The Illusory Theory of Multiple

Intelligences
Gardner's theory of Multiple Intelligences has never been
validated
By Scott A. McGreal, MSc.
Posted Nov 23, 2013

Many people find the idea that there are many different types of intelligence very appealing. Howard
Gardner disparages IQ tests as having limited relevance to real life, and argued that there may be as many
as eight different kinds of intelligence that apply in diverse areas of human functioning.[1] Gardners
claims are very similar to those made about emotional intelligence being a special kind of intelligence
distinct from IQ that may even be more important for success in life than traditional academic
intelligence. Although Gardners claims have become popular with educators(link is external), very little
research has been done to establish the validity of his theory. The few studies that have been done do not
actually support the idea that there are many different kinds of intelligence operating separately from
each other. Although there certainly are important abilities outside of what IQ tests measure, referring to
each one as a special kind of intelligence has little scientific support and doing so may only create
needless confusion.

General intelligence versus multiple intelligences

According to mainstream intelligence research(link is external), there exists a broad form of mental
ability known as general intelligence that underlies a wide range of narrower, more specific abilities. IQ
tests are intended to provide a measure of this broad general ability, as well as some of the specific ones.
Howard Gardner objected to the idea of general intelligence, arguing instead that IQ tests actually
measure distinctly narrow academic skills and denied that there is a single general ability that cuts across
many different domains. Instead, he argued that there are separate domains of ability that deserve to be
called intelligences in their own right, and that ability in one domain is unrelated to ability in other
domains. Specifically, he argued that IQ tests
measure linguistic/verbal andlogical/mathematical intelligences, which happen to be valued in schools.
The other domains of intelligence he claimed were musical, bodily-kinesthetic (skill in using the body to
solve problems), spatial, interpersonal (understanding other people), intrapersonal(ability to understand
oneself and regulate ones life effectively), and naturalistic(recognising different kinds of plants and
animals in ones environment). He also considered, but finally rejected the existence of two further kinds
of intelligence: spiritual(understanding the sacred) and existential (understanding ones place in the
universe). These latter two did not meet his rather liberal criteria for an intelligence, biological
potential to process information that can be activated in a cultural setting to solve problems or create
products that are of value in a culture (Furnham, 2009).

Sounds nice, but just how much support does the theory have?

The idea that there are multiple independent kinds of intelligence appeals to egalitarian sentiments
because it implies that anyone can be intelligent in some way or another, even if they are not lucky
enough to possess a high IQ (Visser, Ashton, & Vernon, 2006a). This egalitarian view was expressed in
an article by Dr Bernard Luskin. He suggested that the theory is accepted by the self-esteem movement,
because according to this view no-one is actually "smarter" than anyone else, just different. This all
sounds warm and fuzzy, but making people feel good is not an index of scientific validity. Dr
Luskin correctly states that IQ tests are reasonably accurate at predicting how well a person will do at
certain school subjects, but they do not gauge a persons artistic, environmental and emotional abilities.
Since they were not designed to measure these latter things, this is not controversial. However, there is
considerable evidence that IQ tests predict more than just school performance (Visser, Ashton, & Vernon,
2006b) but I will let that pass. What I take issue with here is his incredible assertion that Today, the
concept of multiple intelligences is widely acknowledged. He makes additional statements about wide
agreement about Gardners theory of multiple intelligences, and that it is widely accepted. Just who
exactly acknowledges, agrees with and accepts the theory is not made clear though. In fact, it is fair to say
that among academic scholars who study intelligence there is very little acceptance of Gardners theory
due to a lack of empirical evidence for it. A critical review(link is external) of the topic by Lynn
Waterhouse in 2006 found no published studies at all that supported the validity of the theory. Even
though Gardner first made his theory public in 1983, the first empirical study to test the theory was not
published until 23 years later (Visser, et al., 2006a) and the results were not supportive. Multiple
intelligences theory can hardly be described as scientifically generative.

Can multiple intelligences be tested?

