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Robert J Sternberg

Publications and source records attributed to Robert J Sternberg.

10 recordsLinked to original sources

A systems model of leadership: WICS.

This article reviews a systems model of leadership. According to the model, effective leadership is a synthesis of wisdom, creativity, and intelligence (WICS). It is in large part a decision about how to marshal and deploy these resources. One needs creativity to generate ideas, academic (analytical) intelligence to evaluate whether the ideas are good, practical intelligence to implement the ideas and persuade others of their worth, and wisdom to balance the interests of all stakeholders and to ensure that the actions of the leader seek a common good. The article relates the current model to other extant models of leadership.

Character↗

Long-term impact of malaria chemoprophylaxis on cognitive abilities and educational attainment: follow-up of a controlled trial.

OBJECTIVES: We investigated the long-term impact of early childhood malaria prophylaxis on cognitive and educational outcomes. DESIGN: This was a household-based cluster-controlled intervention trial. SETTING: The study was conducted in 15 villages situated between 32 km to the east and 22 km to the west of the town of Farafenni, the Gambia, on the north bank of the River Gambia. PARTICIPANTS: A total of 1,190 children aged 3-59 mo took part in the trial. We traced 579 trial participants (291 in the prophylaxis group and 288 in the placebo group) in 2001, when their median age was 17 y 1 mo (range 14 y 9 mo to 19 y 6 mo). INTERVENTIONS: Participants received malaria chemoprophylaxis (dapsone/pyrimethamine) or placebo for between one and three malaria transmission seasons from 1985 to 1987 during the controlled trial. At the end of the trial, prophylaxis was provided for all children under 5 y of age living in the study villages. OUTCOME MEASURES: The outcome measures were cognitive abilities, school enrolment, and educational attainment (highest grade reached at school). RESULTS: There was no significant overall intervention effect on cognitive abilities, but there was a significant interaction between intervention group and the duration of post-trial prophylaxis (p = 0.034), with cognitive ability somewhat higher in the intervention group among children who received no post-trial prophylaxis (treatment effect = 0.2 standard deviations [SD], 95% confidence interval [CI] -0.03 to 0.5) and among children who received less than 1 y of post-trial prophylaxis (treatment effect = 0.4 SD, 95% CI 0.1 to 0.8). The intervention group had higher educational attainment by 0.52 grades (95% CI = -0.041 to 1.089; p = 0.069). School enrolment was similar in the two groups. CONCLUSIONS: The results are suggestive of a long-term effect of malaria prophylaxis on cognitive function and educational attainment, but confirmatory studies are needed.

Journal Article↗

Intelligence, race, and genetics.

In this article, the authors argue that the overwhelming portion of the literature on intelligence, race, and genetics is based on folk taxonomies rather than scientific analysis. They suggest that because theorists of intelligence disagree as to what it is, any consideration of its relationships to other constructs must be tentative at best. They further argue that race is a social construction with no scientific definition. Thus, studies of the relationship between race and other constructs may serve social ends but cannot serve scientific ends. No gene has yet been conclusively linked to intelligence, so attempts to provide a compelling genetic link of race to intelligence are not feasible at this time. The authors also show that heritability, a behavior-genetic concept, is inadequate in regard to providing such a link.

Genetics, Population↗

Intelligence and culture: how culture shapes what intelligence means, and the implications for a science of well-being.

This paper discusses the relationship between culture and intelligence. The main message of the paper is that intelligence cannot fully or even meaningfully be understood outside its cultural context. Behaviour that is considered intelligent in one culture may be considered unintelligent in another culture, and vice versa. Moreover, people in different cultures have different implicit (folk) theories of intelligence, so may not even mean the same thing by the word. The relationships between different aspects of intelligence can vary across cultures, with correlations that are positive in one setting proving to be negative in another. The paper opens with a general discussion of issues regarding the relationship between the two concepts. It then describes the theory of successful intelligence, which motivates our work on the interface between culture and intelligence. Finally, the article draws some conclusions.

Cognition↗

Unified professional psychology: implications for the Combined-Integrated model of doctoral training.

The authors outline a new identity for the professional psychologist termed Unified Professional Psychology (UPP). UPP combines recent movements toward a unified psychological science, an independent professional psychology, and Combined-Integrated (C-I) doctoral training programs in psychology. The value in the synthesis of these ideas is that they (a) provide a comprehensive system of thought that defines the science and practice of psychology in a commensurable manner, (b) offer a clear identity for the professional psychologist, and (c) set the stage for a training model that develops competencies that will prepare graduates to serve as leaders and advocates in a wide array of health settings. Issues pertaining to why a new view is needed and how UPP specifies the science-practice relationship are addressed in detail.

Curriculum↗

E pluribus unum.

Explore the source record for details and available documents.

Humans↗

Everything you need to know to understand the current controversies you learned from psychological research. A comment on the Rind and Lilienfeld controversies.

Psychological theory and research can help explain some of the aspects of the controversies that arose over articles written by B. Rind, P. Tromovitch, and R. Bauserman (1998) and by S. O. Lilienfeld (2002). In particular, one needs to distinguish between rational and intuitive thinking, to recognize the power of context, to be reflective in one's own thinking, and to realize the costs of defying the crowd. There are steps one can take to be wiser and more balanced in one's own thinking than one may have been in the past. One such step is to resolve conflicts among psychologists by attempting to defuse rather than to exacerbate or avoid them.

Humans↗

Culture and intelligence.

Intelligence cannot be fully or even meaningfully understood outside its cultural context. Work that seeks to study intelligence acontextually risks the imposition of an investigator's view of the world on the rest of the world. Moreover, work on intelligence within a single culture mayfail to do justice to the range of skills and knowledge that may constitute intelligence broadly defined and risks drawing false and hasty generalizations. This article considers the relevance of culture to intelligence, as well as its investigation, assessment, and development. Studies that show the importance of understanding intelligence in its cultural context are described; the author concludes that intelligence must be understood in such context.

Adolescent↗