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% Mastery Mailing 1
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\shorttitle{Existential Intelligence}
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\begin{document}
\centerline{\textbf{Mastery Mailing 2: Existential Intelligence}}
Hey Radeen,
In my psych class, we've been studying the nature of intelligence, and I
didn't realize how many different schema there were for categorizing
intelligence.
Some of these systems were based on measuring intelligence for education
and managing learning disabilities, like IQ.
For the single-number tests to be valid, we need to believe in a general
intelligence, which one psychologist Spearman called the \emph{g}
factor \autocite[276]{textbook}.
But there are two other major schools: Gardner's school, which believes
in many intelligences (including, possibly, a spiritual/existential
intelligence) and Sternberg's school.
Sternberg thinks that intelligence has three main categories and
that Gardner's categories are only talents or capabilities
\autocite[278]{textbook}.
I cautiously subscribe to Gardner's school of multiple intelligences
because the role of practice and very specific talents seems too
important to talk about any general adaptive type of intelligence.
Gardner's 8 intelligences includes, but isn't limited to, bodily-kinesthetic
intelligence, musical intelligence, and naturalist intelligence.
Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence differs most from a standard IQ test,
but we have evidence of very different intelligence levels between
Olympic athletes and laypeople.
And psychologists have nowhere near settled the debate on how heritable
intelligences are, even though most agree it is somewhat heritable.
But even the metric that lets us measure heritability (IQ) has a lot of
critical issues: it's racist, classist, and vulnerable to ``stereotype
threat,'' where minorities perform worse due to the stereotype that
they're less intelligent.
Some empirical evidence backs Gardner's hypothetical spiritual
intelligence, i.e. the ability to answer ``the big questions'' of
philosophy, but proof remains elusive.
Still, we can examine data from self-report assessments about questions
about the ``unseen'' or where we came from.
A study at the World Islamic Sciences University in Jordan at $n=56$
(and previous research on the gender-existential intelligence link)
found no statistically significant link between existential intelligence
and gender or between specialization and gender \autocite{exist}.
That study also showed medium-high existential intelligence of all of
the graduate students it surveyed, and it gives us a high-quality test
(stable, valid, and reliable) for Jordanian students.
Another study, instead on an online sample of young adults, found a
statistically significant relationship between existential intelligence
and a depression-stress asssessment (with effect size $r = .22$)
\autocite{eisneurosis}.
That study is correlative, so it is unclear whether depression causes
existential thinking, existential thinking causes depression, or a
confounding variable.
While many philosophers reject this measure as being too value-laden,
Gardner's system is flexible enough to include skills valued in
culture-specific ways.
I'm still really interested in learning more about the ``big
questions,'' and I'm curious if existential intelligence can be taught
in a value-free way, so I'm excited that we have high-quality scales for
existential intelligence self-assessment.
The Fernandes study scares me a bit that I should be careful about my
own mental health when exploring existential philosophy because it could
be harmful.
I think this multiple-intelligences theory will be useful to you
because, in Model UN, and in any international affairs case study, we
needed a good understanding of the valued competencies in different
cultures.
And in subcultures (like an academic context) that value philosophical
abilities, we need to focus on preserving those values when we think
about international policy.
And, the degree to which education is a self-selection variable or
correlated with existential intelligence can give us some interesting
evidence on how to reduce suffering globally.
One preliminary study from the University of Al-Qadisiyah actually
showed that higher existential intelligence can paradoxically increase
enjoyment of life, so we should continue to examine this variable in
traumatic conditions like civil war \autocite{enjoyment}.
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