Dr Luskin notes that the different types of intelligence proposed by Gardner are hard to measure and
difficult to assess. Some of the proposed intelligences, such as interpersonal and intrapersonal, are
difficult to even define clearly. Gardner himself has declined to specify what he thinks the components of
the various intelligences might be or how these might be measured and has only provided nebulous
descriptions of them (Waterhouse, 2006a, 2006b). If no-one is really sure what these supposed
intelligences really are or how to assess them, then generating scientific support for them would appear
to be quite difficult. This might go some way to explain the dearth of empirical research on this topic.
However, I am aware of at least two studies (Furnham, 2009; Visser, et al., 2006a) that made preliminary
attempts at creating operational definitions of these intelligences and developing tests to assess them. As I
will show, neither one provided much support for Gardners theory.

Trait vs. ability approaches

Since Gardner has not exactly been forthcoming with guidelines on how to assess his proposed
intelligences, researchers have had to improvise. As noted earlier, proponents of emotional intelligence
have claimed that it is something distinct from existing concepts of general intelligence and have actually
attempted to develop ways of assessing a persons EQ as opposed to IQ. These methods have taken
either a trait or an ability approach, and the two studies on multiple intelligences that I will look at
have adopted each of these approaches respectively. The trait approach is based on asking people to self-
estimate their own skill in a given area. This is based on the theory that people mostly have a fairly good
idea of how skilled they really are in many areas of life. Even though this might sound a bit nave, it turns
out for example, that when people are asked to self-estimate their general intelligence, they usually give
reasonably accurate answers (Furnham, 2009). The ability approach on the other hand gives people tests
with right or wrong answers and scores them on the accuracy of their results. Traditional IQ tests use this
latter approach. Developing an objective measure of emotional intelligence poses special challenges,
and I have highlighted some of these in a previous post. Similarly, developing tests for some of the ill-
defined abilities that Gardner refers to has its own problems. However, if the attempt is not made, the
theory cannot be validated.

A pattern that seems to emerge from research on emotional intelligence is that trait measures of it tend
to be highly correlated with existing measures of personality traits, such as the Big Five, while ability
measures tend to be correlated with measures of general intelligence. The latter finding undermines the
claim that EQ is distinct from IQ. If emotional intelligence can be understood largely in terms of
existing concepts of personality and general intelligence, then it is doubtful that the concept adds anything
new to our understanding (Schulte, Ree, & Carretta, 2004). A similar pattern of results emerges from the
two studies on multiple intelligence that I will review next.
 For some, eight is not enough.
Source: Multiple Intelligences and Technology by Lupe
Escobar

Intelligent personalities?

Furnham (2009) examined a self-report measure of

multiple intelligences[2] and its pattern of correlations
with a measure of the Big Five personality traits. One
striking result was that the eight intelligences were highly intercorrelated with each other, contrary to
the theory that they are all supposed to represent separate and unrelated domains. In fact, each one was
positively correlated with at least four others, and naturalistic intelligence was positively correlated with
all seven others. This would suggest that people who scored themselves highly in one domain also tended
to score themselves highly in several others. Furthermore, there were many correlations between the eight
intelligences and the Big Five traits: all eight intelligences were correlated with at least one of the Big
Five, and each of the Big Five was correlated with two or more of the intelligence scores. Openness to
experience and extraversion in particular were each correlated with five different intelligence scores
respectively (but not all the same ones).

Of course self-report measures have their limitations, especially for measuring skills. For example, the
positive correlation between extraversion and five of the intelligences might be due to the fact
that extraverted people tend to have a highly positive view of themselves and therefore might think they
are naturally good at lots of different things. (Although it is possible they really are as good as they say
they are, but this is hard to tell without independent measures.) On the other hand, openness to
experience is positively correlated with objective measures of general intelligence and of knowledge, so
the positive correlations between openness to experience and five of the intelligences in Furnhams
study make sense.

Separate abilities from general intelligence or not?

