WHAT IS PRACTICAL INTELLIGENCE?

ACCORDING TO A WIDELY CIRCULATED STORY that quickly became an Internet parable— or ossibly a legend—a bricklayer had injured himself while working on a repair project at the top of a low-rise building. On his claim form for medical insurance, he tried to minimize the incident by answering the question,“What caused the accident?” with the brief response, “Faulty judgment.”When pressed by the company’s claims department for a full and detailed description of the accident, he related a tale that could indeed tempt the casual reader to question his common sense. According to his account of the incident, he had been repairing a brick chimney on the roof of an older four-story building.When he finished, he still had a large number of unused bricks and needed to get them back down to the ground. Not wanting to make many trips up and down the service stairwell, he decided to rig a rope and pulley system to lower the bricks to the ground. Spotting a pulley mounted on an existing beam that extended over the edge of the roof, he chose a wooden barrel as a container for the bricks. He passed a rope through the pulley, attached one end to the barrel, and threw the other end down to the ground.Then he went down and attached the bottom end of the rope firmly to a cleat mounted on the wall. Next he went back up, hung the empty barrel over the side of the wall, and proceeded to fill it with bricks. When it was full, he went down and proceeded to lower it to the ground. He wrapped the end of the rope securely around his hand and then released the rope from the cleat.Too late, he realized that the barrel of bricks weighed a lot more than he did. He suddenly shot upward, hanging onto the rope, as the barrel rapidly descended. He met the barrel on its downward trajectory, getting severely bruised in the process.As he arrived at the pulley, the barrel hit the ground. Unfortunately, the weight of the bricks tore the bottom out
of the barrel, which—now empty—weighed much less than he did. Now the barrel shot upward as he descended rapidly, still attached to the rope. He met the barrel a second time, sustaining additional bruises. He hit the ground as the barrel hit the pulley. By then, he had become disentangled from the end of the rope and, as he lay on the pile of bricks looking upward, he saw the barrel on its third trip, now 40 Practical Intelligence heading straight for him. Before he could get up and move out of the way, the barrel landed on him, inflicting a final humiliating insult. No, it’s not inhuman to laugh at this incident; we’re laughing at the human condition, not the condition of any one human. If you have guilt feelings about laughing at the slapstick nature of the incident, just imagine that it might not be true. But . . . we all know that it could be true, don’t we? There’s something primal and archetypal about incidents like these. They’re the stuff of comedy, cartoons, and jokes. Failure of common sense is a common theme in theater, movies, and even songs. And if we’re honest with ourselves, we have to admit that we’ve all had similar lapses of “common sense.” My neighbor’s teen-age son, while drilling a hole in the fender of his bicycle to mount a headlight, vigorously drilled down through the metal fender and straight into the front tire. It’s a necessary part of the experience of being a teen-ager—it comes with the territory. I’m a fan of definitions; I often find that I can clarify my understanding of an issue, a topic, or a concept if I can frame it succinctly into a concise definition. And sometimes trying a variety of definitions helps us understand a concept from multiple angles. What counts as practical intelligence, common sense, or wisdom depends on the context in which we hope to find it. It’s situational. A person might be wise in the ways of business, but not at all wise in his or her dealings with fellow human beings. Someone might be considered wise in the practice of some scientific specialty, but not wise in managing his or her personal finances. Practical intelligence, perhaps more than the other intelligences in the MI framework, needs a view through a wide-angle lens. It incorporates a wide range of mental processes, skills, and habits.We understand that it isn’t “IQ,” and in fact that it’s more than IQ, but:What is it? Moving on from this simple definition, we begin a fairly broad investigation of human mental competence, in its many dimensions.

THINKING IS A BODILY FUNCTION

How many of your best ideas have come to you in the shower? While brushing your teeth? While walking or jogging? How often have you experienced strange, surreal, and creative images flowing through your mind as you were falling asleep or coming out of sleep? Have you had an important idea or a realization come to you in a dream, or while daydreaming? Has the solution to a problem flashed into your mind while you were doing something completely unrelated to the problem? The very first principle of practical intelligence to be understood is that you think with your whole body, not with some individual circuit somewhere in the cortex of your brain. In fact, your brain is not really a whole computer—it’s one key part of an extended computer, your biocomputer, which includes your whole nervous system, various information-processing subsystems located in your organs and muscles, and even your chemical messenger systems such as your hormone systems and your immune system. Case in point: controlled clinical studies have shown that, immediately after test subjects meditated for as little as fifteen minutes, concentrations of an immune-system chemical known as Immunoglobulin A (IgA) in their saliva registered significantly higher than before meditation. These changes were not observed when the subjects merely rested or slept.The particular nature of any mental activity potentially has a corresponding physiological impact on the body. Case in point: controlled clinical studies have also shown that listening to counter-classical types of music such as hard rock, grunge, rap, and other strident acoustical patterns induced a significant drop in salivary IgA levels.Working in very high-noise environments tends to have the same debilitating effects on immune function. In Chapter 5 we’ll explore further the effects of environmental stressors on mental health and wellness and discover some strategies for managing our sensory environment and filtering out a major part of the toxic input. Clearly, mental activity of any kind is expressed throughout the body, down to the level of individual cells. In some sense, we can even say that the cells themselves have intelligence—they “think” at a microscopic level. Certainly the individual organs do. A mountain of scientific and anecdotal evidence supports the conclusion that mental activity can make a person sick or well, a point we hardly need debate here. The emerging scientific field of psychoneuroimmunology reports astonishing instances of remission of cancer and recovery from a host of diseases using meditation, intensive imaging, and even prayer, where conventional medical treatment strategies have failed. A thought—any thought— is a whole-body event. It might arise from within an organ, say with a change in blood glucose level, which you sense as a changed feeling, or mood.That change in mood will have a subtle—or significant—effect on the conscious aspect of your mental process, which is only a part of the whole of what you’re “thinking” about. What you decide, what you say, and how you perceive what’s going on around you are all moderated by these bio-information events that are constantly flashing throughout your body.Your brain is usually involved, but may not necessarily be controlling the process.What we think of as “moods,” for example, are actually bio- informational states that pervade the body. You think—in the broadest sense of the term—even while you’re sleeping. Even in the deepest level of sleep, classified as Stage 4 sleep, you can still respond to signals from your environment. How does a sleeping mother’s biocomputer tune out traffic noises, barking dogs, and a snoring mate, and yet wake her instantly when her infant cries? What enables you to wake up five minutes before your alarm goes off? Sleep researchers report incidents of lucid dreaming, a dream state in which the dreamer somehow “knows” that he or she is dreaming. This seems to be a paradoxical state of consciousness that incorporates aspects of waking thought and vivid dream images. Every one of those countless thought-events that continually flash through our bodies makes us a different person—physiologically, psychologically, and informationally.We may be conscious and aware of some of these bio-informational events, which we specifically refer to as “thoughts,” only vaguely aware of others, and incapable of experiencing others at a conscious level. Nevertheless, we’re continuously “thinking.”

MEET YOUR BIOCOMPUTER

Imagine building a computer that can store a hundred years’ or more worth of information; analyze and seamlessly combine multi-media data—images, sounds, numbers, words, and even sensations and smells; recognize and recall complex patterns; generate its own data from scratch; and even write its own software. Make it able to control complex mechanical, electrical, and chemical processes equivalent to those of a small factory, and make sure it can connect instantly to any of billions of others like it. Make it portable, keep it smaller than a fair-sized grapefruit, keep its weight under about three pounds, make it operate with no battery and no cooling fan, on less power than a twenty-five watt bulb, and you have something like the human brain. Your brain. It’s the most advanced biological structure found anywhere in nature. Have you ever considered what a phenomenal gift you have in this biological computer? Let’s take a closer look at this remarkable system and understand more fully the potential it offers for living more intelligently and joyfully. Referring to Figure 3.1, we see the general physical structure of the brain and spinal cord, which form the central processor and the primary communication axis for the whole extended biocomputer. Although not visible in the simplified diagram, your brain floats inside a shockproof vault—your cranium. Three layers of tough tissue, the meninges, protect it and cushion it from bouncing against your skull. It’s the best-protected organ in your body, and it enjoys the highest priority when blood, oxygen, and nutrients are distributed. It produces and floats in its own cerebro-spinal fluid, which circulates nutrients and flows downward to the body, carrying waste products with it.

