Is IQ overrated? Why some psychologists say it's better to measure intelligence differently

Seemingly no one wants a low IQ. People with self-reported low intelligence quotients describe struggling with self-esteem issues and romantic hardships. The Environmental Protection Agency is reevaluating its support for fluoridation because of reported drops in IQ scores, while the Supreme Court is reconsidering death row cases on the basis that certain inmates’ low IQs might be mitigating factors in their sentences. “Low IQ” is a common insult from online forums to mainstream political debates.

All of these news stories are linked by one assumption: The idea that IQ is synonymous with a person’s intelligence. This is a widespread belief, but is it based on scientific evidence? Like an emperor has no clothes situation, do we fearfully accept IQ tests as the primary means of measuring intelligence so we will not have our own intelligence challenged?

Psychologist Howard Gardner, a research professor at Harvard University, argues that the famous so-called “intelligence quotient” tests pioneered by French psychologist Alfred Binet and French psychiatrist Théodore Simon do not capture the full breadth of humanity’s cognitive abilities. He also says his ideas are more relevant today than ever — especially as Americans develop an anti-science culture that, among other things, drastically overrates the significance of IQ tests.

The original IQ test tried to measure memory, attention and problem solving, while modern versions focus on spatial perception, language abilities and mathematical skills, which sounds pretty thorough. But as demonstrated in two recently published collections of papers — “The Essential Howard Gardner on Education” and “The Essential Howard Gardner on Mind,” both from Teachers College Press — Gardner shows we need more than that to truly understand human intelligence, especially as artificial intelligence enters the classroom.

IQ tests assess human intelligence in much the same way that a Polaroid captures human beauty; it captures objective details, but only from a single snapshot in time and mitigated by the eye of the beholder. In contrast to this simplistic method for measuring the mind, Gardner identifies seven distinct types of intelligence: Linguistic intelligence, which is utility of language; logical-mathematical intelligences; spatial intelligence, which is used to shape the physical world; musical intelligence; bodily-kinesthetic intelligence, such as the physical skills displayed by surgeons, athletes and dancers; interpersonal intelligence, or the ability to understand others; and intrapersonal intelligence, or the ability to honestly and accurately understand one’s self.

Not everyone agrees with Gardner. Conservative commentator and psychologist Dr. Jordan Peterson has dismissed the concept of multiple intelligences as being a “fad” and “rubbish,” and in his own popular videos seems to take for granted that IQ tests accurately measure intelligence. Even though scientific evidence consistently shows IQ tests are not reliable, the notion that IQ equates with high intelligence seems to be embedded in our political and educational culture. If nothing else, Gardner hopes his books can stem that tide. Salon spoke with Gardner about how to make that a reality.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

People commonly associate IQ with intelligence. How do you feel about our culture's obsession with this particular test as a metric for measuring intellect?

[Alfred] Benet had no interest in anything genetic. He was interested in predicting who would do well at a certain kind of school. If you and I were parents, and we wanted to know how our kid would do, the IQ test does as well as anything else you can do in 15 minutes or an hour. But at schools, where AI [artificial intelligence] will be much more important every month, the less good an instrument we have [in IQ tests]. We need to develop different ways of assessing people's intelligence or talents.

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I gave an important talk to colleagues less than a month ago, and I said, “Look, we all use the word ‘smart’, but if you're trying to decide whether somebody in physics should get tenure, you're going to have entirely different criteria then when it's somebody who's teaching Shakespeare or Homer. “

Even within the university, and even within an Ivy League school like Harvard, we distinguish between different kinds of intelligence. Everybody distinguishes between different kinds of talents.

Some people like Jordan Peterson say that IQ predicts "success" and has described your ideas as rubbish.

I don't use words like that, and the answer is if you want to predict who will do well in a certain setting in a certain time, and you only have a few minutes to do it, an IQ test will do as well as anything.

Here is the important point: I don't think that my theory can ever be tested by a short-answer kind of test, a short-answer kind of instrument. In the late ‘80s, we created a preschool environment which provided food — that is, intellectual food — for the range of intelligences. We watched the kids over the course of a year to see what they were interested in, where they spent time, and importantly what they got better at. A useful analogy for you is if you take a kid to a children's museum, you see his or her interests once, but if you take them there a number of times, you see what really interests them.

I can't count how many letters and emails I've gotten over the last decades from people who say, "I thought I was dumb, or the teachers told me my kids were dumb, or I applied for Mensa and I didn't get it. But then I learned about your theory and I explored things to find out what I was good at, what I was average at, what I was not good at. And that's been liberating for me or for my children or my grandchildren or whatever."

If Jordan Peterson were here, I would say to him, what do you do with the people who aren't smart on your testing day? Do you just throw them away? Do you pitch them away or do you say, and here we get to the important educational stuff, the kid may not do well in a certain kind of test given in a certain way, but how can I reach that child who wants a child to understand science? What are the right experiences? What are the right teachings? What is the right media? What are the right games to play with?

I've written many times, if you just tell people they're smart or dumb, you've crippled them. But if you say, this is what your profile of strengths and weaknesses are, how should we work on them, you get people to work on them. That's where you progress, and that’s the humane thing to do.

Let’s talk about the widespread scientific illiteracy in this country. People in the public seem to not be able to understand concepts like climate change, evolution and vaccines in an educated way. Based on your theory of multiple intelligences, what suggestions do you have to promote scientific literacy within the public?

Number one, we don't actually know whether scientific literacy is worse in this country than in other countries. It may be or may not be, but I'm not sure that it's scientific ignorance that is at the heart of the problem. Just take the current Congress, which is turning quite right wing. There are many people there who have very good education and they could certainly pass tests of scientific literacy. But to be technical about it, they don't give in politically because they would rather make it anti-scientific. 

Let's use Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as an example. They'd rather embrace him because it fulfills their political goals. 

As a scholar, and especially an interdisciplinary scholar, I want everybody to love and want to increase their knowledge and to respect knowledge. Ever since the 16th and 17th century, scientific knowledge has grown exponentially. If your question implies the fact that we have more knowledge than ever and it can be approached and picked up in many ways, it doesn't mean that people care about it when they want to achieve certain political goals. 

Now let's get to the heart of your question. I think it's important, number one, for everybody to have some experience doing science. And that means finding a problem, guessing how it can be answered or solved, and then mucking around. I went to the schools in Scranton, Pennsylvania and then I went to college, and having some experience in actually doing experiments and seeing how they come out and sometimes changing your mind on the basis of how they come out, I think is very important.

Certainly in any affluent country like America, there's no reason why everybody can't have some experience in puzzling about something. Does this projectile fall more quickly than this one? And if not, why not?

Here is where I think the new technologies have profound effects for teachers and learners. I’m going to use a word, which unfortunately isn't perfect if you can come up with a better one, and it has the double disadvantage that it's also what Facebook is called now, and that is meta. I think teachers and students, all of us will need to have less technical and specific knowledge and more meta knowledge. “Meta” here means it's knowledge about knowledge and it's understanding how something got found out, and whether it's reliable, and how we could test whether it's reliable or not, and what might enable us to change our mind about this.