Explanation:
In recent years, researchers in Africa, Asia and elsewhere have found that people in non-Western cultures often have ideas about intelligence that differ fundamentally from those that have shaped Western intelligence tests.
Research on those differences is already providing support for some of the more inclusive Western definitions of intelligence, such as those proposed by APA President Robert J. Sternberg, PhD, of Yale University and Howard Gardner, PhD, of Harvard University's Graduate School of Education (see related article). Eventually, it may also help researchers design new intelligence tests that are sensitive to the values of the cultures in which they are used.
Researchers of cultural differences in intelligence face a major challenge, however: balancing the desire to compare people from various cultures according to a standard measure with the need to assess people in the light of their own values and concepts, says Elena Grigorenko, PhD, deputy director of the Center for the Psychology of Abilities, Competencies and Expertise at Yale.
"On the one hand, mindless application of the same tests across cultures is desired by no one," she suggests. "On the other, everyone would like to be able to do at least some comparisons of people across cultures."
