Scientific Inquiry into Human Potential

Historical and Contemporary Perspectives Across Disciplines

David Yun Dai, Robert J. Sternberg, David Yun Dai, Robert J. Sternberg

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9780367261368
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000281675
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Scientific Inquiry into Human Potential explores the intellectual legacy and contemporary understanding of scientific research on human intelligence, performance, and productivity. Across nineteen chapters, some of the most eminent scholars of learning and psychology recount how they originated, distinguished, measured, challenged, and adapted their theories on the nature and nurture of human potential over decades of scientific research. These accessible, autobiographical accounts cover a spectrum of issues, from the biological underpinnings and developmental nature of human potential to the roles of community, social interaction, and systematic individual differences in cognitive and motivational functioning. Researchers, instructors, and graduate students of education, psychology, sociology, and biology will find this book not only historically informative but inspiring to their own ongoing research journeys, as well.

PART 1

Evolutionary and Differential Perspectives on Human Potential

1

A Journey from Behavioral Ecology to Sex Differences to Mitochondria and Intelligence

David C. Geary

In 1904, Spearman discovered that performance in school, on various perceptual and cognitive tests, and “common sense” were all positively correlated, and concluded “that all branches of intellectual activity have in common one fundamental function” (p. 285). This function is known as general intelligence or g. The nature and origins of intelligence are long-standing interests of mine and the topic of one of my books (Geary, 2005). Recently, I proposed that the basic mechanism underlying g is the efficiency of mitochondrial functioning (e.g., cellular energy production) that also explains the relations among g, health, and aging. The insight came to me rather quickly, and I put together the theoretical manuscript on the topic (Geary, 2018) over the course of about four weeks. However, the insight was proceeded by several years of reading and thinking about mitochondrial functioning and evolution as related to sex-specific vulnerabilities in cognition and other traits (topic of another book, Evolution of Vulnerability, 2015) and can be linked to a decades-long interest in sex differences and their evolution.

In this chapter, I’ll detail some of the history behind my interest in sex differences and their evolution, and how this led to a proposal that the efficiency of mitochondrial functioning—the seat of cellular energy production—is the most basic biological mechanism underlying general intelligence (Spearman’s fundamental function), which provides an explanation of why intelligence, health, and successful aging in adulthood are interrelated (Geary, 2018, 2019). I understand that this proposal and some of my other ones (especially as related to sex differences) might be controversial, and in fact the question of whether I intentionally try to irritate and offend others has come up. I have to say that I wish that this was the case, but it is not. Topics that might irritate and offend others in the field are often wide open and ready for intellectual exploitation. The general avoidance of such topics also means that much less is known about them, and thus they present the type of ill-structured problem that I find engaging and attractive to think about.

Although I have many collaborators and friends and enjoy working on joint projects of various kinds, I prefer to work alone and am the most content and focused when thinking about some difficult (at least for me) question, often listening to classical music and pacing. In fact, I sometimes find myself a little lost, with “nothing to do”, without some interesting question to think about. To be sure, I actually have plenty to do in terms of typical empirical studies but these are more often than not focused on smaller-scale (though useful) questions. Whatever the endeavor, I am keenly aware of the potential to make errors, especially with controversial topics, and would feel quite embarrassed if this were to happen. One result is that I’m actually pretty cautious before publishing ideas that some people might see as well beyond the current empirical evidence. Typically, I’ve spent a considerable amount of time, often years, thinking about the issue on and off. I generally try to visualize the patterns or relationships (sometimes sketch them) and often mentally simulate how these patterns might change under various conditions, essentially thought experiments to probe the feasibility of what I want to propose. I then read extensively in the area to determine if one point or another is likely to be correct or not. In some cases, I decide that I don’t know enough to pursue the question or that my approach is not on track, and at other times decide to continue.

At the end of this incubation and preparation period, I typically have an outline (sometimes on paper but more typically in my head) of how the argument regarding the proposal (examples below) needs to be structured, the literatures that need to be covered, and the questions that need to be addressed to make it a coherent argument. The latter includes consideration of the targeted audience and how they might understand or misunderstand the proposal, given the current Zeitgeist in the field, whatever that might be at the time. The actual writing is usually an alternating mix of frustration and excitement, typically with a persistent low-level of underlying tension that results from dealing with an unsolved and potentially unsolvable (by me) problem. Although I typically have an outline, I often don’t know where a deep reading of the associated literatures will lead and whether or not it will be consistent with the proposal I have in mind. This reading often leads to iterative revisions of the proposal and typically results in additional nuance.

