IQ's Shortcoming

If there is anything close to a consensus in the understanding of intelligence, it is that the Intelligence Quotient, or "IQ" does not wholly account for an individual's success or failure in the world. In fact, most social scientists who study intelligence estimate that IQ accounts for only 20 to 30 percent of outcome. Even if, as proponents assert, IQ is the "best known predictor" of things like financial success, these numbers are not the kind you'd want to wager on.

The quest to discover what accounts for the rest of who we are and what we do -- the remaining 70 to 80 percent -- is now what drives the field.

Redefining Intelligence

In the early 1980s, Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner entered the intelligence debate with a book called Frames of Mind -- a work that shifted the intelligence testing landscape dramatically. Frames of Mind suggested that, in essence, intelligence is not a single entity, but a wide range of talents, the measure of which is absent from traditional IQ tests. This theory of Multiple Intelligence, considers musical, kinesthetic or spatial intelligences (and a number of others) alongside the more traditional verbal and mathematical skills. Yale psychologist Robert Sternberg published an article suggesting a similar idea, what he called the Triarchic Theory of Intelligence. In Sternberg's model, there are three main areas of intelligence: practical, analytical, and creative. Like Gardner, Sternberg has produced very compelling data in defense of his theory.

But how does one quantify something like spatial or musical intelligence? Certainly these are traits we can recognize, but can we really say that someone has a musical IQ?

The Birth of Emotional Intelligence

In 1990, Dr. Peter Salovey of Yale and Dr. John Mayer of the University of New Hampshire began publishing articles about something they called "emotional intelligence." They tested how well people could identify emotions in faces, abstract designs and colors, and from these studies, they believed they discovered a sort of universal aptitude of emotions. They eventually published an article in which they outlined what emotional intelligence was, drawing together under one umbrella a series of what seemed unrelated skills.

It wasn't until 1995, however, when New York Times science writer Daniel Goleman wrote a popular book called Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ, that the idea of emotional intelligence caught on in earnest. What has happened since is a paradigm shift in American culture, particularly in the areas of education and corporate business where Goleman's book -- and a follow-up book called Working With Emotional Intelligence -- has shaken up the old order and brought the entrenched mid-century ways of teaching and business under scrutiny.

The idea of emotional intelligence lies in a handful of basic principles. Emotionally intelligent people, Goleman says, have the ability to marshal their emotional impulses (or, at least, more so than those who are not emotionally intelligent); they have the self-awareness to know what they are feeling, and are able to think about and express those things; they have empathy for the feelings of others and insight into how others think; they can do things like delay gratification; they are optimistic and generally positive; they understand easily the dynamics of a given group, and, most important, where they fit inside that group.