it’s empowering, but it doesn’t necessarily heal the relationship itself.

I’m Canadian, so I’m basically passive-aggressive. I’m kind, friendly, and then I snap. I’m just a cranky little bitch. There’s just no way around it. Even with my band mates, I’ll just be like, “Mommy hasn’t had a lot of time alone today, so I’m just going to do my thing and I’ll see you guys at an hour.” And they’re like, “Right on, thank you.”

Phair: I’ve been working on learning how to lose my temper because I hold on to it.

Morissette: Anger gets such a bad rap, and it can be such a beautiful force. I mean, it helps us say no. It helps us be activists. It helps us stand up for ourselves, for others. Anger’s so amazing. It’s just that people equate it with something destructive.

Phair: Do you remember when I opened for you a million years ago? We went out to dinner one night, and you were talking to your label about submitting the follow-up to “Jagged Little Pill.” You’d just achieved the absolute pinnacle of success. And yet the label was saying, “You need to do this, you need to do that.” And I just was sitting across from you thinking, there is no end. There’s no amount of success that gives you artistic autonomy. There’s no amount of success where commerce won’t impinge on the art. If you hadn’t earned the ability to walk into an office, drop the songs on their desk, be like, “You’re welcome” and walk back out, there was no endpoint.

Morissette: You said I didn’t have the ability to walk in and drop the music and go, “You’re welcome,” and walk out. The thing is, is I did do that. Their response was, “She’s not very open to feedback.” I used to say, “I’m sorry, is your name on the album cover? It’s my name, my face and it’s my life. So you’re welcome.”

Phair: Did you ever feel pressure, though?

Morissette: A couple of times. I was like, “All right, I’ll re-record ‘Hand in My Pocket’ and see if it’s better,” even though I didn’t want to re-record it and I thought it was finished. Then we’d re-record it, and they’d say, “No, no, no, the original one’s way better.” Sometimes they’re like, “You’re a genius, but change everything about yourself.” Some of that for sure is patriarchy. Some of it is just how the industry is. Record companies are just not compatible with artists. I’m shocked that they even let us be in the same room sometimes.

Back then, it was a very guy-centric time. Labels, musicians: They didn’t know what to do with me. If they couldn’t f— me, they would ignore me. It was like I was an alien. I was going to sleep with them, or I wasn’t going to exist. There were exceptions of course, but that was pretty much how it was. A lot of men in the ‘90s would say to me, “Oh, I love women. Women are amazing.” I’m like, “Oh, no, no. You like to f— women. That’s not the same thing.”

Phair: You and I were both chicks in a male world writing from the point of view of being more than just a girl. I think we both saw ourselves as female but also, more importantly, human. A lot of female artists back then were either masculinized, like they had to hang with the boys and do more coke than them, or they were feminized and fit the hot girl bass-player tokenism. Intuitively, I knew I wanted more room. I wanted more territory for myself. I definitely felt lonely. Now, there are so many young women making music of all sorts, with their visions intact. They wear whatever they want. They make the video the way they want. They play keyboards, drums, whatever. They’re autonomous in a way that I couldn’t have dreamed of back then.

I would have been accepted had I just picked up a bass and played in a male band. I would have been accepted if I’d been a chanteuse who wrote songs and let them be directed by a male producer. But I had the audacity to get onstage and take a spot away from a guy.

Morissette: When “You Oughta Know” was first sent out to radio stations, the response was, “We’re actually playing Sinéad O’Connor, so we’re good.” Or, “We have Tori Amos in our rotation. We can’t add another woman. Sorry.” That changed pretty fricking quickly.

Phair: Thanks in large part to you.

Morissette: I saw that the wave was coming, and I had the surfboard. I’m like, “Let me get up there on the crest.” It was so ready to change.

Phair: The programming at radio stations used to drive me crazy! Thank God I went to Oberlin. It was a very politically progressive college, and it quickly smartened me up about how women are represented in our culture. Like, how many times a woman’s body was used to advertise things: dish soap, tires, real estate, cars. The female body was seen constantly, and their heads would almost be cut off, like they were practically in porn. I wanted to take all those female bodies that I saw and tell their story. That’s why, on “Exile in Guyville,” I took the Rolling Stones’ “Exile on Main Street” and gave the girls in those lyrics their own voice. I wanted to put the story back in the silenced hot bodies. Subjectify the objectification or whatever.

Morissette: What you’re describing, that hyper-sexualizing of women. … There’s a new song on my record called “Sandbox Love,” and it’s really about, what does sex look like post-sexual abuse, post-harassment? How you have sex after abuse is really at the forefront for me right now, because I’ve experienced so much sexual abuse in my past. And so “Sandbox Love” is about that.

