Robert Sternberg

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Robert Sternberg bigraphy, stories - American psychologist

Robert Sternberg : biography

December 8, 1949 –

Robert Sternberg (born December 8, 1949) is an American psychologist and psychometrician. He is the president of the University of Wyoming. He formerly was Professor of Psychology and Provost at Oklahoma State University. He was formerly the Dean of Arts and Sciences at Tufts University, IBM Professor of Psychology and Education at Yale University, and the President of the American Psychological Association. He is a member of the editorial boards of numerous journals, including American Psychologist. Sternberg has a BA from Yale University and a PhD from Stanford University. Gordon Bower was his PhD advisor. He holds ten honorary doctorates from one North American, one South American, and eight European universities, and additionally holds an honorary professorship at the University of Heidelberg, in Germany. He is currently also a Distinguished Associate of The Psychometrics Centre at the University of Cambridge. Among his major contributions to psychology are the Triarchic theory of intelligence, several influential theories related to creativity, wisdom, thinking styles, love and hate, and is the author of over 1000 articles, book chapters, and books. He was recently named the 24th President of The University of Wyoming, a post he will take up July 1, 2013.

The triarchic model

Sternberg (2003) categorizes intelligence into three parts, which are central in his theory, the triarchic theory of intelligence:

  • Analytical intelligence, the ability to complete academic, problem-solving tasks, such as those used in traditional intelligence tests. These types of tasks usually present well-defined problems that have only a single correct answer.
  • Creative or synthetic intelligence, the ability to successfully deal with new and unusual situations by drawing on existing knowledge and skills. Individuals high in creative intelligence may give ‘wrong’ answers because they see things from a different perspective.
  • Practical intelligence, the ability to adapt to everyday life by drawing on existing knowledge and skills. Practical intelligence enables an individual to understand what needs to be done in a specific setting and then do it.

Sternberg (2003) discusses experience and its role in intelligence. Creative or synthetic intelligence helps individuals to transfer information from one problem to another. Sternberg calls the application of ideas from one problem to a new type of problem relative novelty. In contrast to the skills of relative novelty there is relative familiarity which enables an individual to become so familiar with a process that it becomes automatized. This can free up brain resources for coping with new ideas.

Context, or how one adapts, selects and shapes their environment is another area that is not represented by traditional measures of giftedness. Practically intelligent people are good at picking up tacit information and utilizing that information. They tend to shape their environment around them. (Sternberg, 2003)

Sternberg (2003) developed a testing instrument to identify people who are gifted in ways that other tests don’t identify. The Sternberg Triarchic Abilities Test measures not only traditional intelligence abilities but analytic, synthetic, automatization and practical abilities as well. There are four ways in which this test is different from conventional intelligence tests.

  • This test is broader, measuring synthetic and practical skills in addition to analytic skills. The test provides scores on analytic, synthetic, automatization, and practical abilities, as well as verbal, quantitative, and figural processing abilities.
  • The test measures the ability to understand unknown words in context rather than vocabulary skills which are dependent on an individual’s background.
  • The automatization subtest is the only part of the test that measures mental speed.
  • The test is based on a theory of intelligence.

Sternberg, R. J. (2003). Giftedness According to the Theory of Successful Intelligence. In N. Colangelo & G. Davis (Eds.), Handbook of Gifted Education (88-99). Boston MA: Allyn and Bacon.