On 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, you felt like you couldn’t relate to people, you felt like a social misfit, weird, out of place, you never had too many friends, you felt like a loner, you felt like the world it’s too stupid for you to be a part of it, and still feel a bit out of place, my recommendation is that you go to the nearest psychology lab and measure your Intelligence Quotient (IQ). That’s what many young adults must do to avoid prolonged depression. Your IQ score, if it is unusually high or at the level of genius, will give you a meaningful idea of ​​your own emotional condition and the state of the world around you. Then you will stop feeling depressed or suicidal and will simply 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 factor ‘g’, which largely represents the general factor and the ‘s’ or the specific factor that gives us unique or specific abilities to complete specific tasks.

The general factor or ‘g’ is very important since a person with a 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 occupational 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 factor related to technical ability. The 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 is about proposing novel ideas and concepts and indicates a person’s level of creativity. Practical intelligence has to do with logic and is necessary to perform daily tasks.

In this discussion, 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 am inclined to add ‘spiritual intelligence’, but spiritual awareness is a combination of creative and emotional intelligence, so I will not put it in a separate category.

General or cognitive intelligence is similar to the g factor and is related to general intelligence. This is intelligence that is measured in intelligence tests and if you get a high IQ score, it means that you have a high general intelligence that makes you capable of handling all situations in an intelligent way, whether you are running a business, playing chess or training your child. Creative geniuses, as we know them, have high general intelligence and high levels of creative intelligence, which is actually one’s ability to imagine or create things. If you have great 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 will 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 and 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 growing child or adolescent and teacher-student or parent-child relationships. Firefighters, rescue workers, and 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. Businessmen, entrepreneurs, innovators need different levels of creative intelligence, general intelligence and technical intelligence depending on the focus of their business or company. Teachers and academics tend to 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 teachers too, so they must have social intelligence to interact successfully with their students. Journalists, diplomats, activists all have high levels of social intelligence alongside 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, and yet highly creative people are considered geniuses. In general, it is 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 do not measure social intelligence or emotional intelligence. So these IQ tests can be fundamentally incomplete in a way.

It has been argued that people with high IQs are not always socially and emotionally adapted. I will say that geniuses are very much loved 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 subjects. 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 interact with people, have a self-control problem, and have a history of depression or addiction. However, they tend to have a strong sense of appropriate social and emotional responses to situations. Very smart 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 may need to reach a certain age before developing very high levels of social or emotional intelligence. People with high IQs often need more time to understand how social norms work or how people react in social situations. This is because geniuses or people with high IQs tend to remain preoccupied with abstract concepts, usually not interested in interacting with people, unless it is a very abstract intellectual discussion. The apparent stupidity of the world also seems quite disconcerting, so they retreat to their own world. However, as I said, people with high IQs tend to fully understand appropriate social and emotional reactions and responses, but they don’t 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. I would say that the musical and existential intelligences are part of a broader creative intelligence, according to my theory. Language skill is almost a technical skill, as you tend to quickly see the connections between words and concepts. Learning computer programming 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 regard that as sensory sensitivity or 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 should measure all five types of intelligence, rather than just general intelligence that 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 the general abilities of a person 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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