Figure 3.1. Architecture of the Brain
Also not shown in the diagram is the whole system of arteries and veins, which supply the brain with blood. The absence of a properly oxygenated blood supply to the brain for longer than about four minutes usually causes irreversible brain damage or death. Your brain consumes about 20 percent of your body’s glucose supply and a similar amount of its oxygen. It burns energy at a rate about equal to a twenty-five-watt bulb. (We’ll fore go the obvious jokes about people whose bulbs are dimmer than others.)

Hemispheres, Lobes, and Functions

At first glance, one notices that the outer portion of the brain is partitioned fore-and-aft into left and right halves, or cerebral hemispheres.Your two hemispheres are physically separate, but they’re joined by a thick band of nerve fibers called the corpus callosum (“callous body” in Latin),
as illustrated by the interior view in the figure. The corpus callosum carries signals back and forth between the hemispheres, enabling them to share information constantly. The outer part of your brain’s convoluted surface—the cortex—is demarcated by deep fissures, each referred to by scientists as a sulcus (collectively, sulci), separating various mounds or ridges, each referred
to as a gyrus (collectively, gyri). This sulcus-and-gyrus formation tends to maximize the surface area of the gray matter of the cortex, where the billions of neurons do the heavy work in our thinking processes. It’s also well known that the left hemisphere of the brain controls the right side of the body, and vice versa. Similarly, the sensory signals coming to the brain from the two sides of your body cross over to the opposite hemispheres, where they’re processed. Rather peculiarly, your visual neurons, which emerge from the retinas of your eyes, are segmented into left and right “fields.”That is, the nerves from the left half of your left retina and the left half of your right retina both go to your right hemisphere’s visual processing center, located in the occipital lobe at the rear of your brain. Similarly, the nerves from the right half of each retina go to the visual center in the occipital lobe of your left hemisphere. The optic nerves, which emerge from the back of each eyeball, fuse together into a junction called the optic chiasm, and immediately separate again, with each outgoing nerve branch switching over to the opposite hemisphere. This “crossover” effect, in which motor control and sensory processing are swapped between the two sides of the body and the two cerebral hemispheres, remains a mystery to scientists. The functional value of this design feature is open to speculation. Much of what we know about the functions of the brain comes from the study of brain-injured people. Scientists and physicians have long associated various cognitive, behavioral, and motor impairments with specific traumas to the brain and nervous system. Conversely, they can often diagnose specific brain injuries by testing for impairment of these specific functions. Incidentally, your brain cannot directly perceive the effects of trauma to itself. It has no sensory nerves of its own.
Amid the convolution of visible blobs and crevices on the surface of each hemisphere, one can discern four general subdivisions or lobes: the frontal lobe, which sits just behind your forehead; the temporal lobe, located on the side; the parietal lobe, which spans across the top of your brain; and the occipital lobe, located in the back of your skull. Each lobe is responsible for certain specific aspects of the thinking process.The left and right hemispheres each have the same four lobes, although the assignment of the functions differs somewhat between the two. Between any two people, these functional divisions of activity are very similar, although certain areas can vary somewhat from person to person.Two functional areas that seem to vary somewhat from person to person are the speech and language centers. For about 70 to 95 percent of us, these functions probably reside in the left hemisphere, as illustrated in the figure. Slightly above and behind your left ear, Wernicke’s area, named after German scientist Carl Wernicke (in science, you get to name a part of the body after yourself if you’re the first to discover it) handles the complex process of encoding ideas into language and interpreting the meaning of incoming verbal information. Just forward of your left ear, Broca’s area (named after French scientist Paul Broca)
controls your vocal apparatus. These two centers must work together closely for you to understand and use language. “Handedness”—the preference for using either the left or right
hand—is also not so simple as one might first think. Early researchers believed that handedness and speech were mostly contra-lateral—right-handers had their speech centers in their left hemispheres, so therefore left-handers must carry speech in their right hemispheres. More recent research indicates that left-handers are not simply the opposites— cranially speaking—of right-handers. Apparently, some of them are right-brained for language and some are not. Ambidextrous people complicate the question even further. It’s difficult for scientists to settle this question, because it would require opening up the skulls of large number of people and probing their brains—not a very humane approach to research. Your brain receives information from the various parts of your body and sends back instructions of various kinds by means of twelve pairs of cranial nerves, or nerve bundles (not shown in the figure), which emerge from the base of your skull and plug into your spinal cord. Each cranial nerve coordinates a particular collection of functions. Some of them only transmit information to the brain—the sensory nerves; some only transmit commands from the brain—the motor nerves; and some do both. The neurons you have over two hundred different kinds of them in your cortex, stacked in six layers—are specialized cells that seem to be designed to communicate with one another and with other cells in the body. A typical neuron has a blob-like central body with thousands of thread like receiving connections, or dendrites. Branching out from the cell body is a long tail, or axon, with a fatty myelin sheath, from which radiate many other outgoing connectors called axon terminals. These axons and their terminals make up the thick, fatty structure known as the white matter of the brain. Brain tissue, overall, is highly concentrated in fat, and people in certain cultures consider various animal brains a culinary delicacy. Each neuron receives information through its dendrites and passes it on through its axon terminals.These axons can vary in overall length from a small fraction of an inch to several feet. Unlike other body cells, neurons cannot replace themselves, with a few interesting exceptions. Neurons are continually flashing pulses to one another, at speeds of about two hundred miles per hour. The astronomical number of these potential neuron-to-neuron connections makes it possible for the brain to store vast amounts of information.The well-known brainwaves, measured by the electroencephalograph, portray a kind of electrical “music” created by the simultaneous, rhythmic firing of millions of neurons. Actually, neurons only account for about 10 percent of your brain’s cell count. There’s another type of cell, the much more abundant glial cell (from the Latin word meaning “glue”), which doesn’t carry nerve impulses,but supports the neurons in many ways. Scientists have previously thought of glial cells as a kind of passive “pudding” that surrounds and supports the neurons. New findings, however, suggest that the glial cells communicate chemically with one another, and may act in concert to help transmit information throughout the brain.They also transport nutrients, digest the bodies of dead neurons, guide the development of neurons in infancy, and manufacture the fatty myelin, which surrounds the axons of the neurons. The part of the brain we’ve been seeing from the outside—the cerebrum—is just one of three main divisions that reflect the evolutionary history of human development. This so-called cortex of the brain (from the Latin word meaning “tree bark”) is the most recent of the three primary structures, and it’s what makes us essentially human. The three primary brain structures are sometimes labeled the basal region, the mid-brain, and the cerebral cortex. (Note: scientists differ somewhat in the use of these labels and subdivisions, but these three seem to represent the most widely accepted architecture.)