Gardners various intelligences are supposed to reflect specific abilities, so Visser et al. (2006) developed
a set of ability tests, two for each of the proposed eight intelligences. The authors attempted to assess
whether these ability measures were independent of a measure of general intelligence and of each other.
Gardner has argued that apparent positive correlations between tests of diverse mental abilities occur
because most of these tests are language based, so they all involve a common core of linguistic
intelligence to complete them.[3] To overcome this objection, the authors used non-verbal measures of the
non- linguistic intelligences. If Gardners theory that the eight types of intelligence are largely
independent of each other were true, then the results for each domain should not be highly correlated with
each other. However, this did not turn out to be the case. Many of the tests, particularly those measuring
some form of cognitive ability, were highly positively correlated with each other. Additionally, most of
the ability tests had positive correlations with general intelligence. The exceptions were the tests of
musical and bodily-kinesthetic intelligence, which are non-cognitive abilities, and one of the tests of
intrapersonal intelligence. The authors concluded that the reason that the tests involving cognitive ability
were positively correlated with general intelligence is because they share a common core of reasoning
ability. Hence there seems to be a general form of reasoning ability that is applicable across a wide range
of ability domains, including linguistic, spatial, logical/mathematical, naturalistic, and to a lesser extent
interpersonal abilities. This contradicts Gardners assertion that ability in each of these domains is largely
separate from ability in the other domains. However, it is consistent with the idea that a broad form of
mental ability underlies more specific abilities to a greater or lesser extent.

The authors concluded that Multiple Intelligences theory does not seem to provide any new information
beyond that provided by more traditional measures of mental ability. Hence, trying to incorporate
Gardners theory into educational contexts seems unjustified. Waterhouse (2006b) also expressed
scepticism about the value of applying a theory that has not been validated in education, particularly
when one of the aims of education is supposed to be to impart up-to-date and accurate knowledge.

Intelligences or skills?

These two research studies do not support the specifics of Gardners theory of multiple intelligences. Of
course, this does not mean that non-cognitive abilities apart from general intelligence are unimportant.
There is abundant evidence that personal qualities, such asmotivation and social skills, matter a great deal
to ones success in life, and I don't think anyone is really saying otherwise. What is questionable though is
describing any talent or ability that happens to be regarded as important as a distinct intelligence. We
already use the word skill to describe how well a person is able to apply their abilities and knowledge
in a given area of life. Most people are capable of developing a variety of different skills, but this does not
necessarily mean they require a different kind of intelligence for each one, so using the term this way is
simply arbitrary and confusing (Locke, 2005). Similarly, most people would acknowledge that people can
be smart in the sense of exercising good judgement and decision making even if they do not have a
particularly high IQ. Vice versa, high IQ people can easily make poor decisions, e.g. when emotions or
self-interest cloud their reasoning. Again we already have a word for this capacity for good
judgment: wisdom. However, I don't think many people would agree that everyone is equally wise.
Perhaps there are special abilities that deserve to be called intelligences in their own right that have not
yet been identified. However, there is no scientific justification for simply inventing special kinds of
intelligence without evidence just so people can feel good about themselves.

In conclusion, Gardners theory of multiple intelligences looks to be a confused and nebulous set of
claims that have not been empirically validated. Many of Gardners proposed intelligences appear to be
explainable in terms of existing concepts of personality and general intelligence, so the theory does not
really offer anything new. Additionally, some of the proposed intelligences are poorly defined
(particularly intrapersonal) and others (e.g. musical) may be more usefully thought of as skills or talents.
The popularity of Gardners theories in educational contexts may reflect its sentimental and intuitive
appeal but is not founded on any scientific evidence for the validity of the concept.

Footnotes

[1]
Gardner has changed his mind a number of times about the exact number of intelligences over the
years, but for convenience I will consider eight in this article as these are the ones that have been
researched.

[2]
This measure was originally published in a book written for a lay audience called Whats Your IQ? by
Nathan Haselbrauer, published by Barnes and Noble Books.

[3]
Gardner is not correct. IQ tests have incorporated non-verbal subtests since the 1930s.
About the author

Scott A. McGreal, MSc.

Scott McGreal has a research psychology background and has investigated quality of life in people

with schizophrenia. He studies individual differences and writes mainly about personality, intelligence,

the psychology of sex differences, and consciousness. He lives in Sydney, Australia.