Practical Intelligence

Have you ever heard of "practical intelligence?"--To pyschologist, Robert Sternberg, practical intelligence includes things like "knowing what to say to whom, knowing when to say it, and knowing how to say it for maximum effect."

My pepper posses some kind of charm where she can talk her way out. One time when she was at the piano, CM, test. She could wiggle words out from the evaluator to hint her how she did at the test. She would talk to me in such a way that prep my mind to accept whatever she was about to say. --She wasn't born like this for sure.

I recalled when Pepper was younger, she would cry and threw temper tantrum if she didn't agree with us or she didn't get whatever she wanted. And she is the kind of child that would always push her limits. I stood my ground--unless the girls could-convince me! Remember, I am not easily convinced. Somehow those encounter sparked her practical intelligence, if you may.

Image from blog.lib.umn.edu

According to Gladwell, author of Outliers, " It is procedural: it is about knowing how to do something without necessarily knowing why you know it or being able to explain it. It's practical in nature: that is, it's not knowledge for its own sake. It's knowledge that helps you read situations correctly and get what you want. And, critically, it is a kind of intelligence separate from the sort of analytical ability measured by IQ. To use the technical term, general intelligence and practical intelligence are "orthogonal":the presence of one doesn't imply the presence of the other.

We see these all the times where some people always able to convince others easier and get what they want and somehow for whatever situations they may be in, they always manage to get out of them easier. They posses the charm --practical intelligence. And for the rest of us, who are quite intelligent, IQ wise, but not practically intelligent, we may find it harder to squirm ourselves out for many situations. But luckily this social savvy is knowledge --can be learned and normally unintentional trained by our families.

Annette Lareau, sociologist, conducted a fascinating study of group taken from two different classes, poor, middle/upper class. To her surprised that children from middle class own the most 'practical intelligence' --middle-class children learn a sense of "entitlement." --Parents from middle-class family tend to let their children negotiate, involved in conversation, speak for themselves, own their own problems.

It is still not too late ... if we find our children lack of the so called, practical intelligence, we still have a lot of chance to tend them--after all they need to posses both intelligence to be successful in this society.

Do you agree with Gladwell, Lareau and Sternberg that we should enhance our practical intelligence to be successful? 

If you enjoy my blogs, would you come 'Like' me on my FB fan page: https://www.facebook.com/AngelJourneyofLife --Thank you!

Until next stop,
Journey of Life

Threshold in Intelligence

I once wrote Motivation and Us, where I have mentioned that "Self motivation! Without it, even a gifted child can perform less than one! In fact, I was told that there are plenty of gifted children that aren't doing well in this world and some parents considered gifted is a curse!"

Now I have learned something new about being gifted, so called, higher IQ. --IQ is a lot like height in basketball, according to a British psychologist Liam Hudson. Basically you need to be a t least a certain height to play at the NBA level, and the same true of intelligence. Intelligence has a threshold. Basically, what both Hudson and Gladwell from Outliers were saying that once you are in the threshold of having IQ from 130 and above--there is no much difference. And you don't have to have the highest IQ to win the Nobel prize.

Image from sciencedaily.com

Gladwell analyzed schools that have produced Nobel Prize winners and discovered that they were not only from the schools like Stanford, Harvard or Yale but also from any school even the less elite ones. In order to be a Nobel Prize winner, all you have to do is to be smart enough to get into College. "This is a radical idea, isn't it," the author asked.

Another drastic example Gladwell has given in his book Outliers was about The University of Michigan law school. Like any elite schools, the university has given 10% of his admission allocation to member of racial minorities due to the policy of affirmation action. The school decided to tally up some statistic on the students admitted solely based on policy of affirmation action. They wanted to understand how successful were these students compared to the Termites--based on their intelligence. --a phrase introduce by Lewis Terman, professor of psychology at Stanford University for gifted individuals. He believed that these Termites were destined to be the future elite of the United States. To the university's surprised that those law school's minority students did extremely well --They're just as successful. There was no discrepancy.

"We have seen," Terman conclude, with more than a touch of disappointment, "that intellect and achievement are far from perfectly correlated."

Aside from intelligence, there is a creativity. Now take the following sample of 'divergence test.' and ask yourself and/or your children. Write down as many different uses that you can think of for the following objects:
1. a brick
2. a blanket
If your answers simply lie between the conventional usage of both items. Think again! Think about what are their usages when you have nothing but those items. --Now you know ...

