Intelligences about Things and Intelligences about People

Abstract

Human intelligence is redefined in light of new evidence that, in addition to general intelligence, broad mental abilities exist such as quantitative, spatial, and verbal-comprehension intelligences. Many of these broad intelligences pertain to circumscribed topics; that is, to reasoning within a broad content-area. For example, quantitative intelligence is concerned with mathematical reasoning, and spatial intelligence with reasoning about objects and their shapes and movements. Some among the broad intelligences are focused on reasoning about people: People-focused intelligences include personal intelligence (an intelligence about personality), social intelligence, and emotional intelligence. I argue for an understanding of each broad intelligence as involving a group of abilities necessary to reason about a specific subject area. To help organize the broad intelligences, a rationale is provided for categorizing them according to whether they focus mostly on things or on people.

Are People-Centered Intelligences Psychometrically Distinct from Thing-Centered Intelligences? A Meta-Analysis

“…It is worth noting before proceeding that one set of findings already supports the possible existence of a people-thing continuum among intelligences: a growing body of research indicates people-centered intelligences incrementally predict selected criteria over and above thing-centered abilities. For example, personal intelligence predicts such criteria as positive interpersonal relations, better performance in people-centered college courses-but not STEM courses-and other theoretically identified relations over and above verbal, quantitative, and visuospatial abilities (e.g., Bryan 2018;Mayer et al 2018;Mayer and Skimmyhorn 2017). Similar incremental evidence can be found for emotional intelligence (Mayer et al 2008).…”

“…For example, personal intelligence predicts such criteria as positive interpersonal relations, better performance in people-centered college courses-but not STEM courses-and other theoretically identified relations over and above verbal, quantitative, and visuospatial abilities (e.g., Bryan 2018;Mayer et al 2018;Mayer and Skimmyhorn 2017). Similar incremental evidence can be found for emotional intelligence (Mayer et al 2008). Yet, although these findings argue for the importance of people-centered reasoning, such incremental validity could emerge owing to artifacts such as additional reliable variance over the original measure (e.g., Hunsley and Meyer 2003;Sechrest 1963;Westfall and Yarkoni 2016).…”

“…There is converging evidence as to the importance of people-centered intelligences in real life. Such findings include that people-centered intelligences out-predict thingcentered intelligences in regard to certain life outcomes, especially in relation to work and school settings that require reasoning about people (Mayer et al 2018;Mayer and Skimmyhorn 2017). In addition, interventions designed to improve interpersonal understanding positively affects behavior (Durlak et al 2011;Taylor et al 2017).…”

“…Our timeline marks the rise of emotional intelligence in 1990 (Mayer et al 1990;, and the early controversy over whether it could be viably measured (Davies et al 1998;Mayer et al 1999;Zeidner et al 2001)-finally settled in its favor. Still, 18 years after that, personal intelligence was introduced in the late 2000s, with the first measure in 2012 (Mayer 2008;Mayer et al 2012). Concurrently, researchers increasingly regarded nonverbal emotion perception, now called emotion recognition ability (ERAs), as an intelligence itself, perhaps part of emotional intelligence (Schlegel et al 2019b).…”

Advancing the Measurement of Personal Intelligence with the Test of Personal Intelligence, Version 5 (TOPI 5)

“…TOPI scores correlate between r = 0.15 and 0.40 with other broad intelligences such as quantitative and verbal intelligences. The TOPI has a closer relation with ability-assessed emotional intelligence at r = 0.65 to 0.69, and so the two are sometimes referred to as examples of people-centered intelligences [14]. As with other intelligences, TOPI scores are mostly independent of measures of socio-affective styles and self-control, such as those measured by the Big Five—correlating r = 0.25 or less with Openness and Agreeableness and the rest [13,15,16].…”