The Basal Region: Your Reptilian Brain

At the basal region of your brain, your spinal cord enlarges to form the medulla blongata, and above it a bulbous structure called the pons, two structures that regulate and control the most primitive aspects of life: breathing, heartbeat, arousal, and primary motor control.This portion of the system is sometimes called the brainstem, considered by scientists to be the most ancient part of the brain, evolutionarily speaking.We share this primary type of structure with reptiles, birds, and probably with the dinosaurs. Your spinal cord itself is a miniature computer of sorts, where some primitive processes are controlled by in-built spinal reflexes.These include the familiar patellar knee jerk, which the physician tests with a little hammer, and automatic recoil responses to sharp pain, heat, or cold.When you put your weight on your feet as you get out of bed or rise from a chair, your spinal reflexes automatically activate the muscles that raise the arches of your feet so that they will support you properly. This stretch reflex is a in built spinal feature that serves most of the muscles in your body. Sexual orgasm also qualifies as a spinal reflex, although it is mediated in complex ways by cortical activity and a dozen or more hormones and neurotransmitters. At this basal level, various other specialized structures control your autonomic, or involuntary, functions, such as hunger, thirst, sleep and wakefulness, sexual drives, various organ processes, blood pressure, and the general level of activity of your entire nervous system. The pupillary reflex—the automatic dilation and constriction of the pupils of your eyes in response to light—is a fairly reliable indicator of these autonomic functions, which emergency medical workers test to assess for brain injury. Curiously, the processes of falling asleep and waking up are not controlled by the main regions of the brain, but rather by a small patch of cells in the brainstem known as the reticular activating system (RAS). By means not yet well understood, the RAS apparently “turns on” your cortex as you wake up and figuratively turns it off to put you to sleep. Although we can resist falling asleep, it’s well proven that a human being cannot voluntarily stay awake indefinitely. General anesthetics typically work their effects on the RAS.While the RAS doesn’t “cause” consciousness, it seems to be necessary for conscious mental activity to occur. It may also be implicated in attention deficit disorder, and possibly hyperactivity disorder. The brainstem contains specialized cells that secrete neurotransmitters, the chemical messengers that enable the neurons to communicate with one another.These include serotonin, dopamine, acetylcholine, and a number of others.The relative concentrations of these messenger molecules in the brain tends to reflect the current state of brain activity. Some researchers claim that romantic infatuation, for example, is signaled by an increased concentration of dopamine (hence the name). This same basal region has another special structure that easily qualifies as a computer—or at least a sub-computer—in its own right. This is the cerebellum, a plum-sized blob of special nerve tissue that handles your habitual motor functions, such as balance and coordination, walking, routine hand and arm movements, speech, eye movements, and other well-learned motor processes such as a golf swing or tennis serve, typing into your computer, or dancing. The cerebellum (Latin for “little brain”) is also divided into left and right hemispheres. Its neurons, known as granule cells, are very tiny, and while it occupies only about 10 percent of your brain’s volume, your cerebellum has nearly 50 percent of all the neurons in your brain. It receives about two hundred million input fibers, compared to, say, the optic nerve, which contains about one million fibers. It’s the job of the cerebellum to reduce the information-processing load on the cerebral cortex, freeing it for more abstract mental activity. Although the motor control region of the cortex can send commands to various muscles throughout the body, it typically delegates responsibility to the cerebellum for “over-learned” activities that become “second nature.” As you learn any new motor activity, such as writing, singing a song, or reciting multiplication tables, your cerebellum tunes in to the neural activity in your cortex and begins to mimic the patterns in its own neurons. After a number of repetitions, the cerebellum has recorded a script of sorts, which it can call on to control the activity itself. Once the function has been fully learned, the cerebellum takes over control and it actually becomes difficult for the cortex to over ride it. As an experiment, try to take over conscious control of the process of walking across the room or up a flight of stairs. Note how the cerebellar auto-pilot seems to operate almost independently of your effort, making it very difficult to control it by conscious intention.These learned scripts actually account for a large proportion of your brain’s activity.

The Mid-Brain: Your Auto-Pilot

From the basal region, nerve channels branch out to the mid-brain region, which has a set of secondary control systems. Scientists also refer to this collection of structures as the limbic system. The mid-brain area produces various hormones, or “messenger molecules.” These include such hormones as the pituitary gland’s growth hormone and activating chemicals that cause your adrenal glands to secrete the excitatory hormone familiarly known as adrenalin. Other structures stimulate your thyroid gland to secrete thyroxin, which controls the overall pace of your body’s cellular combustion processes, better known as your metabolism. The pituitary, or hypophysis, is a busy little gland. About the size of a pea, it sits in its own private chamber, a small cavity hollowed into the bony brainpan, just above the roof of your mouth. Even this tiny brain structure is further divided fore-and-aft into two lobes, an anterior lobe and a posterior lobe. Operating largely under the supervision of the hypothalamus, the pituitary helps to regulate blood pressure; water retention; thyroid gland function; certain aspects of sexual function; aspects of pregnancy, childbirth, and lactation; overall body growth and size; and the conversion of food into energy. Other components in this limbic or mid-brain system include your thalamus, which serves as the central collection point for almost all sensory data going up to your cortex.The single exception to this thalamic centralization of data is the olfactory data, or the sense of smell, which goes directly to its own processing center in the cortex. The sense of smell is so ancient, evolutionarily speaking, that the olfactory nerves pass upward from the sinuses, through the cribiform plate—the floor of the brainpan—and into the olfactory bulb, a sensory sub-computer that sends its data directly to a special processing area of the cortex. The hypothalamus mediates arousal and emotion (and supervises the pituitary).The hippocampus plays a part in transforming short term memory into long-term memory. A nearby structure, the amygdala, serves as an early warning sensor, detecting patterns in the incoming stream of sensory data that might imply threats to your survival or well-being. Many neuroscientists believe that this constellation of structures in the limbic system, probably coordinated by the hypothalamus, plays a part in psychosomatic illness and psychosomatic healing. By some yet undiscovered process, it seems that the hypothalamus and its partners transform our various levels of conscious and non-conscious ideation into direct physiological consequences, as we’ll explore in more detail in a later chapter. As we’ll learn further, the developing field of psychoneuroimmunology seeks to understand the causative connections between conscious mental activity and immune function, as mediated through these primitive, non-conscious processes.

The Cortex: Your Mental Pilot

The third, and evolutionarily highest, level of your brain’s hierarchy is the cerebral cortex. This region manages the more complex, abstract, relational, and consciously experienced mental processes. It interacts constantly and intimately with the other two levels, as previously described. As we’ve already noted, thinking is not merely a whole brain function—it’s a whole body function. Almost all of the body’s processes, and particularly those processes we refer to as thinking, intertwine closely with the other processes. To illustrate the closely integrated nature of these various brain and body elements, consider the experience of explaining a complicated idea in a conversation.You must begin by forming the concept in your mind; then you find the words to express it; then you switch on your speech apparatus; you modulate the pitch, rate, and volume of your voice to convey the nonverbal meaning; you may make facial expressions or hand gestures to punctuate your message; you study the other person’s reactions for cues that tell you how well you’re getting through; and you sense the emotional tone—the “feeling”—of the situation. Your own emotional and non-conscious responses register your reactions to the situation, and to whatever the other person may be saying. Another familiar experience of the close integration of these brain regions is the so-called “fight-or-flight” reaction, which mobilizes your body in response to a stressful event. The conscious mental activity triggers automatic routines in the limbic or mid-brain region, which in turn mobilize various primitive responses in the basal region. Your whole-body response to a sudden provocation, or to a chronic experience of stress, forms a well-orchestrated syndrome, in which many parts of your biocomputer participate. There is probably much more about the cortex that is yet to be learned than that which we know.We still understand very little about how the brain dreams or why it dreams.We still have no robust theory of how the brain stores its memories. And of course, the entire notion of consciousness remains largely a mystery to neuroscientists.

Two Brains in One: The Hemispheres

As a result of a series of remarkable surgical experiments in the mid-1960s, neuroscientists discovered an astonishing fact about the brain’s hemispheres: they operate as two separate, independent computers, with two uniquely different ways of processing data. Surgeons Joseph E. Bogen and Philip J.Vogel, working at CalTech, began performing a controversial, last-resort surgical technique on patients suffering from severe epilepsy. They theorized that, by severing most of the corpus callosum, the thick band of nerve fibers that connect the two hemispheres, they could prevent epileptic seizures from spreading across the entire brain, or at least limit their severity. Most surgeons had previously believed that such an extreme insult to the brain’s structure would totally incapacitate the patient, or at the least seriously impair his or her general mental functions. But experiments by neuroscientists Roger Sperry and Ronald Myers with cats
and monkeys had indicated no observable impairment. As a result, Bogen and Vogel applied the procedure in a number of cases, with positive results for the epilepsy and no noticeable impairment in mental function. In addition to providing a last-resort treatment for intractable epilepsy, which was eventually rendered unnecessary by more effective drug treatments, the surgical transection of the corpus collosi produced a small population of very unusual human beings. They all had divided brains. Sperry, Myers, and their colleague Michael Gazzaniga performed a wide range of cognitive experiments with these special splitbrain people, over a number of years. Here’s what they discovered. In normal humans (not including the split-brain population), each hemisphere knows what the other hemisphere knows, as a result of the constant swapping of information across the corpus callosum. But each hemisphere “knows” in a different way. The left hemisphere, or “left brain” as pop-psychology fans like to call it, responds much more readily to certain aspects of the data stream than to others. Conversely, the “right brain” responds to its own preferred aspects of the data.Working together they get the job of thinking done, but each makes a different kind of contribution. The left hemisphere—let’s call it “LH”—is more attentive to elements of data—words, phrases, sentences, numbers, repetitive parts of patterns, procedures, sequences, time intervals, and logical “if-then” progressions of ideas. It specializes in noticing, reacting to, and thinking with the “bits and pieces” of information that flow through it. Logic, mathematics, and structure are the home territory of LH thinking. The right hemisphere—the “RH”—is more attentive and more skillful in processing patterns in the data.These include recognizing spatial forms and structures, colors, sound patterns such as musical melodies, and the patterns of intonation of speech.Your RH creates your subjective body image—your sense of your own physical structure, bodily boundaries, and the location and movement of your limbs in space, also known as proprioception. The RH also seems to be much more attentive to the social and emotional meanings of what it’s perceiving. And, of course, we typically associate the term intuition with the RH style of processing. To simplify and sloganize the differences for convenience: the LH specializes in “parts” and the RH specializes in “patterns.” In most normal people, the two hemispheres cooperate so closely that these profound differences are typically concealed. This probably explains why scientists only discovered the phenomenon of hemispheric lateralization in the 1960s when the split-brain surgeries lifted the veil on the brain’s exquisite integration and cerebral synergy. Consider the very ordinary experience of singing a song. Most likely, your RH would conjure up the melody and supply the cues for pitch, intonation, and phrasing, while your LH would retrieve the lyrics (the words). All of this information would flow to your vocal apparatus through the LH speech center, the parietal lobe’s motor center, and probably the cerebellum as well. It’s no wonder that most of us have to practice diligently to learn to sing competently. There’s a lot going on in your head when you sing. Since the discovery of brain lateralization, many scientists and many science popularizers have taken an interest in the implications of the discovery for personal growth and individual effectiveness. Unfortunately, myth and imagination have displaced science in some areas, and various popular myths have sprouted out of wishful thinking. For example,physiological studies indicate certain variations in brain structure and lateralization between males and females and different patterns of learning and competence during childhood. However, the interpretation of this domain of research is so burdened with socio-political controversy that it’s impossible to do it justice within the scope of this book. Consequently, I’ve cravenly elected to limit this discussion and to refer interested readers to the abundant research literature to be found on the Internet.

