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Robert J. Sternberg | |
|---|---|
 Sternberg in 2011 | |
| Born | (1949-12-08)December 8, 1949 (age 75) Newark,New Jersey, U.S. |
| Education | Yale University (BA) Stanford University (PhD) |
| Known for | Triarchic theory of intelligence Triangular theory of love Three-process view |
| Awards | James McKeen Cattell Fellow Award(1999) E. L. Thorndike Award(2003) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Cognitive psychology |
| Institutions | Oklahoma State University,Yale University,Tufts University,University of Wyoming,Cornell University |
| Doctoral advisor | Gordon Bower |
Robert J. Sternberg (born December 8, 1949)[1] is an Americanpsychologist andpsychometrician. He is a professor of Human Development atCornell University.[2] Sternberg received his BA fromYale University and a PhD fromStanford University under advisorGordon Bower. He is a distinguished associate of the Psychometrics Centre at theUniversity of Cambridge.
Among his major contributions to psychology, the most notable are thetriarchic theory of intelligence and several influential theories related to creativity, wisdom, thinking styles, love, hate, and leadership. AReview of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Sternberg as the 60th most cited psychologist of the 20th century.[3]
Sternberg was born on December 8, 1949, to aJewish family, inNew Jersey. Sternberg suffered fromtest anxiety as a child. As a result, he became an inadequate test taker. This upset him and he reasoned that a test was not an adequate measurement of his true knowledge and academic abilities. When he later retook a test in a room that consisted of younger students, he felt more comfortable and his scores increased dramatically. Sternberg later constructed the Test of Mental Ability (STOMA), his first intelligence test.[citation needed] This problem of test-taking is what sparked Sternberg's interest in psychology.
Sternberg was an undergraduate student at Yale University. Neither of Sternberg's parents finished high school, and he attended Yale only by achieving a National Merit Scholarship and receiving financial aid.[4] He did so poorly in his introductory psychology class that his professor insisted that he pursue another major. Determined to succeed, Sternberg earned a BA summa cum laude, and was elected toPhi Beta Kappa, gaining honors and exceptional distinction in psychology. Sternberg continued his academic career at Stanford University, where he earned his PhD, in 1975.
Sternberg returned to Yale as an assistant professor of Psychology in 1975, and would work at Yale for three decades, eventually becoming the IBM Professor of Psychology and Education, as well as the founder and director of the Center for the Psychology of Abilities, Competencies and Expertise.[2]
He left Yale in 2005 to assume the position of Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Tufts University, where he quickly began his job search for a promotion to a Provost position.[4] After multiple unsuccessful high-profile attempts to gain other academic leadership positions within a few years of arriving at Tufts, including at the University of Colorado[5] and the University of Iowa,[6] Sternberg was offered a position at Oklahoma State University in 2010, where he remained as provost for three years. In early 2013, Sternberg was named the new president of the University of Wyoming.[7] After resigning from the University of Wyoming in late 2013, Sternberg joined theHuman Development faculty of Cornell University.[2]
Sternberg took office in July 2013 as the University of Wyoming's 24th president. His major aim was to push the "development of ethical leadership in students, faculty and staff".[8] Therefore, Sternberg wanted to change the University of Wyoming's test-based selection process of applicants towards an ethics-based admission process: "The set of analytical skills evaluated in the ACT [American College Testing] is only a small sliver of what you need to be an ethical leader."[9]
After arriving at the University of Wyoming, Sternberg's term was marked by tumult in the faculty. Three weeks after taking in office as Wyoming's new president, the provost and vice president for academic affairs was asked to resign and stepped down.[10] In the next four months, three associate provosts and four deans were asked to resign or resigned voluntarily—many explicitly citing disagreements with President Sternberg's approach.[11]