Phair: I would argue that all women, because of patriarchy, and all men, because of patriarchy, are going to have to learn how to have sex after abuse, because in some subtle way, we’ve all been given an abusive picture of what sex and love is. Women may need it more, but men need it too because a lot of times they’re just pantomiming what they think they’re supposed to be doing.

When you come down to the best of what sex is, it’s this naked, awkward ... You know that space that you can hold with someone that’s so special?

Morissette: It’s intimate. Yes. I love it.

Phair: It’s intimate, and you don’t have your armor up, and you’re not showing off. The older I get, the more that is my favorite part of life.

Morissette: Everything, even trauma recovery, is all about just coming back into the body.

Phair: I’m so glad to see your face. I love women. Women are the best.

Morissette: We’re going to hit the stage as soon as it’s OK to tour. I can’t wait.

This interview was moderated by Times television

COVID-19 Has Taught Us What Intelligence Really Is

Robert Sternberg’s recent article in Inside Higher Ed argues that COVID-19 has shown more clearly than ever that IQ tests and other tests of their ilk, such as the SAT or ACT, are not valid indicators of the type of intelligence that actually matters. According to Sternberg, intelligence is the ability to adapt to the environment. 

Howard Gardner comments:

COVID-19 certainly explodes any test or textbook notion of intelligence. As you may know, I've maintained that IQ-type tests look at the combination of linguistic and logical intelligence, with a dollop of spatial intelligence sometimes tossed in. They are fine predictors of who could be a law professor—and indeed, perhaps, a Talmud scholar. But they have little to do with recognizing and solving many “real-life” problems, opening up few fields of knowledge, doing the right thing, or choosing the better alternative in difficult circumstances. That's left lots of room for scholars like Robert Sternberg and me to busy ourselves with.

Sterberg’s article from Inside Higher Ed is reproduced in full below.

COVID-19 Has Taught Us What Intelligence Really Is

Roberg J. Sternberg | August 31, 2020 

COVID-19 has taught us something important about intelligence. It’s not just that we can get by without IQ-test proxies like the SAT and ACT that go by a number of different names to avoid being called IQ tests. (Research by Douglas K. Detterman, professor of psychology at Case Western Reserve University, and others shows that these tests are essentially disguised tests of general intelligence.) It’s not that such tests administered online at home will almost certainly be invalid. Rather, it’s that the tests never measured what’s important in the first place, and we should have known better. Actually, we did know better.

Ever since psychologists started measuring intelligence, including the academic skills measured by IQ tests and their proxies, they have known that intelligence is not really your ability to solve obscure multiple-choice problems with largely trivial content that will have no impact on your future life whatsoever. Instead, intelligence is the ability to adapt to the environment.

And that’s what Alfred Binet and David Wechsler, the founders of the intelligence test movement, said. Any evolutionary theorist should be able to tell you that: organisms that don’t adapt die. Species that don’t adapt die off. That’s also the consensus of psychologists in scholarly symposia that have sought to understand what intelligence is. Trivial academic problems don’t measure well your ability to adapt to the environment.

Why are these tests such mediocre measures of your ability to adapt to the environment -- of true intelligence? Compare a real problem, like that of dealing with COVID-19, to the characteristics of standardized-test problems. The characteristics of real-world problems are entirely different from the characteristics of problems on standardized tests. Standardized test problems are mostly multiple choice or short answer and have a right or wrong answer. Real problems require extended answers; there is no perfect answer, and sometimes, not even a very good one. Standardized test problems are decontextualized, emotionally bland and have no real-life stakes. Real-world problems are highly contextualized, emotionally arousing and may have high stakes. Standardized test problems are solved quickly and then you are done; real-life ones often take a long time and, after you think you have solved them, often come back.

Most important, real-world problems require you actively to deploy your intelligence -- to decide seriously to use it. Standardized tests measure an inert form of intelligence -- one that may exist in your head somewhere but is rarely actually put into real-world use. Intelligence is not just about an inert ability to take tests; it is about the active deployment of that ability to solve problems of life.

In research in my labs at Yale and Cornell Universities on intelligence as adaptive knowledge and skills, we have consistently found, over a period of many years, that scores on academic types of tests do not show much positive correlation, if any at all, with tests of adaptive skills. For example, some years back, my colleagues and I conducted a study of young people far away in rural Kenya. We discovered that an important life skill in rural Kenya, knowing how to recognize and treat parasitic illnesses with natural herbal medicines, actually was negatively correlated with IQ. The better you did on the practical test, the worse you did on the academic test, and vice versa.

