Intelligence Key Questions

1. How should intelligence be defined?
There are many controversies regarding the definition of intelligence. While the most agreed definition of intelligence is a person’s ability to learn from experiences and use them to solve future problems, some psychologists believe that intelligence can only be tested as cultural-related issue as different environments demand for different types of intelligence.

2. What are the elements of intelligence?
There are two big theories about the elements of intelligence. Spearman’s theory argues that there is a general intelligence, called the “g” factor, in which everyone possesses while Gardner and Sternberg believe that there are multiple intelligences in a person. The examples of these multiple intelligences are language intelligence, musical intelligence, and bodily-kinesthetic intelligence.

3. Is intelligence testing valid? Reliable? Ethical?
Modern intelligence testing is not valid as it should be because there is still no single test that can fully explain a person’s intelligence; however, with the testing systems today, the results are reliable as they produce a normal distribution. Some critics argue intelligence testing is unethical due to its bias; for example, the SAT is believed to have gender bias because men are generally better at the skills tested.

4. How can variations in intelligence be explained?
There is still no conclusion about the origin of variations in intelligence, but the most approved theory is that intelligence comes from both heredity and environment. Researches reveal that there is a higher correlation between identical twins more than fraternal twins, which supports heredity theory; however, the correlation between identical twins is higher when the twins are reared together than reared apart, which in this case supports environment theory.