What Is Our Real Potential?

One aspect of the human biocomputer that seems to fascinate us all is theexistence of a small number of people with abnormally competent brains, many of whom are simultaneously beset by underdeveloped brain functions. Throughout medical history, scientists have studied these unusual people, often with great curiosity but with little practical result. Often referred to as idiot savants (from the French for “wise idiot”), or sometimes just as savants, they demonstrate a combination of remarkable information processing capabilities with impaired primary faculties. One such person, Kim Peek, is a savant with a “photographic” or eidetic memory, combined with severe developmental disabilities. Born with an enlarged head, an encephalocele (a protrusion of brain tissue through a fissure in the skull), an impaired cerebellum, and no corpus callosum, he nevertheless displayed remarkable skills in memory and information processing before the age of five. Although he reportedly tests well below average on standardized IQ tests and has difficulty interpreting abstract concepts such as proverbs and metaphors, he far surpasses most “normal” humans on data-processing tasks. Affectionately known by his friends as “Kimputer,” he has reportedly read over seven thousand books—typically finishing a book in about an hour—and can quote extensively from them. He rattles off baseball scores, geographic information, highway maps, Zip codes, calendars, particulars of popular movies, books, historical events, current news events, and the details of classical music. Peek was the inspiration for the movie Rain Man, starring Dustin Hoffman. He holds down a clerical job that enables him to use his mental calculating abilities, and he also travels and speaks about disabilities as he demonstrates his own unusual abilities. As far as I have been able to determine, neuroscientists and psychologists have learned little or nothing from studying these remarkable savants that might be used to help the rest of us “normal” people to use our biocomputers more effectively. The ironic paradox of a person possessed of phenomenal mental skills that we’d all like to have, combined with severe impairments that none of us want, offers a poignant counterpoint to our concept of ordinary “intelligence.” But we can continue to hope, and to strive to understand. In Chapter 10 we’ll explore a number of practical applications of this knowledge of our biocomputer’s operation, particularly hemispheric lateralization, including the concept of thinking styles, which shape the way we perceive, react, listen, learn, decide, and communicate.

BRAINCYCLES, BRAINWAVES, BRAINSTATES, AND THE DAILY TRANCE

We know so much about the human biocomputer, and yet we know so little.And we make use of very little of what we do know.Although we don’t need to know as much as neuroscientists, maybe we should know at least as much about our brains as we know about our cars and our computers. And this simple knowledge can translate directly into greater personal effectiveness,career success, and greater contributions to our organizations. Let’s start with a better understanding of the patterns of mental process. In the following discussion, when we refer to the brain, let’s keep in mind that we’re usually referring to the entire biocomputer, of which the brain is the central processor.

Braincycles

Scientists have long known about “braincycles,” but few people in the general public seem to understand them or make good use of that knowledge, except perhaps intuitively or inadvertently. Braincycles are variations in the brain’s focus of attention, ranging through a period that averages roughly ninety minutes. In one part of the cycle, your brain pays close attention to the outside world, that is, the incoming “data” from the senses. During this phase, you’re consciously involved in interacting with our environment, such as when reading or listening attentively to what someone is saying. During the other phase of the braincycle, your brain withdraws its attention from the sensory data stream and turns inward, processing its own stored images, sensations, reveries, thoughts, and musings. In everyday language, we say that your mind is “wandering.” This brainstate is usually easily observed in another person by watching his or her eye movement, facial expression, and diminished motor activity. One can immediately think of practical applications for just this one simple but important aspect of brain function. For example, you may observe that your boss seems to be distant and detached from the conversation, indicating that his or her brain is temporarily “off line” (to use an Internet analogy).You might decide to wait until another time to bring up a complex or critically important issue that requires his or her full concentration—your raise, for example—a time when the brain is back “on line.” As another example, consider that there are certain times when you seem to be in the mood for work that requires close attention and concentration, and at other times you find it more difficult to focus on details.To the extent that you can choose, you can tackle certain tasks when your brain cycle is in the right phase for the job. We can directly apply findings like these to human performance management. How many data-entry errors, short-changed customers, industrial accidents, car crashes, surgical blunders, and maybe even plane crashes might be associated with braincycles? Can we provide job aids and skill training to reduce these effects?1 This attention cycle—the shifting of attention between on-line and off-line phases, is just one of many cyclic patterns exhibited by the biocomputer. When we consider the number and variety of other cycles, we can see that the system is like a collection of oscillators, or perhaps like a collection of musical instruments, each playing its own melody. Scientists refer to daily cyclic patterns as circadian rhythms—from the Latin root, which means “about a day.” Perhaps the most obvious circadian pattern is the cycle of sleep and wakefulness. Researchers also identify ultradian cycles, or patterns that repeat several times within a day, and infradian cycles, which span across multiple days. Among the ultradian patterns we have the obvious but taken-forgranted cycles of heartbeat and respiration. Somewhere in the biocomputer, or perhaps at various points, we have oscillators that keep our vital processes going. Our body temperature tends to rise and fall throughout the twenty-four-hour period.The chemical composition of our blood and various other bodily fluids tends to cycle throughout the day. Appetite and digestion follow their own cycles. Sexual arousal and release follows its own cycle. The attention cycle, described above, is also a primary ultradian pattern. A particularly curious ultradian pattern is the so-called nasal cycle, which seems to vary over a period of about ninety minutes. At various times over the cycle, one nostril or the other will be more dilated, with a freer flow of air—provided your nasal passages aren’t congested— and the other will be less open. Sometimes during the cycle they’ll both be about the same.To test this, press one nostril closed with your fingertip and notice the volume of air as you inhale through the other nostril.Then switch to the other side and compare the flow rates. Some researchers have speculated that this nasal cycle is linked to a cycle of cerebral activity in which either the left cerebral hemisphere or the right one is more active, although there seems to be some controversy about this connection. One of the most noticeable infradian patterns is the female menstrual cycle of about 25 days. Over a much longer span, the gestation period for human females is about 280 days. In between, there seem to be human cycles of adaptation based on changes in seasons, the weather, and the amount of daylight. We have many other cycles built into our biocomputers. Consider various rhythmic physical activities such as walking, which are controlled by the cerebellum. Keeping time to music, singing, dancing, and marching all involve built-in oscillators. Even commonplace motor activities such as knocking on a door, brushing your teeth, and washing your hands involve rhythmic patterns.The compelling rhythm of sexual intercourse responds to oscillators programmed deeply into the biocomputer. Consider also the cadence of ordinary speech. The native users of any particular language all tend to follow a distinctive rhythm, or alternating pattern of emphasis. Read the following passage from a poem by A.E. Housman and sense the rhythmic pattern of the language, marked off by the rhyming syllables: And how am I to face the odds of man’s bedevilment, and God’s? I, a stranger and afraid in a world I never made.

