In the fall of 1994, the publication of Herrnstein and Murray's book The Bell Curve sparked a new round of debate about the meaning of intelligence test scores and the nature of intelligence. The debate was characterized by strong assertions as well as by strong feelings. Unfortunately, those assertions often revealed serious misunderstandings of what has (and has not) been demonstrated by scientific research in this field. Although a great deal is now known, the issues remain complex and in many cases still unresolved. Another unfortunate aspect of the debate was that many participants made little effort to distinguish scientific issues from political ones. Research findings were often assessed not so much on their merits or their scientific standing as on their supposed political implications. In such a climate, individuals who wish to make their own judgments find it hard to know what to believe. tatives. Other members were chosen by an extended consultative process, with the aim of representing a broad range of expertise and opinion.The Task Force met twice, in January and March of 1995. Between and after these meetings, drafts of the various sections were circulated, revised, and revised yet again. Disputes were resolved by discussion. As a result, the report presented here has the unanimous support of the entire Task Force.

This article presents a triangular theory of love. According to the theory, love has three components: (a) intimacy, which encompasses the feelings of closeness, connectedness, and bondedness one experiences in loving relationships; (b) passion, which encompasses the drives that lead to romance, physical attraction, and sexual consummation; and (c) decision/commitment, which encompasses, in the short term, the decision that one loves another, and in the long term, the commitment to maintain that love. The amount of love one experiences depends on the absolute strength of these three components, and the kind of love one experiences depends on their strengths relative to each other. The three components interact with each other and with the actions that they produce and that produce them so as to form a number of different kinds of loving experiences. The triangular theory of love subsumes certain other theories and can account for a number of empirical findings in the research literature, as well as for a number of experiences with which many are familiar firsthand. It is proposed that the triangular theory provides a rather comprehensive basis for understanding many aspects of the love that underlies close relationships.

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A prestudy and four experiments were conducted in order to understand the nature and use of people's implicit theories of intelligence, creativity, and wisdom. In the prestudy, a brief questionnaire was sent out to professors in each of the fields of art, business, philosophy, and physics, and was also given to laypersons. The questionnaire asked subjects to list behaviors characteristic of an ideally intelligent, creative, or wise person in one's field of endeavor, or in general, for laypersons. In Experiment 1, individuals from the same populations rated, on a 9-point scale, the extent to which each of the behaviors listed at least twice in the Prestudy was characteristic of an ideally intelligent, creative, or wise individual. In Experiment 2, a subset of the behaviors from the prestudy was sorted by subjects in order to yield a multidimensional space characterizing the subjects' implicit theories for each of intelligence, creativity, and wisdom. In Experiment 3, subjects rated themselves on a subset of the behaviors from the prestudy, and these ratings were correlated with "ideal prototype" ratings to yield a measure of resemblance to the prototype. Resemblance scores were then correlated with scores on standardized ability tests. In Experiment 4, subjects rated hypothetical individuals described in simulated letters of recommendation in terms of their intelligence, creativity, and wisdom. The results revealed that people have systematic implicit theories of intelligence, creativity, and wisdom, and that they use these implicit theories accurately both in evaluating themselves and in evaluating hypothetical others. Moreover, the implicit theories for each of the constructs show at least some convergent-discriminant validity with respect to each other.

The author presents a balance theory of wisdom. First, some alternative approaches to wisdom are reviewed, including philosophical, implicit theoretical, and explicit theoretical ones. Second, the concept of tacit knowledge and its role in wisdom are discussed. Third, a balance theory of wisdom is presented, according to which wisdom is defined as the application of tacit knowledge as mediated by values toward the achievement of a common good through a balance among multiple (a) intrapersonal, (b) interpersonal, and (c) extrapersonal interests in order to achieve a balance among (a) adaptation to existing environments, (b) shaping of existing environments, and (c) selection of new environments. This theory is compared to some other theories, and wisdom as a construct is compared to some other constructs. Measurement issues are also discussed. It is concluded that it might be worthwhile for American society to emphasize development of wisdom in schooling more than it has in the past.