At the time, a journal reviewer thought that the test was too “far out” -- that knowing how to treat illnesses was not what intelligence is about. He was wrong. You know who the really adaptively unintelligent people are today, in the age of COVID-19, not only in Kenya but also right where you live? Not the ones who get low standardized test scores. Rather, they are the ones who refuse to wear masks, who don’t socially distance and who don’t trouble themselves to wash their hands. They are the ones who, from a Darwinian adaptive standpoint, are unintelligent, regardless of their IQ or standardized test scores. They have inert intelligence but do not choose actively to deploy it in the real world. They thereby not only risk their own health and life; they also put other people’s lives at risk when they breathe on them. They might literally be the cause of others’ deaths. The principle behind the tests we used in Kenya applies anywhere: in the end, intelligence is about adaptation to the environment, not solving trivial or even meaningless problems.

In our current research at Cornell, we are measuring people’s adaptive intelligence both at a micro level and at a macro level. A micro-level problem might concern an interpersonal issue, such as how one deals with two friends who are fighting and both expect you to take their side. A macro-level problem might deal with two nations who are having a dispute over shared water resources, where one nation is accused of taking more than its fair share of water. Solutions are free response and are scored for the extent to which they seek a common good -- balancing the interests of the various parties over the long as well as the short term -- through the use of positive ethical values (such as acting toward others as you wish them to act toward you).

Is adaptive intelligence really important? Well, you be the judge. Which skill is more important for the great majority of students in college once they have graduated: the ability to solve artificial verbal and math problems or, alternatively, to address and try to solve problems of global climate change, air and water pollution, global pandemics, bacterial resistance to antibiotics, gun violence against schoolchildren (other than the usual pathetic “our thoughts and prayers are with them”), and the return of would-be autocrats to declining democracies?

Are you going to buy in to the notion that what matters is standardized test scores? They measure a small part of intelligence, but only a very small part. IQs increased 30 points around the world in the 20th century (the so-called Flynn effect), and given the current problems in the world, that increase does not appear to have bought us much.

In my in-press book, Adaptive Intelligence, I argue that all us, including colleges and universities, ought to focus not on producing test takers who are content to see the world go to hell in a handbasket so long as they get their degrees and make their money. Look around us. It’s not working! Instead, we need to develop and assess students’ adaptive skills in and willingness to make the world a better place. If not now, when?

Robert J. Sternberg is professor of human development at Cornell University and honorary professor of psychology at the University of Heidelberg, Germany. His upcoming book, Adaptive Intelligence: Surviving and Thriving in Times of Uncertainty, will be published in February 2021 by Cambridge University Press.

Tiny Pieces for the Jigsaw Puzzle that is Multiple Intelligences

As most readers know, I have not worked actively on “MI theory” for many years.  And yet, it is very often on my mind and I try to monitor scientific findings that are relevant to the theory.

I am a regular reader of Science, the premier scientific journal in the United States. In a recent issue (7/31/20), there were actually three articles that are relevant to the theory.

1. “Inside the Paleolithic Mind”   
   A tool made 1.75 million years ago represented a technological breakthrough. The author infers that the maker, homo erectus, devised a distinctive flaking technique that allowed him (or her) to butcher animal carcasses with precision.
   MI Implication: Spatial and bodily intelligence (emerging a million years before human language)

2. “Autobiographical Subnetworks”  
   There are nine subnetworks within the default-mode network that deal with autobiographical memory and other types of internally oriented cognition.
   MI Implication: Intrapersonal intelligence, clearly a distinct area of cognition

3. “This Man Can Read Letters But Numbers Are A Blank”  
   A patient with brain damage was able to read regular prose but could not read numbers, though he was still able to do mental arithmetic and perform other mathematical operations.

   This case brought me back to my earlier work in neurology and neuropsychology, where we observed the dissociation between reading numbers and words. (See The Shattered Mind: The Person after Brain Damage).
   MI Implication: Linguistic intelligence is dissociated from logical-mathematical intelligence

In my 2020 memoir, A Synthesizing Mind, I describe the development of MI theory, while conceding that it is certainly not the final word in the study of intellect. But neither, I emphasize, can those who posit a single kind of intelligence explain these dissociations—psychological, neurological, and chronological.

Howard Gardner on Maria Montessori

The Maria Montessori Italian Association and University of Macerata recently invited Howard Gardner to speak at the Montessori 150 year Anniversary Conference, commemorating 150 years since the birth of Maria Montessori. Gardner’s talk was shown by video to a wide audience of Italian educators; he also made a live, virtual appearance for a Q&A session.

In his talk, Gardner spoke about the context of great Italian thinkers on education: Maria Montessori and also Loris Malaguzzi, why he respects the Montessori approach, and the reason Montessori education has endured. He also touched on how he used Montessori ideas and materials in his own research. 

A video of the talk and following Q&A (in English) is available here.