Brainwaves

Nowhere do we see the rhythmic, cyclic pattern of the biocomputer’s activity so compellingly illustrated as in the electric signals coming from the brain. In about 1920, German physiologist Hans Berger demonstrated that electrodes attached to the scalp could detect the minute voltage differences between different areas of the brain and could monitor the voltage oscillations caused by the simultaneous firing of millions of neurons. He referred to his device as the electro- encephalograph. Researchers and physicians now use these “brainwaves” to study the brain’s operation and to diagnose and treat a wide range of neurological disorders. Neuroscientists have divided up the range of brainwave frequencies into a series of bands, much like musical notes on a scale. By adjusting their equipment to select only certain ranges of frequencies, they can see the relative proportion of energy that goes into each range. If one band of frequencies is getting much more energy than the others, researchers say that this particular band—or brainwave—is predominant at the moment, and they are able to associate the individual’s reported mental
state with the brainwave that’s most prominent. Although there is no precise agreement on the exact frequency ranges. the most commonly identified brainwave frequency bands (in cycles per second, or Hertz, abbreviated “Hz.”) are:
• Beta Waves. The range of frequencies from about 12 to 16 Hz. upward is usually associated with active, conscious thinking, concentration, problem solving, and forming ideas in preparation for talking.The beta zone is the “alert” state of mental activity, possibly the “standard” state we use most often. If you become anxious, highly vigilant, or expectant, your beta activity will usually increase.
• Alpha Waves. The range of frequencies from about 8 Hz. to about 12 to 16 Hz. is usually associated with a relaxed, alert state of consciousness.When you close your eyes, your alpha activity usually increases.The mental process in the alpha state is usually less purposeful, somewhat detached, possibly somewhat of a reverie, but not necessarily “tuned out.” Alpha activity diminishes with the onset of sleep, opening the eyes, and physical movement, or the intention to move.
• Theta Waves. The range of frequencies from about 4 Hz. to about 8 Hz. is usually associated with drowsiness, reverie, and various states such as trances, hypnosis, deep daydreams, lucid dreaming and light sleep, and the preconscious state just upon waking and just before falling asleep.Theta activity tends to be higher in young children, diminishing into young adulthood.
Curiously, the theta pattern can sometimes be increased significantly by hyperventilation.
• Delta Waves. The range of frequencies from 0.5 Hz. up to about 4 Hz. is usually associated with deep sleep, deep trance states achieved by experienced meditators, and sometimes by drugs,
medication, or neurological dysfunctions.Very young children tend to exhibit higher proportions of delta activity than older children or adults. In addition to these four primary zones of brainwave activity, scientists study other patterns for evidence of abnormal brain activity.
Brainwave energies also shift due to the effects of drugs, dementia, general anesthesia, and brain lesions.2 As we’ll see in a later discussion, variations in these brainwaves— particularly their frequency of oscillation—are associated with particular kinds of mental activity, ranging from conscious purposeful thinking to emotional arousal, to meditation, to reverie, to drowsiness, and to sleep. And the more important reason for knowing about these brainwaves and brainstates, or mindzones, is to realize that we can choose the state we want to be in at a particular moment.We can use this knowledge of brainstates to reduce stress, improve our concentration, increase our creative ideation, and solve problems more effectively. For example, here’s a simple method for going into the alpha state, which can help you relax, de-stress, and become more centered in
yourself: Sit still, stop moving, close your eyes, suspend all intention, and begin listening. Imagine that you’re listening for a particular sound—say the tinkle of a tiny bell—and that, paradoxically, you know it will not happen. Imagine what the bell would sound like if it did tinkle, but at the same time imagine that it has not, does not, and will not. In a sense, you’re meditating on the idea of the bell. As you perform this simple mental procedure, your biocomputer will shift toward the alpha state, the alpha frequencies of your cerebral cortex will increase, and your state of consciousness will change. A few minutes spent in this state every day can help you
become more calm, more centered, and less reactive to any stress or conflict going on around you.

Brainstates

We all recognize, at least occasionally, that our “state of mind”—the momentary configuration of mood, ideation, attention, intention, and expectation—can take various forms. Our mental activity can range all the way from deep sleep through light sleep; drowsiness; reverie; detached attention; concentrated attention; reactive attention; proactive attention; engagement; excitement; agitation and stress; fear and apprehension; and even hysteria. Each of these brainstates—more accurately thought of as a state of the whole biocomputer—has its own unique arrangement of programs in the biocomputer. Researcher Charles T.Tart, one of the pioneers in the study of consciousness, identifies a wide variety of brainstates, each with subtle differences. His book States of Consciousness became a foundation work for the study of consciousness, and what some practitioners refer to as “altered states of consciousness.” For example, Tart contrasts the state associated with going into sleep, which he labels the hypnogogic state, from the state associated with emerging from sleep, which he calls the hypnopompic state. “Micro-dreams,” those momentary images—like video clips or excerpts of dreams—that arise during the state of “half-sleep,” can be very vivid but often make no apparent sense as one returns from them.3 I often find that new ideas, fragments of ideas, strange verbal expressions, and half-formed concepts come to me during dreams or while going into or out of sleep.This is one reason why I keep a stack of index cards and a pen on the night table next to my bed. Brainstates such as apprehension, fear, strong intention, anger, intense concentration, amazement, amusement, disappointment, suspicion, guilt, shame, elation, and many others have scientific interest to researchers.To us ordinary civilians, they’re significant because they’re all part of our mental software. Harvard professor, psychologist, and researcher Herbert Benson, an authority on the subject of meditation and its biocognitive effects, traveled to remote Tibetan monasteries in the Himalayan mountains to study the monks who lived there. The monks, who practiced a method known as g Tum-mo meditation, could raise the temperature of their fingers and toes by as much as 17 Fahrenheit degrees above their average body temperature. Similar measurements on advanced meditators in Sikkim, India, found that the monks there could reduce their metabolism by as much as 64 percent.To understand the significance of that finding, consider that metabolism, or oxygen consumption, typically drops by about 10 to 15 percent during sleep, and slightly more than that during simpler states of meditation. These practitioners could reduce their metabolic functioning to levels below what researchers had previously considered necessary for survival. Benson and his researchers caught the attention of the popular culture by making a video of nearly nude monks in states of deep meditation, drying cold, wet sheets with body heat, in temperature-controlled rooms at 40 degrees Fahrenheit.
According to an account in the Harvard Gazette:
“In a monastery in northern India, thinly clad Tibetan monks sat quietly in a room where the temperature was a chilly 40 degrees Fahrenheit. Using a yoga technique known as g Tum-mo, they entered a state of deep meditation. Other monks soaked 3-by-6- foot sheets in cold water (49 degrees) and placed them over the meditators’ shoulders. For untrained people, such frigid wrappings would produce uncontrolled shivering.
“If body temperatures continue to drop under these conditions, death can result. But it was not long before steam began rising from the sheets. As a result of body heat produced by the monks during meditation, the sheets dried in about an hour.
“Attendants removed the sheets, then covered the meditators with a second chilled, wet wrapping. Each monkwas required to dry three sheets over a period of several hours.”4 Benson and his colleagues also videotaped monks sleeping through a winter night without shelter, at an altitude of 15,000 feet in the Himalayas.The event took place in February on the night of the winter full moon, with temperatures dropping to 0 degrees Fahrenheit. The video documentary showed no indication of symptoms of hyperthermia, or even normal shivering. Accounts of super normal human capabilities associated with special states of consciousness are so well documented and verified that we can reasonably take them as proven. The question we now seek to ask is: Can these advanced methods ever be accessible to “normal” human beings who don’t spend their lives studying and meditating? Is it possible that all of us have the possibility of increasing our mental functions to much higher levels than we’ve previously dreamed of? Maybe we won’t be able to find a magic pill that does it, but there is the hope that, by learning more about the human biocomputer and its software, we may be able to transform ourselves and our lives in ways heretofore unimagined.