The last dean to step down, the Dean of the College of Law, Stephen Easton, accused Sternberg at a university meeting of unethical treatment of staff, professors, and schools: "You have not treated this law school ethically."[12] Sternberg refused to discuss the case at the meeting. TheCasper Star Tribune portrayed the situation at the university as "chaos in the college".[12] Additionally, other provosts blamed a lack of respect for and interest in human capital. According to Peter Shive, a professor emeritus, Sternberg asked everyone to wear the school colors, brown and gold, on Fridays. Shive said the farther away from the administrative building he went, the fewer people were wearing brown and gold.[13]
Ray Hunkins, a UW Law College graduate, former counsel to the UW trustees, a member of the board of directors of the UW Foundation, and the Republican nominee forgovernor of Wyoming in2006, questioned Sternberg's policies that had led to the dismissal or resignation of the administrators. "I think there's chaos in the university," Hunkins said.[14]
On November 14, 2013, only 137 days after Sternberg had taken the helm of UW, it was announced at a press conference following a trustees meeting in William Robertson Coe Library that Sternberg had tendered his resignation to the board. In a public statement read by the trustee president, David Bostrom, Sternberg said that despite his care for the university, "It may not be the best fit for me as president." Laughter arose immediately upon the reading of Sternberg's statement.[15] In accordance to university regulations, vice president for academic affairs Dr. Dick McGinity took the office as interim president. His resignation was neither asked for, nor forced by the Board of Trustees.[16]
According to theWyoming News, Sternberg's four-month presidency produced more than $1.25 million in administration-related costs equivalent to the costs of 31 faculty staff positions for one year.[17] That includes $377,000 for Sternberg's severance pay, including $325,000 that he will be paid 2014; $37,500 in deferred compensation Sternberg is due by December 31; about $89,000 for the next presidential search; $330,000 for search firms to find replacements for administrators and deans who resigned; $265,000 for renovations to the house and garage that Sternberg was allowed to continue to rent at a price of $1,100 a month until May 31.
Sternberg holds thirteen honorary doctorates, from universities in and outside the United States, including theComplutense University of Madrid,Durham University,KU Leuven,Tilburg University,University of Cyprus,University of Paris V, andSt. Petersburg State University. Additionally, he holds an honorary professorship at theUniversity of Heidelberg,
Sternberg began serving as editor of the journalPerspectives on Psychological Science in 2015. As editor he published eight commentaries in his own journal between 2016 and 2018 without peer review.[18] In response to one of these pieces, a letter of concern was drafted,[19] which over 100 psychologists endorsed. In addition to the concerns about the lack of peer review, the letter of concern also mentioned that these articles feature extreme levels ofself-citation, ranging from 42% to 65%.[19] In response to the letter and from pressure on social media, Sternberg resigned in late April 2018 from his position of editor ofPerspectives on Psychological Science, over a year and a half before his term was scheduled to end.[18]
Sternberg's awards include the Cattell Award from theAssociation for Psychological Science (APS), SirFrancis Galton Award from theInternational Association of Empirical Aesthetics, the Arthur W. Staats Award from the American Psychological Foundation and the Society for General Psychology, the E. L. Thorndike Award for Career Achievement in Educational Psychology Award from the Society for Educational Psychology of theAmerican Psychological Association (APA) and theGrawemeyer Award for Psychology in 2018.[20] In the APA Monitor on Psychology, Sternberg has been rated as one of the top 100 psychologists of the twentieth century. The ISI has rated Sternberg as one of the most highly cited authors in psychology and psychiatry (top .5 percent). Sternberg is a fellow of the National Academy of Education, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and other organizations. He is past-president of theAmerican Psychological Association and the Eastern Psychological Association, and currently is President of the Federation of Associations in the Behavioral and Brain Sciences.
Sternberg's main research include the following interests:
Sternberg has proposed atriarchic theory of intelligence and atriangular theory of love. He is the creator (with Todd Lubart[21]) of the investment theory of creativity, which states that creative people buy low and sell high in the world of ideas, and a propulsion theory of creative contributions, which states that creativity is a form of leadership.
He spearheaded an experimental admissions process atTufts to quantify and test the creativity, practical skills, and wisdom-based skills of anapplicant.[22] He used similar techniques when he was provost at Oklahoma State.
