Human Intelligence

This article reviews theory and research regarding human intelligence. It defines intelligence and then proceeds to the consideration of various theoretical approaches, such as psychometric, cognitive, biological, and developmental. The article then considers special topics – heritability and malleability and the relation of IQ to intelligence. Many theorists believe that intelligence can be understood hierarchically in terms of a general ability at the top of the hierarchy and successively more specific abilities in hierarchical levels below that. Other theorists, however, suggest that intelligence is better understood multiply, not through hierarchically related abilities but rather through interactively related ones of roughly equal importance.