Types of Intelligence: IQ, EQ and Multiple Intelligences

By the IQScore Fun team

Everybody knows someone who's brilliant at exams but hopeless at reading a room. And everybody knows someone who barely scraped through school and can fix any engine, sell anything or calm down a crying toddler in thirty seconds. So what does "smart" even mean?

Psychologists have argued about that for well over a century, and they still haven't settled it. Here's a straightforward tour of the main ideas, what each one gets right, and where each one runs into trouble.

The classic view: one general factor

In 1904 a British psychologist named Charles Spearman noticed something curious. Students who did well in one school subject tended to do well in others too. Scores across very different tasks were positively correlated. He suggested there was a common underlying ingredient, which he called general intelligence, or g.

Modern IQ tests are built on this idea. They include several kinds of tasks, such as vocabulary, number problems, pattern puzzles and memory, and combine the results into one overall number. The reason this works at all is that, statistically, those different tasks do tend to travel together. IQ scores have also been shown to predict things like school performance and, more modestly, job performance.

That's the strength of the traditional view. The weakness is that "predicts school performance" isn't the same as "measures everything that matters."

Fluid and crystallized intelligence

A refinement came from the psychologists Raymond Cattell and John Horn, who split general ability into two big parts.

• Fluid intelligence is your ability to reason through new problems you haven't seen before. Number sequences and shape puzzles, like many questions on our own test, lean on this.
• Crystallized intelligence is the stuff you've learned and can use: vocabulary, general knowledge, skills built up over years.

The two don't always rise and fall together. As we explain in our article on IQ and age, fluid reasoning tends to peak earlier in adulthood, while crystallized knowledge can keep growing for decades. A veteran carpenter and a twenty-year-old puzzle champion are strong in different ways.

Emotional intelligence (EQ)

In 1990, psychologists Peter Salovey and John Mayer described emotional intelligence as the ability to notice, understand and manage emotions, both your own and other people's. The idea hit the mainstream in the mid-1990s when Daniel Goleman wrote a bestselling book on the topic.

The appeal is obvious. Think of the colleague who can disagree with you without making you feel stupid, or the friend who always knows when to listen and when to joke. Those are real skills, and they clearly matter for relationships and teamwork.

Now the caveat. Researchers still debate how best to measure EQ. Self-report questionnaires ("I am good at reading other people") are easy to fake or to get wrong about yourself, and some of the bolder claims you'll see online, like "EQ matters more than IQ for success," go well beyond what the evidence supports. EQ is a useful concept. It just isn't magic.

Gardner's multiple intelligences

In 1983 Howard Gardner, a Harvard psychologist, proposed that human ability is better described as several fairly independent intelligences. His list, which he later extended, includes:

• Linguistic (words and language)
• Logical-mathematical (numbers and reasoning)
• Spatial (images and navigating space)
• Musical
• Bodily-kinesthetic (movement and physical skill)
• Interpersonal (understanding others)
• Intrapersonal (understanding yourself)
• Naturalist (recognizing patterns in nature)

This theory became hugely popular with teachers, partly because it feels generous. It says everyone is smart at something. A footballer, a violinist and a mathematician can all be called "intelligent."

But it's controversial among psychologists. A common criticism is that there isn't much solid evidence that these abilities are truly separate, and that some of them look more like talents or skills than intelligence in the usual sense. It's also often confused with "learning styles" (the idea that you're a visual or auditory learner), which is a different claim and one that research has not supported well. If you want a fair summary: Gardner's list is a nice way to appreciate human variety, but it hasn't replaced traditional intelligence research.

Sternberg's three kinds of intelligence

Another well-known model comes from Robert Sternberg, who argued that success depends on three things: analytical intelligence (the kind IQ tests capture), creative intelligence (coming up with new ideas), and practical intelligence (getting things done in real situations, sometimes called "street smarts").

Few people would disagree that creativity and practicality matter. The hard part, again, is measuring them in a consistent, fair way. That's where traditional IQ tests have an advantage: they're imperfect, but they're standardized, so results can be compared.

So where does an IQ test fit?

An IQ test measures a particular slice of thinking, mostly reasoning and problem-solving under time pressure with questions that have clear right answers. That's useful. It's also limited. It tells you nothing about your kindness, your work ethic, your sense of humor, your courage or your ability to stay calm in a crisis.

Our practice test is a good example. Its math, logic and visual pattern questions lean heavily on fluid reasoning. If you do well, you're good at that kind of puzzle. If you don't, it doesn't mean you're bad at people, music, craft or leadership.

A healthier way to think about it

The most sensible takeaway is also the least dramatic. Intelligence has several parts, researchers disagree on how to carve them up, and any one number or label is a thin summary of a whole person. Use IQ puzzles for what they are: a fun workout for one kind of thinking. Then go and build the other skills too.

If you'd like to see how your puzzle skills look today, take the free IQ test.