I see these types of ill-structured problems as a puzzle to be solved but also as a piece of art, whereby each segment has to be carefully constructed and all of them have to be put together in just the right way to produce a coherent whole that communicates a key message. In the following, I provide a bit of history, starting with graduate school and then my time at the University of Missouri, and the circuitous route that led from an interest to sex differences to sex-specific vulnerabilities and finally to mitochondria and intelligence, health, and aging.

Graduate School

I decided to enroll in the PhD program at the University of California, Riverside (UCR) to study hemispheric specialization, that is, the representation of information in the left- and right-sides of the brain, and its development. As part of the breadth requirements for the PhD, I took a number of courses in physiological and comparative (cross-species) psychology, and these piqued my interest in evolution, especially Krebs and Davies’ (1981) An Introduction to Behavioral Ecology. The book was actually required reading before the start of one of Lewis Petrinovich’s courses in comparative psychology, to get us up to speed before diving into primary articles, and so we never actually discussed it. Nevertheless, I remember reading this book sitting outside of our 40-year-old graduate student housing (temperatures were often > 100 degrees Fahrenheit, with no air conditioning), which was built as “temporary housing” for the air force during WWII (to be torn down after the war). I remember this because I got quite excited about the concepts and research described therein and decided that this was the way to go. It provided a big-picture view of behavior that was otherwise lacking in psychology, but there was not much to be done with it at that time, at least for me.

After completing the required coursework, I spent a year putting together a dissertation proposal that involved the study of sex differences in the hemispheric representation of verbal and spatial information as related to pubertal development, following Waber (1976). The goal was to assess the latter using physician-administered standardized ratings of pubertal development and through the measurement of concentrations of various hormones that change during this time (e.g., testosterone). I was able to convince a reproductive biology lab at UCLA to collaborate on the project (they were interested in the hormone assays as related to pubertal development). My proposal was approved by my dissertation committee and I was ready to go, but the Institutional Review Board (IRB) at UCR refused to approve the project. The reason was that UCR did not have appropriate facilities for the pubertal ratings or the blood draws for the hormone analyses, even though the UCLA lab agreed to send qualified personnel to conduct these. After making some adjustments and submitting appeals, the IRB refused to budge and thus sank my project. I recall being pretty disheartened as a result and considered leaving the program. Fortunately, I was also working with another faculty member, Keith Widaman, on a mathematical cognition study and switched my dissertation project to this area. It is very likely that without Keith’s friendship and support I would have left UCR and perhaps the field.

Missouri

After more than 100 applications and only one interview, I landed a one-year teaching position (six classes, plus two in the summer) at the University of Texas at El Paso. Following advances made by Mark Ashcraft and Robert Siegler, I began my own work on children’s mathematical development and the study of children with difficulties learning mathematics; the latter interest emerged from a two-year program and degree in clinical child/school psychology. I continued this work after moving to the University of Missouri, first in Rolla and then in Columbia, because it is an interesting and practically important area of research. I also thought it was a much safer route to tenure than was integrating an evolutionary approach with my interest in sex differences. So, while doing standard cognitive developmental work on children’s mathematical development, publishing in appropriate journals, and securing funding from the National Institutes of Health, I was reading on the side to improve my understanding of evolution. Along the way, I met Mark Flinn (Anthropology) who knew most of the major players in the nascent area of sociobiology. He plied me with reading lists.

Except for one short and almost entirely ignored (including by me) article on evolution and cognition, I decided not to publish anything having to do with evolution prior to tenure. The decision was in part due to my relative ignorance of the field, the controversies surrounding sociobiology, and my sense that I had no idea what I would do to support my family if I was denied tenure as a result of pursuing controversial topics. The decision was reinforced by the intense reactions I received from some students, as I started to incorporate these ideas into some of my graduate courses. As just one example, during a lecture on sex differences, a student actually stood up pointed at my notes on the chalkboard (this is before PowerPoint) and yelled “You can’t teach this, it’s not politically correct!” Needless to say, I continued but after several courses filled with these types of episodes, among other things, I approached their training director and told him I didn’t want his “*&%$ing students taking my classes anymore.” That was the end of that, although I still get irritated when thinking back on these experiences.

