Rethinking intelligence

In a previous post, I discussed Ackerman’s (2023) “Intelligence . . . Moving Beyond the Lowest Common Denominator” published in American Psychologist. Here’s another response to his article. Sternberg (2023) published “Intelligence is not the ‘entire repertoire of knowledge’, but rather the repertoire of adaptive knowledge: Commentary on Ackerman (2023).” in American Psychologist. Here’s the edited abstract and article: 

Intelligence, historically, has been defined as the ability of an individual to adapt to the environment. Building on this definition, I argue for a concept of adaptive intelligence whereby adapting to, shaping, and selecting real-world environments so as to recognize, define, and solve real-world problems—not just artificial ones—is the core of what constitutes intelligent thought and behavior. 

According to Ackerman (2023), “Intelligence is the entire repertoire of knowledge (declarative, procedural, and tacit) and skills available to the individual to solve tasks that demand cognitive, perceptual, and/or psychomotor processing and behaviors, and the processes to acquire new knowledge and skills” (p. 285).

On the one hand, Ackerman’s (2023) definition of intelligence represents a substantial augmentation of, and improvement upon, the conception of intelligence as g, or general intelligence (e.g., Carroll, 1993). Ackerman’s definition recognizes that intellectual performance goes well beyond the knowledge and skills commonly assessed by so-called “IQ tests.” Other investigators previously have proposed broader conceptions of intelligence (e.g., Gardner, 1983; Sternberg, 1999), and some investigators have proposed augmenting the concept of intelligence to include emotional (Rivers et al., 2020), practical (Sternberg, 1997), and other forms of intelligence. But Ackerman (2022) goes beyond even these broad conceptions in including the “entire repertoire of knowledge” (p. 285). This definition would include, for example, certain job-related skills of a carpenter or plumber that traditional conceptions of intelligence would not encompass.

Although Ackerman’s (2023) definition is an improvement, I suggest it is lacking because it, like many other contemporary conceptions of intelligence, represents a neglect of the fundamental insight of early theorists of intelligence, such as Binet and Simon (1916), Wechsler (1940), and other early experts (“Intelligence and Its Measurement,” 1921)—that intelligence, at its core, is the ability to adapt to the environment. The whole biological basis of intelligence is in giving organisms a selective adaptive advantage. For example, what early humans lacked in physical capacities they made up for in adaptive intelligence, which nevertheless enabled them to survive and even thrive.

Ackerman’s (2023) unselective knowledge accumulation definition appears to treat all knowledge as largely equal parts of this repertoire, but they are not. Some kinds of knowledge are (a) adaptively useful, others, (b) adaptively irrelevant, and still others, (c) adaptively harmful. Adaptively useful information would include things like how to protect oneself (and others) against (a) toxins in the environment, (b) contagious diseases, and (c) crime (e.g., pickpocketing). 

Adaptively irrelevant information (for most people) would be memorizing, for example, a novel or a random sequence of musical notes. Adaptively harmful knowledge would be absorbing in detail, and also believing, the contents and perhaps acquiring procedural knowledge of how to act hatefully in response to anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim, racist, or generally hate-filled tracts, such as The Turner Diaries or The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, or of contemporary conspiracy theories, such as that vaccinations against COVID-19 actually cause the disease. Such knowledge might actually decrease adaptive intelligence.

My theory of adaptive intelligence (Sternberg, 2019, 2021) is based on the notion of intelligence as adaptation to the environment, as in the first three examples above. Ackerman (2023) seems to have misunderstood the theory when he states that assessments are “outside of most individuals’ areas of knowledge or expertise” (p. 292). If knowing how to protect oneself against COVID-19 or crime or toxins in the environment is outside individuals’ areas of knowledge, something is seriously wrong with what we are teaching our students.

The fundamental problem with Ackerman’s (2023) definition, as stated in the article, is that adaptively useful, irrelevant, and harmful information can all be part of the “entire repertoire of knowledge” (p. 285). Greater intelligence is not merely in having knowledge but rather, adaptively, in discerning what knowledge one has is actually true and what knowledge is useful. Most Republicans in the United States, for example, believe they “know” the 2020 U.S. presidential election was stolen (Greenberg, 2022), despite the lack of any substantive empirical evidence.

The risk of a definition such as Ackerman’s is that it fails, as so much schooling does today, to distinguish between adaptively valuable and adaptively questionable or even maladaptive knowledge. What is missing today is not so much acquisition of knowledge, but rather skills for curation of that knowledge. Such curation would be used to determine which knowledge is accurate, which is questionable, and which is false. It is often difficult to judge.

The world faces enormous challenges—global climate change, air and water pollution, pandemics, gross economic disparity, the rise (once again) or ruthless autocrats, and weapons of mass destruction, to name a few. Intelligence needs to be deployed to the solution of these and other problems. Intelligence needs to be deployed to adaptive solutions, not to just accumulating vast stores of any kind of knowledge, no matter how school or job relevant. As Ackerman (2023) recognizes, critical, creative, practical, and wise thinking are keys to curating knowledge (Sternberg, 2021). Traditional notions of intelligence and Ackerman’s alike, I suggest, are not up to the challenges the humans face right here and now in the struggle for not just individual but also species survival. If we, as a species, use our “vast stores” of knowledge to wipe out ourselves and our potential future generations, were we really intelligent? Intelligence is to be found in the adaptive deployment of knowledge, not merely in its accumulation.

I will conclude by referring back to Ackerman, who responds to Sternberg in the same journal. He argues that Sternberg is defining unselective knowledge accumulation in ways that include false beliefs. He also asserts that Sternberg’s position implies that knowledge of arts and music if “not somehow adaptive, it is irrelevant and thus not intellectual.” He further claims, “Sternberg proposes to assess the intelligence of a musician and an artist by asking them how they could solve global climate change, whereas my proposal is to ask them about their respective knowledge of music and art, among other domains for which they have knowledge skills.”

I’ve made it pretty clear that I detest the use of IQ tests as a “gold standard” for measuring intelligence. Because of the nature of research funding, however, we are not going to see them replaced any time soon and those who like quick and dirty answers to questions will continue to use them. I, with Sternberg, think it is important to ask the question: What can this person do? The answer to that question requires a different approach to measurement and the relationship to the client. I think it is especially important in our complex multicultural world. What people bring to the table is often not the repertoire that IQ tests test since, after all, they were designed to measure what educated White men were supposed to know at the beginning of the 20th century and have barely changed since then. It also invites professionals to carefully examine what they want clients to do with information they are provided after assessment.