Culture and IntelligenceRobert J. SternbergYale UniversityIntelligence cannot be fully or even meaningfully under-stood outside its cultural context. Work that seeks to studyintelligence acontextually risks the imposition of an inves-tigator’s view of the world on the rest of the world. More-over, work on intelligence within a single culture may failto do justice to the range of skills and knowledge that mayconstitute intelligence broadly defined and risks drawingfalse and hasty generalizations. This article considers therelevance of culture to intelligence, as well as its investi-gation, assessment, and development. Studies that show theimportance of understanding intelligence in its culturalcontext are described; the author concludes that intelli-gence must be understood in such context.Behavior that in one cultural context is smart maybe, in another cultural context, stupid (Cole, Gay,Glick, & Sharp, 1971). Stating one’s politicalviews honestly and openly, for example, may win one thetop political job, such as the presidency, in one culture andthe gallows in another.The conceptualization, assessment, and developmentof intelligence cannot be fully or even meaningfully un-derstood outside their cultural context. Work that seeks tostudy intelligence acontextually may impose an (oftenWestern) investigator’s view of the world on the rest of theworld, frequently attempting to show that individuals whoare more similar to the investigator are smarter than indi-viduals who are less similar. For example, a test of intel-ligence developed and validated in one culture may or maynot be equally valid, or even valid at all, in another culture.This article is divided into five parts. First, I define themain concepts of the article, culture and intelligence. Sec-ond, I specify models of the relationship between cultureand intelligence. Third, I introduce the article and its mainideas, including a description of how my colleagues and Icame to do the work we do. Fourth, I discuss culturalstudies relevant to these ideas. Fifth and finally, I drawsome conclusions.What Is Culture and What IsIntelligence?Because the topic of this article is culture and intelligence,it is necessary to define these constructs. There have beenmany definitions of culture (e.g., Brislin, Lonner, &Thorndike, 1973; Kroeber & Kluckhohn, 1952). I defineculture here as “the set of attitudes, values, beliefs andbehaviors shared by a group of people, communicated fromone generation to the next via language or some othermeans of communication” (Barnouw, as cited in Matsu-moto, 1994, p. 4). The term culture can be used in manyways and has a long history (Benedict, 1946; Boas, 1911;Mead, 1928; see also Matsumoto, 1996). Berry, Poortinga,Segall, and Dasen (1992) described six uses of the term:descriptively to characterize a culture, historically to de-scribe the traditions of a group, normatively to expressrules and norms of a group, psychologically to emphasizehow a group learns and solves problems, structurally toemphasize the organizational elements of a culture, andgenetically to describe cultural origins.How is intelligence defined? The theory motivatingmuch of the culturally based work that my colleagues andI have done is the theory of successful intelligence (seeSternberg, 1985, 1997, 1999b, for more details), whichproposes its own definition of intelligence. I use the termEditor’s note. Robert J. Sternberg was president of APA in 2003. Thisarticle is based on his presidential address, delivered in Toronto, Canada,at APA’s 111th Annual Convention on August 8, 2003. Award addressesand other archival materials, including presidential addresses, are peerreviewed but have a higher chance of publication than do unsolicitedsubmissions. Presidential addresses are expected to be expressions of theauthors’ reflections on the field and on their terms as president. Both thisaddress and that of Philip G. Zimbardo, the 2002 APA president, werepresented at this convention to catch up on the year lag that had developedin the last decade of giving presidential addresses.Author’s note. I am grateful to my many collaborators at and affiliates ofthe PACE Center for their collaborations. My principal collaborator in thiswork has been Elena L. Grigorenko, who has made invaluable contribu-tions both to our research and to the preparation of the figures for thisarticle. The work in Kenya and Jamaica was supported primarily by thePartnership for Child Development, centered at Imperial College, Univer-sity of London. The work in Tanzania was supported by the James S.McDonnell Foundation. The work in Alaska was supported by the Insti-tute of Educational Sciences (formerly the Office of Educational Researchand Improvement), U.S. Department of Education. The work in Zambiawas supported by the U.S. Agency for International Development. Thework in Russia was supported by the National Council for Eurasian andEast European Studies. The work in Taiwan was supported by the U.S.Office of Educational Research and Improvement. The work in San Jose,California, was supported by the Spencer Foundation.Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Rob-ert J. Sternberg, PACE Center, Yale University, 340 Edwards Street, P.O.Box 208358, New Haven, CT 06520-8358. E-mail: [email protected]–August 2004●American PsychologistCopyright 2004 by the American Psychological Association 0003-066X/04/$12.00Vol. 59, No. 5, 325–338 DOI: 10.1037/0003-066X.59.5.325APA PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESSESsuccessful intelligence to underscore the importance ofunderstanding intelligence not just as a predictor of aca-demic performance, in the tradition of Binet and Simon(1916), but also as a predictor of success in life. This theorydefines successful intelligence as the skills and knowledgeneeded for success in life, according to one’s own defini-tion of success, within one’s sociocultural context. Oneacquires and utilizes these skills and this knowledge bycapitalizing on strengths and by correcting or compensatingfor weaknesses; by adapting to, shaping, or selecting envi-ronments; and through a balance of analytical, creative, andpractical abilities.In solving problems and making decisions, metacom-ponents, or higher order processes, decide what to do.Performance components actually do it. And knowledge-acquisition components learn how to do it in the first place.Analytical intelligence results when components are ap-plied to fairly