BY ANNIE STACHURA
Since its conception in the early 1980s, Howard Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences (MI) has been reviewed and cited in countless ways. Discussions of its uses and applications have evolved over time, taken on new shades and shapes, across the educational landscape. As with any similarly expansive theory, misrepresentations can gain traction and persist, and these misunderstandings can in turn lead to malpractices.
In an effort to encourage representations and uses of MI that are grounded in a reasonable understanding of the theory, Gardner has outlined both “good practices” and “malpractices.” This concern about accuracy is increasingly crucial in our times, where it is all too easy to find and spread misinformation — sometimes inadvertently, sometimes deliberately. Especially on the internet, reiterations are not always fact-checked. The answers we’re looking for may sometimes be at our literal fingertips and at other times, buried somewhere, difficult to distinguish or verify.
Methods to understanding accurate/inaccurate representations of mi
I wanted to unpack some of the misunderstandings and misrepresentations that commonly appear in MI-related discourse. I was interested not only in how the theory was being reiterated and used, but the frequency with which these misinterpretations have come up in recent years. Accordingly, I collected a sample of 241 papers and articles published online between the years 2018 and 2023 — all of which mentioned Howard’s research.
First, a tiny refresher. The Theory of Multiple Intelligences suggests (based on evidence from disparate sources) that human beings have not one, but a number of relatively discrete intellectual capacities. Gardner’s theory is a critique of the standard psychological view of intellect: the idea that there is a single intelligence that can be adequately measured by IQ or other short answer tests. There are no direct educational implications of the theory, but some recommendations make sense, while others are misleading, or even false.
I found that of the sample of articles collected that mentioned Gardner’s research, 72% (or 173 articles) mentioned MI. I divided those that mentioned MI into three categories:
Category 1: Mentions MI, but does not define it
Category 2: Mentions MI, and accurately defines/uses it
Category 3: Mentions MI, and inaccurately defines/uses it
FINDINGS
After sorting through these papers, I made the initial categorical breakdown out of the total (173).
While I was curious to understand the proportion of these papers that provided or did not provide a definition, I thought it might be advantageous to know how the numbers change when only taking into consideration the papers that both mention and define MI. If one solely looks at Categories 2 and 3, here is what the percentages look like:
Adjusting the data this way, it becomes more obvious that while a majority of the discourse around multiple intelligences defines and uses the theory in a reasonably accurate way, inaccuracies and misrepresentations still make up a sizable portion of the conversation.
I wanted to understand more about these misrepresentations and to determine from which fundamental misunderstandings about multiple intelligences they arise. Accordingly, I focused on the papers from Category 3 (“Mentions MI, and inaccurately defines/uses it”) and worked to create descriptive buckets, to categorize these misconceptions and determine how often they appear in the discourse. Below, I’ve outlined these descriptive buckets from most frequently presented misconception to least, and provided some examples from the data.
Error #1: Equating multiple intelligences with “learning styles” (38%)
MI theory is often confused with and/or conflated with learning styles. The term “learning styles” refers to a handful of theories that aim to account for differences in individuals’ learning. Readers may have encountered before the idea of one student being a visual learner while another learns best by listening. While both learning styles and MI theory have possible educational implications, the implications are not the same; a “style” describes an approach that can putatively be used for a range of activities, but intelligence refers to the computational power of a mental system. For example, if someone has strong linguistic intelligence, that person can readily compute information that involves language or convert other material into linguistic form. Gardner himself is skeptical about the utility — and even the validity — of the concept of learning styles. As an example, people with weakness in reading are often called visual learners, and yet reading itself is a visual endeavor!
The data showed us that this was by far the most common misconception about MI theory. Most often, these papers seemed to use the terms interchangeably, such as one article that included the statement, “Howard Gardner highlighted the different learning styles of students with his theory of Multiple Intelligences back in the 1980s” or another that said, “According to psychology and Research Professor of Cognition and Education at Harvard University, Howard Gardner, there are seven identifiable learning styles.”
Error #2: Linking intelligence directly to career success or domain selection (25%)
While it’s fair to say that possessing strength in certain intelligences may mean you are well-suited for certain kinds of work, claims that an individual’s MI profile determines how successful they will be professionally or which jobs they can have are extrapolations or oversimplifications, and are not supported by MI theory.
