RELATIVITY OF INTELLIGENCE IN PSYCHOLOGY AND ITS ADVERBIAL FUNCTION IN ORDINARY LANGUAGE, THE

Behavior and Philosophy, 2003 by Oliveira-Castro, Jorge M, Oliveira-Castro, Karina M

ABSTRACT: Psychological interpretations of intelligence have varied considerably. Theoretical approaches have differed, among other things, with respect to the number, type, and level of abilities implied by the concept. Recent investigations have suggested, moreover, that people's conception of intelligence is, at least in part, culturally determined, depending upon one's country of origin or ethnic group. In the present paper, we suggest that this theoretical and cultural relativity of the concept is related to the logic of its use in ordinary language. An analysis of the use of intelligence in ordinary language indicated that the concept has an adverbial function, which characterizes an action as successful or well executed under certain conditions. In addition to this, the concept is used at different levels, functioning as an adverbial summary of an individual's actions in general or specific abilities. This adverbial function may be related to the theoretical relativity of intelligence found in psychology, since the concept may be used at various different levels of analysis. Considering that each culture or group may adopt different criteria to identify successful actions, the cultural relativity of intelligence is compatible with its use in ordinary language.

Key words: intelligence, conceptual analysis, ordinary language

Theoretical and Cultural Relativity of Intelligence

The identification of individual characteristics and abilities associated with intelligence has been the topic of a large variety of empirical and theoretical research. Some authors have interpreted intelligence as referring to a general characteristic that permeates all actions of an individual (e.g., Reed & Jensen, 1992; Spearman, 1927), whereas others have proposed that the mind is formed by different, and independent, more specific abilities, the number of which has varied from three (e.g., Sternberg, 1996) to seven (e.g., Gardner, 1993; Thurstone, 1938), up to 150 (Guilford, 1959). More recently, multifactorial, often hierarchical, models, which attempt to integrate general and specific abilities, have been proposed (e.g., Ackerman & Heggestad, 1997; Carroll, 1993). Independently of the number of abilities or characteristics involved, intelligence has been associated with individual differences in biological characteristics (e.g., Haier, Nuechterlein, Hazlett, Wu, & Paek, 1988; Reed & Jensen, 1992; Willerman, Schultz, Rutledge, & Bigler, 1992), elementary cognitive processes (e.g., Deary & Stough, 1996; Fagan, 2000; Hunt, 1978; Nettelbeck & Lally, 1976; Newell & Simon, 1972), and broad, less elementary, cognitive components (e.g., Piaget, 1952; Sternberg, 1977, 1985).

These different uses of intelligence illustrate the relativity of the concept in psychology, which has been interpreted as referring to phenomena belonging to quite different levels of analysis. Some of these different usages were pointed out by Howard (1993), who identified three different concepts of intelligence in psychology. The first concept would be related to general intelligence, "a biological difference among people which correlates with performance on virtually all mental tasks" (p. 31). A second concept, identified by Howard, describes a characteristic of behavior, when the word is used as an adjective rather than a noun. Intelligent behavior would be well-adapted behavior. The third concept would be intelligence as a set of abilities, the specification of which may vary considerably among different authors. Howard concluded that these three concepts are used in psychology and that much unnecessary controversy would be avoided if researchers were to specify which one of them they were using.

In addition to this theoretical relativity of the concept, there is a growing body of evidence indicating that people's implicit theories of intelligence (cf. Sternberg, Conway, Ketron, & Bernstein, 1981) are influenced by cultural differences. According to Sternberg (2000), as different cultures value different things, the meaning of success depends on the culture. Each culture would then have its own stories of success, which would serve as models and exemplars for their children. If a given community places more value to interpersonal relationships than another one, the former would, more likely than not, hold a conception of intelligence that emphasizes social skills more than the latter. Recent research indicates, for example, that the conceptions of intelligence found in some Asian and African cultures place more emphasis on social skills than those in the United States (cf. Sternberg & Kaufman, 1998; Yang & Sternberg, 1997). Similar cultural differences were also identified in the United States when comparing groups of immigrant parents to American-born parents (cf. Okagaki & Sternberg, 1993). Some results also suggest that conceptions of intelligence may vary even in the same culture depending upon people's pro-social or antisocial group (cf. Sternberg, 2000) or occupation (cf. Sternberg et al., 1981).