In any case, once tenured, I began to incorporate evolutionary ideas into some of my work, including arguing for a distinction between evolved or biologically primary cognitive abilities (e.g., language, intuitive sense of approximate quantity) and culturally-specific or biologically secondary ones (e.g., reading, symbolic mathematics). This insight came in the context of my frustration with some of my older daughter’s schooling, especially the then popular belief that learning to read was essentially the same as language learning, that is, whole language and its counterpart, whole math. I knew there was something wrong with this approach but didn’t have a good framework for understanding why. When listening to a lecture by Alvin Liberman (a University of Missouri alum) on language evolution, he offhandedly mentioned that reading was just secondary to language and not important to the gist of his talk. It immediately occurred to me that this was a good way to frame the issue (this is the source of my primary vs. secondary abilities). I thought about the distinction for a while and how it might relate to mathematics and introduced the primary-secondary distinction in my first book, Children’s Mathematical Development (Geary, 1994), and elaborated on it in an American Psychologist article soon thereafter (Geary, 1995). I actually wrote another article before this one that was eventually published in Behavioral and Brain Sciences (Geary, 1996), but given the controversial nature of the corresponding topic—evolution, sex differences, and mathematics—it went through multiple reviews, with ten reviewers overall. I argued that there are no sex differences in primary quantitative abilities (e.g., intuitive sense of quantity) and that boys’ and men’s advantage in some areas of math are secondary to their evolved or primary advantage in spatial abilities, among other things. I have to say that I was pretty naïve when writing this article. I was certainly aware of general social issues regarding these topics but thought a scientific discussion would be more rational and tempered. I was wrong but am thankfully blessed with a good amount of social insensitivity and so continued in this direction.

Male, Female: From Sex Differences to Cognitive Traits

Soon thereafter, a representative from MIT Press approached me about writing a book on sex differences. I didn’t know it at the time, but they had been negotiating with Doreen Kimura to write a similar book and thought they had lost her to another publisher; I was their backup. Eventually Doreen went with them and produced her excellent Sex and Cognition (1999), but in the meantime they dumped me and offered a couple of free books for the trouble of putting together a book outline and proposal. I had the basic outline ready and was enthusiastic about the project and so approached APA Books, which had published Children’s Mathematical Development, and they accepted it. I recall someone telling me that I was “crazy for agreeing to write a book about something I knew nothing about.” The assessment wasn’t entirely true but it wasn’t entirely off base either. Bu...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Preface
• Introduction: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on HumanPotential
• PART 1. Evolutionary and Differential Perspectives on Human Potential
• 1 A Journey from Behavioral Ecology to Sex Differences to Mitochondria and Intelligence
• 2 A Long “Intellectual” Journey
• 3 Partnership: A Tale by the Tail of the Kite
• 4 Of Human Potential: A Forty Year Saga
• PART 2. Cognitive and Developmental Perspectives
• 5 Unleashing Clio: Tracing the Roots of My Journey in Cognition
• 6 Ignoring Boundaries between Disciplines
• 7 Optimal Expression of Human Potential as the Central Goal of Human Development
• 8 Capitalizing on Chance Opportunities
• 9 My Journey from the Humanities to Psychology
• PART 3. Perspectives on Human Creativity
• 10 Human Potential at the Achievement Pinnacle: A Lifelong Preoccupation with History-Making Genius
• 11 A Contrarian’s Apology and the Changing Contexts of Creativity Research
• 12 Female Teacher/Researcher: My Work in Talent Development Education and in Creativity Education
• 13 Business as Unusual: From the Psychology of Giftedness to Changing the World via Innovation
• 14 Creativity and Cities: A Personal and Intellectual Journey
• PART 4. Educational and Social Perspectives
• 15 Everything I Needed to Know about Human Intelligence I Learned Before I Even Went to College
• 16 Reflections on My Work: The Identification and Development of Creative/Productive Giftedness
• 17 Academic Achievement, Identity, and Hope: Investing in and Over Time
• 18 Intellectual Roots and Paths
• 19 Learning from Life: How I Became a Wisdom Researcher
• Epilogue: The Past, Present, and Future of (Research on) Human Potential
• List of Contributors
• Subject Index
• Name Index