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Adventurous navigator of the dimensions of high ability: an interview with Robert J. Sternberg.

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Robert J. Steinberg is Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences, Professor of Psychology, and Adjunct Professor of Education at Tufts University. He also is Honorary Professor of Psychology at the University of Heidelberg, Germany. Prior to joining the faculty at Tufts, he was IBM Professor of Psychology and Education in the Department of Psychology, Professor of Management in the School of Management, and Director of the Center for the Psychology of Abilities, Competencies, and Expertise at Yale. Sternberg also was the 2003 President of the American Psychological Association and is the 2006-2007 President of the Eastern Psychological Association and 2007-2008 President-Elect of the International Association for Cognitive Education and Psychology. He was on the Board of Directors of the American Psychological Association (2002-2004) and of the Board of Trustees of the APA Insurance Trust (2004). He is currently on the Board of Trustees of the American Psychological Foundation (2005-2009), and on the Board of Directors of the Eastern Psychological Association (2005-2008) and the American Association of Colleges and Universities (2007-2009).

Sternberg received the PhD from Stanford University in 1975 and the BA summa cure laude, Phi Beta Kappa, with honors with exceptional distinction in psychology, from Yale University in 1972.

Henshon: What led you to the field of psychology?

Sternberg: When I was young, in early elementary school, I did poorly on IQ tests and I wanted to understand why I did so poorly. I am still trying to find out! That is basically how I started. Generally, everything I have studied has been for the same reason--trying to figure out things about myself or others. I studied creativity at a time when I was trying to figure out more about how to come up with new ideas because I was at an impasse in my research.

I started to study wisdom when I felt like I had given bad advice to a student, and later reinitiated the study when 1 was perplexed by how smart leaders like Andrew Fastow, CFO of Enron and a Tufts graduate, began to do very foolish things. I studied love at a time when my personal life wasn't going well. So for me I have always tended to study things that I don't quite understand in myself or others.

Henshon: What were the most important lessons that you learned from a mentor?

Sternberg: I learned one important lesson from Endel Tulving, my undergraduate mentor at Yale. Even if everyone believes something, it doesn't mean it is true. Indeed, it is quite likely not to be true. Don't believe something just because a lot of people believe it. I had several specific experiences around that. For example, in the field of intelligence, there are many people who believe that IQ is everything. The fact that many people believe in this view does not make it correct; we and others have amassed considerable evidence challenging this assumption and arguing that creative and practical intelligence are at least as important as IQ. Other evidence suggests the importance of emotional intelligence. Yet many educators blithely go on assessing only IQ because others do it or say they should do it.

From my graduate mentor, Gordon Bower at Stanford, I learned how important it is to communicate your ideas in a way that makes contact with where the audience is. You can't just write a paper or give a talk without knowing for whom you are writing or to whom you are speaking. You have to make intellectual and emotional contact with the audience. You need to read where they are and then try to lead them where you hope they will go. For example, I may disagree with the theory that all there is to intelligence is "g" (general intelligence) but many people in my audience may believe this, and when I speak, I have to acknowledge their belief and try to show them why I believe other kinds of intelligence matter as well. I cannot assume that either they are "with me or against me."

From my mentor when I was as assistant professor at Yale, Wendell Garner, I learned that you sometimes have to take risks even if you are putting your career on the line. If you really believe in something, you have to be willing to put yourself on the line and take a risk even if it means that you lose your job. When you have a certain mission then you have to do it. I was told, when I was at Yale, that my getting tenure was at risk because I was studying intelligence, a "low-prestige" field in academic psychology. Garner told me I should continue studying it even if it cost me my job because that was my mission and...

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