An American professor of psychology, Howard Gardner has identified at least seven forms of human intelligence. Social intelligence is one of these seven. Social intelligence has two components. One is the ability to access one’s own emotional life or to ‘look into the inner self’. This involves the ability to understand and to control one’s own behavior and actions. For example, this happens when we feel stress or anxiety and the ability or self-awareness to not let these feelings interfere with the quality of a decision. Psychotherapists have a perfect understanding of these feelings and have deep insight into them. Philosophers and authors also have the ability to verbalise their feelings in an exact and self-critical way.
Successful politicians and religious leaders have horned this form of Emotional Quotient, or EQ very well. Good teachers and gifted parents with this ability can put themselves into another person’s position and work well with that person. They can do this very well because they are sensitive to the mood fluctuations, temperaments, motives and aims of people around them, and are able to measure them against their own emotions. A person who has very good social intelligence is able to therefore merge the two facets, that is, to ‘look to the outside’, combined with the ability to ‘look into the inner self’.
Together with the two facets of social intelligence, Howard Gardner has identified a range of other talents. The first of these is language, which is a universal ability of humans transcending all cultures, despite the differences. Poets, scriptwriters, editors and public speakers generally have a high degree of linguistic intelligence. The second is, logical-mathematical intelligence that is shared by all people. The third variety of intelligence is spatial orientation. This ability transcends time. It was just as important when early men hunted animals or crossed oceans to discover new land, as it is now when we need to drive safely on roads or to fly jets. This talent is also important in some professions such as sculpture, architecture. The fourth variety of intelligence is physical-kinaesthetic intelligence, which enables us to remember movements throughout our lives. Anyone who has learnt to play an instrument or ride a bicycle will never lose this ability. Finally, there is musical intelligence. Everyone has an innate ability to appreciate music and rhythm and everyone is a potential musician. We can readily convert tones, harmonies and rhythms into music. Musical intelligence comprises the set of tools we use to do this.
Other intelligence include the ability to use all our other skills and perception to memorise and make sense of the abstract, for example numbers and mathematical formulas. Our brains have a natural ability to think in pictures and this intelligence has in the past allowed early men to communicate. Examples can be found in cave drawings by primitive men, modern form of Chinese characters originating from pictures of animals or other forms of nature, and hieroglyphics used by the ancient Egyptians. In modern times, the ability to think in pictures or make mental movies in our mind has helped many to achieve incredible feats of memory as well as accelerated learning.
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