This chapter differentiates intelligence and related constructs such as creativity and intellectual giftedness, which helps people to better understand each construct. Sternberg proposed a way to classify the various approaches to studying the intelligence-creativity relationship. Guilford’s Structure of the Intellect (SOI) model is probably the most explicit, with divergent thinking specifically identified as one of his five cognitive operations. The relationship between intelligence and giftedness has also received substantial attention. Every gifted education program has a formal assessment procedure to identify potential participants, and creativity assessments are often included in the battery of measures in these identification systems. The Marland Definition suggests that giftedness and talent are manifest in six areas: general intellectual ability, specific academic aptitude, creative or productive thinking, leadership ability, visual and performing arts, and psychomotor ability. It has been extremely influential and is still used by many school districts in their identification of talented students.

Intelligence is a hypothesized quality whose ontology, etiology, and scale must be inferred through indirect means. Personal definitions of intelligence are not the same as constructs of intelligence. Psychological constructs are highly technical, painstakingly crafted, and subjected to rigorous theoretical examination and empirical testing. Intellectual abilities are organized at a general level into two general intelligences, viz., fluid intelligence and crystallized intelligence. Intelligence is the sum total of all cognitive processes. It entails planning, coding of information and attention, as well as arousal. Given his personal history and society’s attitudes toward heredity, that Galton concluded that the development of genius, must be understood in terms of hereditary processes. The chapter concludes with two tables presenting definitions of intelligence provided by several prominent historical and living intelligence theorists. They convince readers that human intelligence is a fascinating and complex subject, and to provide a foreshadowing of many of the essential issues.

This chapter suggests some new directions that personality research is, or should be, taking as well as the future agenda of this research. In contrast, personality psychology provides us with a solid evidence base that people can lean on when searching for answers about human nature. Personality refers to the stable and consistent patterns we observe in how people behave, feel, and think. Associations between personality and intelligence have been found on the measurement level and hypothesized at a conceptual level. It is supposedly human nature not to trust humankind to provide the unselfish responses in questionnaires, or to possess an adequate level of self-awareness. Admittedly, this trend has been changing. An increasing number of organizations are using self-report personality measures and even laypeople seem to accept the notion of questionnaires more kindly than before.

The ideas of Aristotle, Socrates, and Plato all contribute to the foundation of our understanding of the nature of human intelligence. Their ideas on topics as diverse as the origin of ability, the mind-body relationship, and general inquiry methods continued to inspire thinkers centuries later and influenced those who shaped modern psychology and intelligence theory. This chapter provides an overview of recent research on how people’s beliefs about intelligence impact their behaviors, a body of research that has significant implications for education. The emergence of reliable genetic and neurological research methodologies is creating a new area of study in which environmental, biological, and psychological facets of intelligence are studied simultaneously. Structure of Intellect (SOI) model represents a very different approach to theories of intelligence. Recent technological advances have encouraged explorations into the relationship between brain function and specific types of cognitive functioning.

The term genius is peculiar. It can be applied to a diversity of phenomena or confined to just one or two. The tremendous range in usage reflects the fact that genius is both a humanistic concept with a long history and a scientific concept with a much shorter history. The word genius goes way, way back to the time of the ancient Romans. Roman mythology included the idea of a guardian spirit or tutelary deity. This spiritual entity was assigned to a particular person or place. Expressed differently, geniuses exert influence over others. They have an impact on both contemporaries and posterity. The exemplars of intelligence have a feature in common: They are called as exceptional creators. The favored definition is that creativity satisfies few separate requirements. First, to be creative is to be original. In main, genius in the leadership domain of achievement appears to fall into several groups.

Creativity and intelligence, like bacon and eggs, certainly seem like they should go together. But exactly how they do, or whether intelligence is part of creativity or creativity is part of intelligence, is still debated. At one point in time, a ‘threshold’ theory was popular, which argued that creativity and intelligence are positively related up until an IQ of approximately 120. Some studies have found that although creativity does predict GPA, other variables do it better or more directly, such as cognitive style, mental speed and short-term memory, or reasoning ability. An additional way of considering how creativity relates to intellectual abilities is to consider how creativity is connected to learning disabilities (LD). Another learning disability with a relationship to creativity is Williams syndrome. Healey and Rucklidge found that although 40” of a creative group showed symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), none met the level for actual diagnosis.

Individuals have beliefs and judgments about their ability to successfully complete an activity or task. In the motivation world, people call these expectations. In addition to expectations, people also have a value system associated with the expectation. Modern versions of expectancy value (EV) are still descendants of Atkinson’s work and are based on achievement performance, persistence, and choice. Within the task-value beliefs there are four components: attainment value, intrinsic (interest enjoyment) value, utility value, and cost. There are emotional components to success and failure or even the expectancy of the two. In addition to the poor performance, people tend to try and avoid making a mistake, quit early, and lose interest rapidly. This pattern, fear of failure leading to performance-avoidance goals, leads to poor adjustment skills and anxiety. Related to the performance and mastery concepts is an implicit theory of intelligence.

Geniuses have been around for a very long time. Genuine scientific inquiries into the psychology of genius came much later. The investigators engaged in these inquiries adopted two main approaches: psychometrics and historiometrics. Not only was Francis Galton the first psychometrician to study genius, but he himself was a genius. Psychometric research represents the most common way that research psychologists investigate genius. The principal alternative is a technique known as historiometrics. Frederick Woods also conducted historiometric research of his own. In 1906, he had studied the inheritance of intellectual and moral genius in royal families, and in 1913 he examined the influence of political genius on the welfare of the nations ruled. Lewis M. Terman had also explored a method of calculating intelligence quotient (IQ) scores using historiometric methods. Unlike psychometrics and historiometrics, psychobiography constitutes a single-case qualitative approach.

This chapter concentrates on the nature of intelligence and the nature of domain expertise. It examines three alternative positions on the nature of cognitive ability: unified intellect, diverse intellect and hierarchical intellect. Historiometric studies suggest that historiometric genius correlates at between.25 and.35 with estimates of psychometric genius. Whether intelligence is unified or multiple, all budding geniuses must go through some sort of apprenticeship period in which they acquire the expertise that will enable them to make original and exemplary contributions to their chosen domain of achievement. To understand the difference between algorithms and heuristics, and to appreciate their relevance to an understanding of the nature of genius, the chapter takes a glance at two kinds of computer programs that engage in problem solving of a rather high order: expert systems and discovery programs. In any case, most expert systems operate according to algorithms rather than heuristics.