Sternberg has criticizedIQ tests, saying they are "convenient partial operationalizations of the construct ofintelligence, and nothing more. They do not provide the kind of measurement of intelligence that tape measures provide of height."[23]
In 1995, he was on anAmerican Psychological Association task force writing a consensus statement on the state of intelligence research in response to the claims being advanced amid theBell Curve controversy, titled "Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns."
Many descriptions of intelligence focus on mental abilities such asvocabulary,comprehension,memory andproblem-solving that can be measured throughintelligence tests. This reflects the tendency of psychologists to develop their understanding of intelligence by observing behavior believed to be associated with intelligence.
Sternberg believes that this focus on specific types of measurable mental abilities is too narrow. He believes that studying intelligence in this way leads to an understanding of only one part of intelligence and that this part is only seen in people who are "school smart" or "book smart".
There are, for example, many individuals who score poorly on intelligence tests, but arecreative or are "street smart" and therefore have a very good ability to adapt and shape their environment. According to Sternberg (2003),giftedness should be examined in a broader way incorporating other parts of intelligence.
Sternberg (2003) categorizesintelligence into three parts, which are central in his theory:
Sternberg (2003) discusses experience and its role in intelligence. Creative or synthetic intelligence helps individuals to transferinformation from one problem to another. Sternberg calls the application of ideas from one problem to a new type of problemrelative novelty. In contrast to the skills of relative novelty there isrelative familiarity which enables an individual to become so familiar with a process that it becomes automatized. This can free up brain resources for coping with new ideas.
Context, or how one adapts, selects and shapes their environment is another area that is not represented by traditional measures of giftedness. Practically intelligent people are good at picking up tacit information and utilizing that information. They tend to shape their environment around them. (Sternberg, 2003)
Sternberg (2003) developed a testing instrument to identify people who are gifted in ways that other tests don't identify. TheSternberg Triarchic Abilities Test measures not only traditional intelligence abilities butanalytic,synthetic, automatization and practical abilities as well. There are four ways in which this test is different from conventional intelligence tests.
Sternberg added experimental criteria to the application process for undergraduates toTufts University, where he was Dean of Arts and Sciences, to test "creativity and other non-academic factors." Calling it the "first major university to try such a departure from the norm,"Inside Higher Ed noted that Tufts continues to consider theSAT and other traditional criteria.[22][25]
Sternberg proposed a theory ofcognitive styles in 1988.
Sternberg's basic idea is that the forms of government we have in the world are external reflections of the way different people view and act in the world, that is, different ways of organizing and thinking. Cognitive styles should not be confused with abilities, they are the way we prefer to use these abilities. Indeed, a good fit between a person's preferred cognitive profile and his abilities can create a powerful synergy that outweighs the sum of its parts.
The main three branches of government are the executive branch, legislative branch and judicial branch. People also need to perform these functions in their own thinking and working. Legislative people like to build new structures, creating their own rules along the way. Executive people are rule followers, they like to be given a predetermined structure in which to work. Judicial people like to evaluate rules and procedures, to analyze a given structure.
The four forms of mental self-government are hierarchical, monarchic, oligarchic, and anarchic. The hierarchic style holds multiple goals simultaneously and prioritizes them. The oligarchic style is similar but differs in involving difficulty prioritizing. The monarchic style, in comparison, focuses on a single activity until completion. The anarchic style resistsconformity to "systems, rules, or particular approaches to problems."
The two levels of mental self-government are local and global. The local style focuses on more specific and concrete problems, in extreme case they "can't see the forest for the trees". The global style, in comparison, focuses on more abstract and global problems, in extreme cases they "can't see the trees for the forest".
The two scopes of mental self-government are internal and external. The internal style focuses inwards and prefers to work independently. The external style focuses outwards and prefers to work incollaboration.
The two leanings of mental self-government are the liberal and conservative. These styles have nothing to do with politics. The liberal individual likes change, to go beyond existing rules and procedures. The conservative individual dislikes change and ambiguity, he will be happiest in a familiar and predictable environment.
All people have different profiles of thinking styles which can change over situations and time of life. Moreover, a person can, and often does, have a secondary preferred thinking style.