The Daily Trance

Have you ever found yourself standing in some room in your house and you couldn’t remember why you went there? It’s as if you’ve come back to consciousness after having passed through some mental nevernever-land.You struggle to re-orient yourself.You’ve lost continuity—the normal sense of the connectedness and progression of experiences from one to another. Although substance abusers and people with cognitive impairment experience this state of mind fairly often, mentally healthy people also do. It’s a normal feature of the way your biocomputer operates. The simplest description of your experience is that you went into a trance. Unfortunately, the word “trance” tends to conjure up ideas and images of strange and supernatural experiences. Folk myths about hypnosis, often perpetuated by the popular media and the antics of stage hypnotists, tend to color the meaning of the term. The simple fact is that we all slip into and out of trance states many times in a typical day. So, if trances are merely one particular kind of normal mind-state, we can learn to understand and demystify them. We all have a general sense of what a trance, or a trance-like state, is. Yet psychologists and neuroscientists cannot seem to agree on a working definition.There seem to be a variety of trance states, ranging from the specialized state of hypnosis to the kinds of religious and ritualistic trances experienced by various native cultures, to various meditative experiences that are different from “normal”waking consciousness. Aside from the normal “daily trance,” as we might label it, trance states can be caused by a number of experiences. Hypnosis, of course, is the deliberate induction of a trance state by means of hyper-focused concentration. Meditation and prayer can also induce trance-like states. People in some cultures chant, sing, and dance to put themselves into trance states. But accidental, momentary trances are also quite common. A magic trick, or almost any similar astonishing experience, will cause most minds to go into a fixated state, at least for a matter of seconds. Sudden fear, extreme anxiety, and other pathological states can also cause trance. A more mundane example of the daily trance is the experience of watching television. After about five minutes, a person watching TV typically slips into a light trance state. One key characteristic of virtually all trance states, including the normal daily trance, is a condition psychologists refer to as dissociation. In our normal waking mental processes, our mind—or minds—are continually weaving our perceptions and our thoughts into coherent patterns.These associative patterns are what we store away in our memories, and they’re what we recall when we access any element of an experience. In a condition of dissociation, however, the associating process temporarily stops. The brain no longer waves the elements of perception together. The effect of dissociation could explain to some extent the repressed memory syndrome, in which victims of trauma cannot access certain parts of the experience that caused the trauma.The conventional psychological explanation is “ego defense,” the notion that one of our minds is protecting us from the unbearable experience of recalling the unpleasant material. But another explanation, based on dissociation, is that the information became dis-integrated, or unpatterned, and the memory elements have lost their associative connections. Typically, a trained therapist can help a person retrieve these lost memories by a process of guided recall, in which they are brought to consciousness and then properly reassociated, after which they can indeed be remembered. The daily trances we slip into and out of many times in a typical day seem to be a normal and necessary part of the biocomputer’s operation. Neuroscientists aren’t sure why they happen, or exactly what their function is. It’s conceivable, although by no means proven, that we could learn to manage our mental energies and emerge from the typical microtrance by a conscious procedure. Presuming that the biocomputer What Is Practical Intelligence? typically gets as much trance time as it needs over the course of a day or so, can we recapture our attention and redirect it toward the mental activities we prefer and the things we want to accomplish? Here’s a method you can use to bring your mind back to a conscious state and focus your attention more clearly. It involves three steps or attentional “scans”:
• The Body Scan.When you become aware that your mind has been wandering—which implies that it has stopped wandering for a moment—bring your attention to your body. Close your eyes if you like, and tune in to as many signals as you can detect that are coming from your body. Feel the sensation of your clothes on your skin. Does anything itch or tickle? Can you feel any activity in your stomach or digestive tract? What’s your overall energy level? Can you feel the pressure of the chair, couch, bed, floor, or whatever you’re sitting or lying on? Rub your fingertips against your thumbs and feel the sensation. Move your head around and feel the sensation of movement. Get messages from as many parts of your body as you can.
• The “Bubble” Scan. Next, extend your attention to your immediate physical environment—the imaginary bubble that extends about three to five feet outward from your body.What’s there? Is anyone close enough to you to make physical contact? What are the movements, colors,textures, and patterns you can sense? What do you hear? What are you doing with your hands? What are you holding, if anything? What are the various things around you: a pen and some index cards; your computer keyboard, mouse, or display; papers and other items on your desk; if you’re in a car, the arrangement of the compartment you’re sitting in; if you’re on a plane, the people, seats, and other items around you.Tune in as intently as possible as you scan your close-in environment.
• The “Field” Scan. Next, extend your attention outward to the larger environment around you.Who and what do you see? What are people doing? What sounds do you hear, and where are they coming from? If you’re outdoors, how far can you see and what do you see? Can you feel and smell a breeze? What does the sky look like? Can you feel the sun? What colors and patterns do you become aware of? If you’re indoors, study the arrangement of the room or the space you’re in. How is it designed? How do people move around in it? What materials, textures, and patterns do you see? Tune in to the “meaning” of what’s going on in the extended space around you. With this simple three-step scan, all you’ve done, basically, is to activate your sensory system.You’ve coaxed your biocomputer out of its dissociated, trance-like reverie state and given it a job to do. If you make a habit of this three-scan method, using it occasionally during a day, you may find that you feel more focused, more present, more mentally clear, and more connected to what you’re doing. You can use it in any number of situations.While you’re waiting for someone; sitting in your car waiting for a traffic light to change; while shopping or taking care of routine errands; you can do a quick “triplescan” and bring your mind back to consciousness. Of course, it’s probably not advisable to try to avoid the daily micro-trances altogether, even if we could. Most likely, your biocomputer will find the trance time it requires, and you can make use of the rest as you see fit.

Mind: A Collection Of Mental Functions

With these simple definitions—thinking, thoughts, and minds—it makes sense to think in terms of lots of minds and lots of thoughts interacting in an orchestrated way to allow us to function at the biological level, various unconscious levels, and various conscious levels. These various minds, or modules, as Ornstein identifies them, all cooperate— or fail to—to make us what we are. A third key principle to keep in mind is that these multiple minds are always at work all the time, doing their jobs simultaneously. While we’re thinking “consciously”—usually verbally or logically—our nonconscious thinking processes are feeding information from all levels, offering it to the gatekeeper modules that admit new information into our awareness. Where do hunches come from? Where do great new ideas come from when they flash onto our mental view screens? The creative thinking concept of incubation, for example, depends on this “behind
the scenes” mental activity; we consciously think about a problem or a situation for a certain amount of time, and then we move on to think about other things. But other mindmodules may go to work on the problem below the level of our awareness. Then, suddenly, seemingly without invitation, an idea flashes into our consciousness that gives us the solution we were seeking. Careful study of the varieties of mental process suggests more and more strongly that what we call the “conscious mind”—or just “the mind” to most people—is more like a projection screen than a functioning computer. So much of our real thinking goes on at precognitive and non conscious levels, that it often seems that the viewing screen of consciousness simply displays the results of what the other minds are doing at any particular moment. If we think of a mind or a mindmodule as a collection of mental functions and recognize that we have many mindmodules processing information for us simultaneously on multiple levels, it’s intriguing to wonder about how these modules manage to get along.Who’s in charge? According to psychologist and researcher Michael Gazzaniga, none of them are. Gazzaniga and other researchers argue—to the dismay and consternation of many of their colleagues—that the human biocomputer may not actually have an “executive module.” There may not be a single master program in control of our thinking processes. In his research with split-brain patients, described above, Gazzaniga presented tasks that placed the two separated hemispheres in competition with one another.
For example, by flashing an image to the left half of each visual field of the subject’s eyes (using a divided viewing device), he could make it known to the right hemisphere without allowing the left hemisphere to know what it was. In normal, undivided people, the information would immediately cross over to the left hemisphere, through the corpus callosum, and the left hemisphere would activate its speech center to name the object. With the split-brain subjects, however, the right hemisphere would recognize the object, but the information could not pass over to the left hemisphere. Consequently, the subject’s left hemisphere, having control of speech and believing that it was the “real” brain, would claim not to know what the object was.
But if the image was presented to the right half of the visual field, traveling through the cross over optic circuit to the left hemisphere, the subject could easily name it, because the same hemisphere that controlled speech received the information. From his research with split-brain subjects over about a decade, Gazzaniga arrived at, and began to promote within the scientific community, a very provocative proposition. He argued that our brain-mind systems are composed of multitudes of processing modules, and there is no “master module,” no “executive mind.” Further, he contended, our left brains are home to a specialized module he called the “interpreter” module, which might also be called the “explainer.” The function of the interpreter module, according to Gazzaniga, is simply to explain why we just behaved the way we did.
His theory touched off an explosion of argument and theorizing among brain researchers, and well it might. Gazzaniga’s proposition has four parts, all of them distressing to the conventional “free-will” model of human mental process:
1.That we have no executive module—“No one is really in charge,” as he says;
2.That our behavior arises out of impulses not known to consciousness;
3.That our “explainer” module simply makes up reasons for our
behavior, after the fact, so to speak; and
4.That what we call our “values” are simply the explanations we give for our behavior, and not the causes of it. Gazzaniga’s proposition has been the subject of debate and theorizing in the psychological community for almost two decades, and the discourse becomes ever more complex and intricate. We certainly can’t resolve it here, but it does seem that the multi-mind, modular
concept of the biocomputer’s organization has merit. In later chapters we’ll frequently refer to this modular aspect of the human mental process and capitalize heavily on the idea of mindmodules as normal components of our information processing biosystem.