This error often appeared in well-intentioned articles about choosing a career path, a matter that can be overwhelming and stressful. The problematic nature of these claims is in their reductive implications. For example, one article described, “Potential career choices for people with linguistic intelligence include lawyer, author, journalist, speaker, and politician.” Not only does this make it seem as though intelligence refers to a mutually exclusive type, rather than a component of the mind that has a certain amount of strength; it also both unfairly limits the number of career options a person has and exaggerates the predictive nature of MI on career success. Moreover, it is possible to succeed in some of these careers without strong linguistic intelligence, and strength in an intelligence by no means narrows or dictates one’s career options.
Error #3: Misunderstanding what it means to have strength in a certain intelligence (20%)
These types of misrepresentations seemed based on incomplete or false understandings of MI theory, which then led to fragmentary or deficient descriptions. For example, one paper included the statement, “Illustrious American psychologist Howard Gardner proposes that a child is blessed with at least eight skills and he keeps divulging and making use of it in different phases of his life,” while another said that MI theory describes, “a model composed of eight requirements of cleverness.” In both of these examples, the writers’ understanding of MI may initially seem close to the mark, but the implications are misleading. Children do not all have strength across the intellectual landscape, nor are intellectual strengths or weaknesses linked to life stages.
Error #4: Misattribution; mentions a type of intelligence that does not exist in the theory (8%)
These errors likely arise when there is confusion between MI theory and another theory. For example, one article stated, “…people have learned the habit, not just the skill of what Harvard professor Dr. Howard Gardner called ‘listening intelligence,’ one of the multiple intelligences he focuses on.” In fact, this is not one of the eight intelligences the theory proposes. Another article claimed that MI theory contains twelve different types of intelligence, which is inaccurate.
Error #5: Claims that there is an MI-assessment associated with the theory (5%)
Gardner has not developed an MI test, and does not place a great deal of weight on self-assessment (because there is no reason to assume that people understand their own minds accurately). To be sure, some scholars have developed their own way of measuring multiple intelligences (the best-known instrument is the MIDAS test, developed by Branton Shearer), but there is no official assessment associated with the theory. In one article, the author recommends readers “use Howard Gardner’s ‘Multiple Intelligence Assessment’ to help each individual be successful academically.” Not only does Gardner neither have nor endorse any test: it’s a far stretch to claim that any brief instrument can predict success or failure in academic work.
Other errors (5%)
A few articles did not fall into the above categories but were still in error. One claimed that Gardner has denounced the legitimacy of multiple intelligences, which he most emphatically has not! Several described how fingerprints can be used to determine information about a person’s intelligences -- a claim not supported by any legitimate research (you can find more information about this particular misconception under “Malpractices.”) This misconception — or other claims that MI is tied to any identifiable physical trait — is particularly dangerous, as it creates the opportunity for individual bad actors or companies to exploit those who may not know better, persuading them to spend money on fingerprint analysis or other bogus testing.
In conclusion…
My research led me to a clearer understanding of common misconceptions in journalism (or elsewhere on the internet) around Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences. It’s not possible to say with certainty why these misunderstandings and misrepresentations come up. However, it seems likely that accuracy issues often arise not from malicious intent, but rather from rush jobs. When proper research is not done, even theories that would otherwise be fairly easy to present, like MI, can be misconstrued as inaccurate assumptions are made.
While the data collected is about one specific theory, the insights also speak to a troublesome wider issue: misinformation, and the ease with which it can be found and spread on the internet. Especially in this age of rapid technological development, AI instruments like ChatGPT may use and replicate misinformation, making our ability to achieve accurate understandings even more difficult.
It’s worth noting that our findings by no means detract from how encouraging it is to see sustained discourse about the theory online. Scholarly and scientific research should be widely available and accessible; it is to the great advantage of all that the conversations around MI and other theories continue to expand and change, to find new venues and voices with time. However, it is key that, in moving discussions like this forward, we are scrupulous in calling attention to unwarranted claims and seeking to clear and correct the landscape of misinformation.
I would like to thank Shinri Furuzawa and Howard Gardner for their very thoughtful comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this piece.