I really enjoy writing this part of blog as much as I enjoy reading the Outlier. --Simply mind boggling!

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Thank you for walking with me on this journey ...
Journey of Life

The 10,000-Hour Rule

There is no doubt that each of us have heard of ‘Practice makes better.’ In fact I often said that to my girls. There are certain things in our lives, aside from using our brains, we need to spend a lot of  time to practice. Be in the math, computer programming, or singing or dancing or playing sports and … You got the point!

What I found most intriguing is the rule of 10,000 hours! Somehow what set the success individuals apart from the rest of the world, is the Ten Thousand Hours Rule!

If you have read Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, you know exactly what I am talking about. If you haven’t, don’t worry … I will fill you in. –And trust me :-)

I am going to take you on a journey to visit three icons that are quite different in some ways but yet they all share one thing in common. –The Ten Thousand Hours…

Courtesy of enlightenmentsite.com

First, let’s visit Bill Joy, the cofounder of Sun Microsystems, and the person who wrote the Unix code that is still being used even now. It was all started with his times in Michigan where he first set foot in the campus in the fall of 1971. Just a year after the university decided to upgrade their computers to time-share systems where they could handle more than 100 students using the main frame at a time.

 It would have been different story the year before where the students would have to wait in line for the computer to free up before they could use it. As of his guardian angel was with him to grant his wish to spend more time in front of those computers,  someone had found a bug in the system that would allow them to spend unlimited time in the lab without being kicked out. –After quick calculation, he said, “So, so maybe … ten thousand hours?” he said, finally. “That’s about right.”

Next let’s visit The Beatles –John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr. Before their records hit the top list. They spent innumerable of hours practicing in Hamburg Strip Club called The Indra. Why? ---Again, the 10,000 hours!

Then you have Bill Gates, who have spent his childhood (since 8 years old) attending a private school, Lakeside, where it was the only school at that time that had enough money to buy the time-shared computer. Gates and his friends taught themselves how to program and before they know it! –Get the idea now? He spent about 10,000 hours behind the computers.

There is no doubt that those individuals are very talented and intelligent. According to Gladwell, “But what truly distinguishes their histories is not their extraordinary talent but their extraordinary opportunities.”

Joy was lucky enough to attend the Michigan where they just converted their computer lab to the latest a year before and someone found a bug in the system which enable them to use the lab unlimited time. The Beatles was invited to play countless hours at the Hamburg. Gates’ incredible good fortune to be at Lakeside in 1968.

“All the outliers –referring to Gates, Beatles and Joy, we’ve looked at so far were the beneficiaries of some kind of unusual opportunity. Lucky breaks don’t seem like the exception with software billionaires and rock bands and star athletes. They seem like the rule.”

What do you think about the 10,000 rule? Yay? Nay?

If you enjoy my blogs, would you come 'Like' me on my FB fan page: https://www.facebook.com/AngelJourneyofLife --Thank you!

Until next stop,
Journey of Life

The Roseto Mystery

I am reading a book, Outliers, by my favorite author, Malcom Gladwell. I am not even close to completing the book but I was so inspired and I felt like I have something to offer to all of you. In the Introduction, the author took the readers to visit an incredible story about The Roseto Mystery, how they migrated from Roseto Valfortore located about one hundred miles southeast of Rome, Italy. to US. First they came in a group of eleven Rosetans –ten men and one boy—set sail for New York. After settling down, they sent message back home and the following year, came fifteen Rosetans. And as time passed, twelve years later in 1894, twelve hundred Rosetans applied for passports to America, abandoning their own town. 

Town of Roseto Valfortore, Italy Image courtesy of https://encrypted-tbn2.google.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTvy8oTPcCIgrYA7Sms8h06x69XvPV4KKEc-1LnVZcbT8o9U18W

They called their new town Roseto, Pennsylvania. Somehow they were blessed by their health as no one seemed to pass away due to heart attack but old age.—Rarely anyone who was under sixty five with heart disease, this was in 1950s, according to Outliers.  In fact the finding suggested that “There was no suicide, no alcoholism, no drug addiction, and very little crime. They didn’t have anyone on welfare. Then they looked at peptic ulcers. They didn’t have any of those either. These people were dying of old age. That’s it!” Stewart Wolf, a physician, found this mystery fascinating. He was determined to solve it. At first, he thought the Rosetans must have special diets until he discovered that instead of cooking with olive oil, a much healthier oil, they had been cooking with lard. Further discoveries spelled that the Rosetans consumed 41 percents of their calories from fat and they smoked heavily and many were struggling with obesity.

