Definitions of Intelligence

The ability to learn from experience, solve problems, and use knowledge to adapt to new experiences

A mental quality that consists of the abilities to learn from experience, adapt to new situations, understand and handle abstract concepts, and use knowledge to manipulate one’s environment

The ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills

The ability to learn or understand things or to deal with new or difficult situations

The capacity for learning, reasoning, understanding, and similar forms of mental activity

First of all, it's very hard to measure out intelligence because it involves a lot of different factors such as ones culture, emotions, age, skill sets, thoughts and etc. Because of these factors and the way they influence our intelligence it's hard to define it and that's why we have so many definitions of intelligence. Most of them can be easily manipulated, therefore making them controversial. The four definitions that I have chosen are to some extent different, but similar and can be interpreted differently. The first, second and fourth definitions, all have emotions involved in them since they include experiences, new situations or environments. It's easier to adapt these two definitions to social situations than for example the third definition, since it doesn't involve emotions, similarly to the last definition. Even those the last and third definitions, both seem to have only knowledge and skills involved,  all five of these definitions have something in common, which is the ability to learn new things. 

In the video above, two theories and definitions of intelligence (Spearman's and Gardner's) are discussed and compared. This video also looks into the controversy of definitions of intelligence and ranking intelligence as well as dividing intelligence into different types of intelligence. 

Emotions and Intelligence

Knowledge Question: To what extent are emotions part of intelligence?

Definition against:

“The ability to use memory, knowledge, experience, understanding and judgement in order to solve problems ” AllWords Dictionary, 2006

Definition for:

“the general mental ability involved in calculating, reasoning, perceiving relationships and analogies, learning quickly, storing and retrieving information, using language fluently, classifying, generalising  and adjusting to new situations.” Columbia Encyclopedia, sixth edition, 2006 

“Sensory capacity, capacity for perceptual recognition, quickness, range or flexibility or association, facility and imagination, span of attention, quickness or alertness in response.” F. N. Freeman 

First of all as we can see in the definitions above, emotions aren't always involved and that makes me question why? Well, since a lot of psychologists and scientist usually disagree on whether emotion is involved or not caused these different definitions that in some way are similar. In my opinion, emotions should be considered to be a part of intelligence. It is intelligence because when people are born, they are born with skills such as ability to reason and children from an early age have an ability to detect emotions around them (for example Mayer stated that babies know when their parents are angry at them). Also people usually make decisions based on their emotions. 

Most of the time emotions are not considered to be a part of intelligence because it's hard measure EI. However Dr. Salovey, Dr. David Caruso and John. D. Mayer developed a new set of 12 ability tasks that assess this four-branch model. These ability tasks include asking people to identify emotions in faces as well as asking people to identify a set of simple emotions which, when combined, match a more complex feeling. The research with these new scales showed that emotional intelligence can be measured reliably, exists as a unitary ability, and is related to, but independent of, standard intelligence

Mayer et al also have concluded from his research that emotional intelligence does indeed meet these traditional criteria of a standard intelligence, such as breaking it out in several sets of mental abilities, is intercorrelated, abilities have a positive correlation to traditional intelligence

Even though these are only few claims that show that emotional intelligence is intelligence and there were a lot of counterclaims against it , I still think that emotions play an important role in intelligence. Without emotions people wouldn't know how to perceive relationships with other people or how to adjust to new situations, which are both very important aspects in the definition of intelligence since they are, repeated a lot of times in different definitions.

In-group Bias

Ingroup bias is simply the tendency to favor one's own group. In-group bias is influenced by a neurotransmitter called oxytocin also known as "love molecule. It helps us to create strong bonds and relationships with people in our in-group and also makes us fearful, suspicious and disdainful to others groups known as the out-groups. 

The in-group bias causes us to overestimate the abilities and value of our immediate group. 

A study that supports this : British schoolboys were randomly placed into two groups. The boys were led to believe that the groups were defined on the basis of a preference for paintings by Klee or Kandinsky. The boys had to work individually (while knowing they belonged to either a Klee or Kandinsky group) and had to award points to both in-group and out-group members. They were not allowed to give points to themselves.

Results: The boys showed a strong tendency to award more points to members of their in-group over members of the out-group. Sometimes the boys would sacrifice gain for their in-group in order to maximize the difference between their in-group and out-group. For example, the boys would often give an in-group member 7 points and an out-group member 1, rather than giving them both 13 points as they could have done.

What is intelligence?

What makes something an intelligence? What is the difference between an intelligence and a skill? Support your position

For a long time philosophers tried to find how to measure and define intelligence. Now there are three major theories on intelligence. Charles Spearman proposed the first theory in 1904, where he acknowledged that there are a lot of different types of intelligence and they are correlated. Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner revised this notion with his Theory of Multiple Intelligences, which set forth eight distinct types of intelligence and claimed that there need be no correlation among them. He also stated that a person can posses strong emotion intelligence without being gifted. In 1985, Robert Sternberg, created the Triarchic Theory of Intelligence, which argued that previous definitions of intelligence are too narrow because they are based solely on intelligences that can be assessed in IQ test. Instead, Sternberg believes types of intelligence are broken down into three subsets: analytic, creative, and practical. 

The standard definition of intelligence is the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills. It is also a mental ability that involves perceiving relationships, emotions, reasoning, ... etc.  However this definition is way to short and simple and can't just simply define intelligence. Intelligence is a hypothetical idea which we have defined as being reflected by certain types of behavior.

Intelligence is generally understood intelligence to be a combination of biological and environmental (including; diet, parenting style, socio-economic and education) factors. Modern tests focus on spatial ability, reasoning, divergent thinking, and verbal fluency rather than knowledge. 

The Flynn effect refers to the rise of average scores on intelligence tests in most parts of the world over the last century: The average mean scores on standard IQ tests have been going up by about three points every 10 years (Neisser, 1997).Possible environmental factors include better nutrition, improved schooling, better child-rearing practices, increase in financial situation (more books, more toys, better food) and the increased use of technology in modern life. A lot of other studies and research on intelligence showed that brain development is heavily influenced by the environment and this is likely to make an influence on intelligence.
A skill is an ability, coming from ones knowledge, practice aptitude, etc. , to do something well as well as capitative excellence in performance, expertness and dexterity. It is clear that  an intelligence and skills are different. In some way they are also similar, because we gain more intelligence while we develop and grow and we acquire new skills that we didn't have before.