Success is Thinking and Working SMARTER not Harder by Clifford Morris

Welcome and thanks for your visit.

Some years ago, I developed this quite plain web site. I was, and continue to be, most interested in the psychological construct termed human intelligences. Stated in the form of a research question: "Are we who we are due to our biological background, agreeing that inheritance and genetics play a firm factor in our overall cognitive makeup ... or are we able to enhance our cerebral smarts via deliberate practice and by best utilizing our various intelligences?"

Here is my 2010 take on all of this.

I liken the broad field of human intelligence research as to an intellectual continuum.  Each end of this continuum houses a major cerebral camp, each camp being polar opposite to the other as to the definition of what constitutes human intelligence.  Those psychologists who practice their wares in the traditional camp suppose that smarter individuals are more intelligent than others are because they possess the right genes.  In other words, the campers operating in this end of the cerebral spectrum argue that the cognitive capabilities of humans include stronger biological underpinnings, and are more genetically influenced.  To sum up their stance, they tend to argue that there is, in the main, one (1) unitary general factor, or g , which accounts for a large part of the variance among all of us.

At the other end of the spectrum houses the opposing camp, more liberal-minded psychological theorists.  They disagree strongly with the contents of the immediate above paragraph, disputing this more hereditary stance ... arguing instead that it is the environment which strongly influences gene expression.  Their stance is that our multiple smarts are composed of various cognitive capacities and that it is the combination of these cerebral capabilities via deliberate practice which constitutes our overall bundle of smarts.  Still others like to argue that males and females tend to select the best environments that suit their particular abilities.  This latter viewpoint complicates considerably the (age-old) gene-versus-environment debate.

To sum, I believe that all of our intelligences and our various levels of expertise are products of mother nature, as well as nurturing environments.  However, we must remember that we are not fully slaves to our genes or prisoners to our background.  In short, I 'see' success as stemming from a blending of us best using those intelligences that our parents passed on to us and by developing those special talents that we have deliberately polished over the years.

I believe that the 'jury is still out' , so-to-speak, on all of this.  In the interim, might the content from some of the below links aid us in better understanding this most interesting psychological construct?

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