Multiple Intelligences

Multiple intelligences (Howard Gardner) is the view that intelligence is a bundle of relatively independent capacities, not one general factor.

Why split intelligence into multiple kinds?

Someone can be brilliant at music and mediocre at math. A single IQ number misses that.

Gardner’s original list:

• Linguistic: words, language
• Logical-mathematical: numbers, reasoning
• Spatial: visualization, navigation
• Musical: rhythm, pitch
• Bodily-kinesthetic: athletes, dancers, surgeons
• Interpersonal: reading other people
• Intrapersonal: self-knowledge
• Naturalistic: recognizing patterns in nature (added later)

Contested

Psychometrically, the intelligences don’t cleanly separate; most correlate with a general factor (g). Influential in education as a framing against over-indexing on narrow test scores.