Have you ever heard of the triarchic theory of intelligence? This theory, developed by Robert J. Sternberg, has a perspective contrary to the psychometric approach and, on the contrary, is closer to the cognitive perspective.
For Sternberg, intelligence represents our ability to successfully adapt to the changes that occur in our lives. The better we adapt to these changes, the smarter we will be.
It is called the triarchic theory of intelligence because there are three aspects that determine our intelligence. According to Sternberg, our intelligence depends on our analytical, creative and practical abilities.
In this PsicologíaOnline article, we will delve into the Sternberg’s triarchic theory of intelligence.
The analytical capacity
For Sternberg, ‘metacomponents’ refers to our way of solving problems that occur in our daily lives. It also refers to our decision making. Metacomponents are responsible for the decisions we make and the way we act.
The ‘performance components’ They are the processes that help us act as the metacomponents decide.
The ‘knowledge acquisition components’, on the other hand, work while we obtain additional information. They act when we have to differentiate relevant information from less relevant information, and they help us take advantage of significant data and discard those that are not so important. The knowledge acquisition components also help us find the relationship between the set of information and data that we have obtained.
Analytical ability helps us solve problems. The drawback of this ability is that, if we are not good at the other abilities, we will not be able to be creative and think of new ideas. For this reason, creative capacity is very important, which we explain below.
The creative capacity
To explain creative ability Sternberg paid attention to two important characteristics: novelty and automation.
We lived a new experience when we had never experienced it before. People with high creative capacity are able to find solutions to a novel problem that they have never had before, and these solutions are different than what the rest of the people have.
On the contrary, the automated process arises when we have already intervened in a situation on many previous occasions and this experience allows us to act in this type of situation in a simple and automatic way, without the need to reflect on our actions. The advantage of acting automatically in these types of situations is that the lack of need to pay attention to what we are doing allows us to act, at the same time, in other different situations.
The practical ability
People with high practical ability take into account the particular context of the situation. They take into account not only who they are, but also what environment they are living in.
People who have remarkable practical ability are able to adapt successfully to the environment in which they live. For example, when we fail an exam we can complain and feel blocked in this situation, or on the contrary we can accept our mistakes and begin from that moment to study more to get the pass we want. People with high practical ability are able to accept that they have not passed a selection process, and continue looking for work without frustration preventing them from moving forward and continuing to look for what they want.
Adaptation arises when we accept the environment in which we live and change our ways to live successfully within that environment, but Sternberg also places importance on shaping, which arises when we modify our environment in order to satisfy our important needs. For example, we advance the time when the whole family has dinner so that the children can have more time to brush their teeth and change into their pajamas.
Another fundamental aspect of practical ability is the selection process. Through this process we replace the environment where we lived with an environment where we can live better and where we can satisfy our important needs.
This article is merely informative, at Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.
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