Triarchic Theory of Intelligence

Definition of Successful Intelligence

According to the proposed theory, successful intelligence is the use of an integrated set of skills needed to attain success in life; however, individuals define it within their sociocultural context. People are successfully intelligent by virtue of recognizing their strengths and making the most of them, at the same time that they recognize their weaknesses and find ways to correct or compensate for them. Successfully intelligent people adapt to, shape, and select environments through finding a balance in their use of analytical, creative, practical, and wisdom-based skills. This section considers each element of the theory in turn.

According to the first element, there is no one definition of success that works for everyone. Education should be geared toward the goals of each individual rather than toward one predefined goal that may be relevant to some students but not to many others.

The second element asserts that there are different paths to success, no matter what goal one chooses. For most of us, there are at least a few things we do well, and our successful intelligence is dependent in large part upon making these things “work for us.” At the same time, we need to acknowledge our weaknesses and find ways either to improve upon them or to compensate for them.

The third element asserts that success in life is achieved through some balance of adapting to existing environments, shaping those environments, and selecting new environments. There may be times when our attempts to adapt and to shape the environment lead us nowhere—when we simply cannot find a way to make the environment work for us. In these cases, we leave the old environment and select a new environment. Sometimes the smart thing is to know when to get out.

Finally, we balance three kinds of skills in order to achieve these ends: analytical skills, creative skills, practical skills, and, in the augmented version of the theory, wisdom-based skills. We need creative skills to generate ideas, analytical skills to determine whether they are good ideas, practical skills to implement the ideas and to convince others of the value of our ideas, and wisdom-based skills to help achieve a common good that goes beyond just our own self-interest.

Most people who are successfully intelligent are not equally endowed with these diverse skills, but they find ways of making the three skills work harmoniously together. People exercise their analytical skills when they analyze, compare and [Page 1721]contrast, judge, critique, and evaluate. People exercise their creative skills when they create, invent, discover, design, imagine, and suppose. People exercise their practical skills when they put into practice, apply, utilize, implement, and persuade. People exercise their wisdom-based skills when they utilize their knowledge and their other skills to serve a common good, by balancing their own with others’ and higher order interests over the long and short terms, through the infusion of positive ethical values.

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