Then Wolf went down the path to analyze their genetics and later tracked down Rosetans’ relatives who were living in other part of the US to see whether they shared some similarity only to find dead end. –They didn’t. Now Wolf started to suspect the location where they lived may have some influenced. There were couple towns nearby where Roseto is and those people had similarity habit and background but only to find much of their death were due to heart disease. –Another dead end.

After scratching his head, Wof finally derived to one point, if it wasn’t the diet, or the genetics or the location, it must be the Rosetans. After further observations, Wolf found that the way of their living. Rosetans have a very social, warm and close knit community. Throughout the day, people were stopping and chatting away with their friends. If one needed a hand, the whole community would lend theirs.

What I found the most intriguing about this story is something quite foreign in this age of our society. We are so busy with our own lives and we can’t even spare 30 seconds to let someone pass or let someone into our lanes when we are driving, let alone lending our hands to the needy ones. Even with the medical so advanced today, we are still finding our close friends dying from heart attacked at relatively young age. What do we need to do to have the close knit community like the Rosetans  have?--Have you ever wondered?

I am hoping this journey of visiting the Roseta Mystery, Outliers, by Malcom Gladwell will inspire all of us to start reaching out and building a community that we all could treasure and benefit from and perhaps --someday when the time come, we would visit our ancestors in a natural way, not heart attack. 

If you enjoy my blogs, would you come 'Like' me on my FB fan page: https://www.facebook.com/AngelJourneyofLife --Thank you!

Until next stop,
Journey of Life

Mind Reading ...

I first noticed about mind reading when my girls were young. Every child goes thru the same cycle in life. They will attempt to deceive us. If we pay close enough attention, we may catch them and hopefully they will not have the chance to hone this skill and becoming an expert. When they are younger, my girls tried to deceive me and I could see thru them? I often tell my kids that mommy knows what you are thinking. The truth is each of has this power, mind reading.

--courtesy of cartoonstock.com

In fact, according to the article in Psychology Today dated September 1^st 2007, newborns were born with the ability to read minds and they are able to mimic facial expressions in just a few weeks old. And Nancy Eisenberg, a psychology professor at Arizona State University and an expert on emotional development stated that, “By two months, infants can perceive and respond to the emotional states of their caregivers.  By age 5, children have acquired a rudimentary ability to read others' minds; they possess a "theory of mind." That is, they understand that other people have thoughts, feelings, and beliefs that are different from their own.”

The theory of mind reading is actually merely reading facial expressions and body languages. It was reported that on average we can read people's minds at the accuracy of 20 percents. This number goes up to 35 percents for couples and close friends. The article claimed that we, females, tend to better read mind, simply by motivation factor. We want to know. Men can too; however, often they don’t bother to do so. Not motivated.

We also tend to feel the emotion that the other parties have. By going thru the same emotion, we can somehow better read their mind.  In contrast, we fail miserably on mind reading when we are under stress and no time, according to “Blink – The Power of Thinking Without Thinking,” by Malcom Gladwell. When we are under stress, our minds stop reading and our abilities to read mind have become impaired. Worst, they are filled with our own assumptions and thoughts. And sometimes, we simply don’t have the chance to do it when we are given no time.

Often, when we know someone well (long) enough, we take it for granted and assume that we know them well enough. We become presumptuous to pay details attention to their facial expressions and body language. And, we may insert our own presumption. And this can lead to disastrous. But, good news is, we are given many opportunities to re-confirm our initial reading. After all, if we care enough, we would keep trying and understanding our friends or significant others and that could lead to better mind reading.

Last December, we were on a Princess cruise to Eastern Caribbean, and we attended a “Mind Reading,” show. It was incredible! This person, (pardon me, I am not good with names,) asked the audiences to clear our minds and start focusing on one thing, anything. Later he narrowed down the reading by saying, “I see someone is thinking about a dog.” Then he went on, “The dog name starts with letter A.” Then he concluded with the exact name of the dog.  It was impressive! He also claimed that if any of the audience can prove that the participants were his accomplice, he would reward them with $ Million.

Hope you fun with Mind Reading … See you on my next stop!

Until next stop,
Journey of Life