MINDMODELS: YOUR PORTABLE REALITY

A story circulated many years ago in the psychiatric community about a man who came to visit a psychiatrist, claiming that he was dead. He’d been telling his friends and acquaintances that he was dead, and he made a habit of referring to himself in the past tense. The psychiatrist was unable, using ordinary counseling procedures, to shake him loose from his attachment to the morbid idea that he was dead. The psychiatrist decided to provide the patient with a very powerful emotional experience that would disconfirm his faulty concept of himself as a dead person. He asked the man to stand in front of a mirror, roll up his sleeves, clench his fists tightly, and say with emphasis, “Dead men don’t bleed.” He asked him to practice this procedure a dozen times every day, and then to return at the same time next week. The man faithfully carried out the instructions, practiced diligently, and returned the next week. The psychiatrist asked him to stand in front of the mirror, roll up his sleeves, and repeat the procedure. The reason for having him clench his fists was to cause the veins in his forearms to distend. As the man repeated the statement “Dead men don’t bleed,” the psychiatrist produced a small scalpel and nicked the vein at the inside of his arm. Blood spurted out of the vein.The patient looked at the blood trickling down his forearm, and with an astonished expression, exclaimed, “By God! Dead men do bleed!” We human beings carry around in our heads our own portable versions of reality—a model, or actually a huge inventory of models, that represent the parts of the world we’ve experienced so far.The fact that each of us has our own mind full of memories seems so self-evident as to deserve no further thought.Yet it’s one of the most fundamental and significant facts of all about our existence as a species. Without our memories—our mental models of the parts of reality we’ve experienced—we couldn’t function in even the most primitive way. Our cave-era ancestors could never have survived to sire the generations that led to us if they weren’t able to remember which animals were their prey and which were their predators, and countless other facts about their environment and their functioning in it. If you didn’t have a memory model of your house, for instance, how could you find your way back home whenever you left? How could you recognize your car, your place of work, the coffee shop where you meet you friends, your spouse, your children, or your relatives? People with profound loss of long-term memory often can’t call to mind even the standard mental models that we take absolutely for granted. We’re constantly accumulating these mental models as we keep living. Some people continue to accumulate them—it’s called learning—throughout life, while others tend to slow down and lose their curiosity and eagerness to learn. Our ability to think and to cope with our experiences depends on the size and richness of the inventory of mental models we’ve accumulated and can put to use as we need them. We know, of course, that every one of our mental models is a very limited replica of reality—a proxy for what we understand some sample of reality to be. All mental models are limited, flawed, distorted, and contaminated. Most of them work well enough for us to make use of them in our lives. But when they no longer represent reality in a sufficiently meaningful way, they affect our mental performance. Much of what we recognize as human maladjustment, ranging from mild eccentricity to downright craziness, is caused by “mangled models”—distorted versions of reality from which we think and react. People with adjustment difficulties have typically constructed a particular collection of mindmodels that drastically misrepresent reality, and that cause them to perceive, reason, conclude, decide, and behave in dysfunctional ways. We can think of human beings as functioning mentally at various points along a spectrum, or continuum of mental competence, which is basically practical intelligence for the sake of discussion, we could further divide human beings—including ourselves—into three broad camps, in terms of their levels of practical intelligence (not to be confused with “IQ”–type intelligence. The Insane. At one end of the figurative bell curve of human mentality, we have the certifiably “crazy” people. Some people don’t like to use the term “crazy,” but it’s a popular word, we know generally what it means, and it works. Crazy people the insane, if you prefer—are muddled thinkers: their muddled models prevent them from functioning successfully in the typical environments most human beings have to cope with.When they become crazy enough, the rest of us get to lock them up for our own good. The Sane. At the upper end of the figurative bell curve we find the very sane people, those who have somehow learned to cope at a very high level of effectiveness and who’ve learned not to get co-opted into the craziness in the society that surrounds them.They’re meta-thinkers: they think about thinking and they’re more highly conscious of their own mindmodels, and that enables them to think more effectively than others. The “Unsane.” In the broad middle of the bell curve we find most of society—the “normally maladjusted” majority. They function well enough to get along in the world; they grow up, find mates, hold jobs,raise families, save for their retirement, and are generally convinced that they “think for themselves.” They’re reflex thinkers: they think mostly with “standard” models, pre-established archaic patterns they learned early in life.The models we carry around in our heads dominate our thinking incessantly. At any instant, we form our thoughts from two sources,usually simultaneously: what we’re taking in through our senses, and what we’re calling up from memory—our models. We automatically combine these two channels of information as we decide what to do. We call on our mindmodels so regularly, so routinely, and so habitually that they sometimes provide the largest share of the raw material that we think about. Visual illusions provide a compelling way to illustrate the dominating effects of our learned models on our perceptions, reactions, and conclusions. Consider the arrangement of elements in Figure 3.3. Do you “see” a star? Of course, there’s no star there.What you “see” is a memory model your brain superimposes over this ambiguous figure.The five black circles with the wedges removed offer what psychologists call a subjective contour: the suggestion of a figure that your brain seizes on to make a real figure—at least “real” enough for it to conclude that it knows what it’s looking at. Consider this: We don’t actually see reality.What we see are the retinas of our eyes. Our brains have been looking at our retinas for so long that they believe the retinas are reality. Consider, however, that colorblind people see a different reality than full color perceivers see. On the few occasions when I order a steak in a restaurant that doesn’t specialize in steaks, I find it amusing to observe how food servers are sometimes locked into the standard models they’ve learned. When the server asks, “How would you like your steak cooked?” I usually reply, “I’d like it to be just slightly pink at the center.” Almost invariably, the server will offer one of the standard steak-cooking categories: “Medium?” he or she will ask, expectantly. Presumably I’m supposed to ratify the conversion of my model of a steak to the restaurant’s model. My usual response is, “You can call it whatever you like, but I call it slightly pink at the center.” At this point, the furrowed brow and the confused look lead to another try: “How about Medium Rare?” I reply “You can call it whatever you like, but I call it slightly pink at the center.” I can imagine the mental wheels spinning as he or she tries to force-fit my model into the standard steak-cooking model. I may also politely remind the server, “May I presume that if it’s not slightly pink at the center, the cook will be willing to redo it?” Almost invariably, the server will write down one of the standard categories. Then, of course, the cook transforms the server’s model, which was transformed from my model, into the cook’s model.The steak typically comes out overcooked anyway, usually falling somewhere into the well-done zone. These are simple and commonplace examples, chosen for their illustrative value. But at various other levels of behavior and social interaction, our mental models operate in just the same way as our recognizer circuits that see the star or the “medium” steak.We tend to see, in people and situations, what we’ve programmed our brains to see. Forcing people and situations into our mental models is the basic mechanism of prejudice, bigotry, and intolerance.When one person or a group of people demonizes another, accusing them and attributing various disreputable motives to them, there is a strong tendency to perceive selectively. The antagonist tends to perceive and remember evidence that reinforces the stereotype and tends to overlook or minimize evidence that contradicts it. An interesting news story a few years ago described a courtroom incident, in which an attorney was lambasting two physicians in a malpractice suit. Just before he finished his characterization of them as incompetent, self-serving, money grubbing hacks, he was suddenly stricken with a severe heart attack—an acute myocardial infarction. The attack surely would have killed him if the doctors hadn’t leaped to his rescue, administering first aid, and calling for medical assistance. When the attorney left the hospital, he dropped the lawsuit.

