Culture and Intelligence

From one culture to another, intelligence is unique. What one culture considers intelligent, another culture may consider unintelligent. The purpose of this paper it to discuss how to test intelligence of two differing cultures, Eastern and Western, based on three of Gardner's seven types of intelligence, linguistic, logical mathematical, and interpersonal. Theories of intelligence and how they account for cultural differences will be discussed as well.

Types of Intelligence

In 1983, Howard Gardner introduced seven types of individual strengths in an effort to aide teachers and students in understanding individual strengths (Macalester College, n. d.). Three of the seven types of intelligences are linguistic, logical mathematical, and interpersonal (Macalester College, n. d.). Linguistic intelligent children are the type who enjoys crossword puzzles, storytelling, and writing. Logical mathematical intelligent children "are interested in patterns, categories, and relationships. They are drawn to arithmetic problems, strategy games, and experiments" (Macalester College, n. d., sect. 3). Interpersonal intelligent children tend to be leaders among their peers, understand feelings and motives of others, and are good communicators (Macalester College, n. d.).

Eastern versus Western Cultures

There are many differences between Eastern and Western cultures. In Eastern cultures, people tend to value rest, accept what is, freedom of silence, passiveness, and retire to enjoy family. In Western cultures, people value activity, seek change, freedom of speech, assertiveness, and retire to enjoy what they have worked hard to gain (Lynchburg City Schools, n. d.). Religion is among the differences between Eastern and Western cultures.

Eastern

In Eastern cultures, intelligence is viewed as "a way for members of a community to recognize contradiction and complexity and to play their social roles successfully" (Benson, 2003, para. 6). Members of an Eastern culture are more interpersonal. They emphasize understanding and relating to others. Some Eastern cultures, such as those from rural Africa, believe that intelligence is a combination of cognition and social responsibility (Benson, 2003). They tend to view intellectual struggles as strength instead of weakness. Intelligence comes from a persistence to learn. Eastern culture prefers depth over speed in quality of work. There are three factors of intelligence: verbal and nonverbal reasoning ability, and memory (Bulut, 2008).

Eastern culture is based on spirituality and family. They believe that culture is built upon community and that people are an integral piece of society. Their religions consist mainly of Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, Islamic, Taoism, and Zen. Meditation is common practice as a search for answers.

Western

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