FOUR HABITS THAT UNLOCK YOUR MENTAL CAPACITY

If you’ve read this far, I’d like to thank you for your patience and acknowledge that you may be keen to know more about the “how-to” of practical intelligence. At least, that’s what I would be feeling at this point.We have the needed inventory of basic concepts for understanding PI, and now we need to get specific. How does it work? How do we learn it? How do we put the methods to use every day? We will begin by “cleaning out the attic”—tuning up four key aspects of the way we process information that profoundly influence almost all of our other mental processes. These four mental habits— features of our mental “software”—enable us to put our natural, inbuilt range of mental skills to effective use. Let’s review them briefly, and then explore each one in greater depth in the following chapters.
1.Mental Flexibility—the absence of mental rigidity.When you free yourself from narrow mindedness, intolerance, dogmatic thinking and judgments, “opinionitis,” fear-based avoidance of new ideas and experiences, and learn to live with ambiguity and complexity, you become more mentally flexible. Mental flexibility is at the very foundation of your ability to perceive clearly, think clearly, solve problems, persuade others, learn, and grow as a person.
2.Affirmative Thinking—the habit of perceiving, thinking, speaking, and behaving in ways that support a healthy emotional state in yourself as well as in others.This includes consciously and continually deciding what you will accept into your mind, what you will and will not devote your attention to, and which people and messages you will allow to influence your thinking and your emotional reactions.We’ll go beyond the usual “positive thinking” slogans and the “glass is half full” clichés, to explore how affirmative thinking really works.
3.Semantic Sanity—the habit of using language consciously and carefully so as to promote your own mental flexibility and affirmative thinking, think more clearly and less dogmatically, and persuade others much more effectively than by using the customary methods of arguing and verbal combat. Revising the way we talk forces us to revise the way we think; therefore, adopting language habits that are “semantically sane” contributes to mental health and emotional well-being as well as more intelligent thinking, problem solving, and communicating. .Valuing Ideas—the habit of saying a “tentative yes” to all new ideas at the first instant of perception—however strange, unfamiliar, or different from our own—rather than reflexively shooting them down.Valuing ideas means letting the ideas of others live long enough to present their possibilities, capturing your own fleeting ideas with a pen and note cards, thinking up lots of new ideas—“option thinking”—and encouraging others to do the same. And we’ll go beyond the usual slogans about “thinking outside the box,” to learn about mental boxes and “metaboxical” thinking. Once we’ve started working on these four upgrades to our mental software, and realizing that we need to upgrade them continually, we can then understand much more clearly how to make good use of the four “mega-skills” for thinking that all of us have.

FOUR DIMENSIONS OF PI: YOUR MEGA-SKILLS

Much of our exploration into the concepts, practices, and skills of practical intelligence will involve four key dimensions of thinking—“sub-smarts,” we might call them. Each of these four dimensions contributes in its own unique way to our total capability to cope with our environments.We can think of them as polarities—contrasting mental processes that go together with both alternatives to be used to the fullest, rather than to be thought of as an either-or choice. The four mega-skills, or competence polarities, are:
1. The range of divergent and convergent thinking, the “D-C” axis, which we shall refer to as “bivergent thinking,” in terms of the ability to choose freely between both modes. Divergent thinking, as previously touched on, is the pattern of branching out from an initial idea to explore various related ideas—much like tracing the many branches of a tree; it’s how we think up great new ideas. Convergent thinking, by contrast, is the pattern of “de-branching”—narrowing down from many ideas and options to a critical few; it’s how we make effective decisions.
2. The range of abstract and concrete thinking, the “A-C” axis, which we shall refer to as “helicopter thinking,” in terms of the ability to move from one to the other. Concrete thinking is thinking about what we can sense—see, hear, feel, smell, or taste. The more concrete an idea is, the closer it is to something we experience directly.Abstract thinking is thinking about concepts rather than things—understanding things in general rather than one thing in particular.When we think and speak of some particular human who has a face and a name, for example, we’re closer to the concrete end of the scale.When we speak of “mankind,” we’re closer to the abstract end of the scale. Conceptual fluency involves being able to maneuver along the entire range of possibilities from concrete to abstract,much like flying a figurative helicopter from its landing spot on the ground up to an altitude from which we can see much more of the terrain.
3. The range of logical and intuitive thinking, the “L-I” axis, which we will refer to as “intulogical thinking,” in terms of the ability to use either pattern freely and even to integrate the two into a single process when appropriate. Logical thinking is stepwise thinking; it’s procedural, systematic, and progresses from one idea to another; it imposes order on information. Intuitive thinking is “all-at-once” thinking; it seems to originate preconsciously, dealing with the raw material of thought, before the conscious mind dices it up and tries to apply logic to it. The capacity to respect both patterns of thinking and to use them in a compatible combination is one of the hallmarks of highly effective problem solvers.
4. The range of rational and emotive thinking, the “R-E” axis, which we will refer to as “viscerational” thinking (a contraction of “visceral” and “rational” thinking), in terms of the ability to cherish and respect emotional experience while making it compatible with so-called rational or “unemotional” thinking. Although many people tend to think of “being rational” and “being emotional” as two opposing patterns of thinking, a more careful consideration invites us to treat them as compatible, and to some extent even simultaneous.Values, for example, can be considered an emotional aspect of thinking; we want our solutions and decisions to reflect our values and ethics. Compassion is also a worthy emotion that can guide our rational decisions and our problem-solving strategies.We can also learn to temper the influence of our emotions on our reactions and our choices.
As Figure 3.4 shows, we can think of these four key polarities as offering us a rich combination of mental processes, suited to the various situations and problems we encounter. At any one moment, we may find one of the four mega-skills especially useful, and in fact we may choose to dwell on one polarity or the other within a particular mega-skill.As we become fluent and versatile in using these various patterns at will, we become ever more effective in understanding the situations we face, communicating with others, solving problems, and managing our lives.

MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES THE POSSIBLE HUMAN

THE GAP BETWEEN SCIENCE AND THE POPULAR PERCEPTION
May be wider in the area of human mental process than for almost any other topic—with the possible exceptions of global warming and losing weight. Scientists and researchers toil away in their laboratories and clinics, trying to accumulate an agreed-on body of knowledge about the human biocomputer and its capacities. Meanwhile, educators, parents, business managers, publishers, writers, and advisors of every stripe are left to evolve a street-level understanding of how we think and how we might think better. It would seem that the exchange of knowledge between “gown and town” could be much richer and more useful than it has been. For example, one of the charming “scientific facts” that seems to have become firmly embedded in the popular consciousness is that we humans use only a small part of the brain’s thinking capacity. This seems eminently reasonable—especially after having read or watched a typical day’s “news.” However, somewhere in the foggy zone between science and experience we’ve developed a peculiar cliché:“Well, studies show that we only use 7 percent of our brain’s capacity.” The percentage number varies, but is almost invariably low. And it’s usually an odd number: 5 percent, 7 percent, but sometimes 10 percent. The next time you hear someone—including yourself—make such a “scientific” pronouncement, you might pause and ask the speaker:
“By the way, how do scientists measure the brain’s capacity? Do they measure it in thoughts per second? Megabytes? Megahertz? RPM? Furlongs per fortnight?” There is no credible method for measuring mental capacity; we don’t even know how to define it. Nevertheless, this “fact” has remained popular for a long time. Unfortunately, the journey we’ve embarked on in this book must necessarily traverse that foggy zone between science and experience.My academic friends are probably already appalled at my cavalier acknowledgement of Gardner’s multiple intelligence theory, which many feel has little basis in research. Some will take me to task for not being sufficiently “rigorous” in my assertions and in the evidence I adduce for their support. Some will cry “foul” in protest of what they see as prostituting the whole concept of intelligence as the academic community has traditionally defined it—for allowing the barbarians to overrun the palace. And some of them get really mad about it. At the same time, many of my colleagues in the business sector, where I earn my livelihood, seem convinced that even if there are multiple intelligences, so what? It doesn’t matter.The competitive process sorts it all out: the cream will always rise to the top. All you have to do is hire the smartest people you can find or afford and pay them well. Maybe they’ll act a bit smarter if you treat them nicely, but beyond that, why concern yourself with trying to make them any smarter? The smart ones will make it to the head of the pack anyway.This is the same logic that governs the educational system. The difficulty presented by the gap between science and experience in this case lies in the confusion of terms like smart, intelligent, intelligence, skill, talent, and thinking ability. Clearly, they do not all mean the same thing in the academic world, and the secular world seems rather confused about what they do mean. In the discussion that follows, I have no aspiration to narrow the gap between science and experience, but I do recognize an obligation to explain what I myself mean when using those terms and others related to them, and to explain what I believe is possible.The best I can hope for is to request an armistice with both gown and town, while I attempt to trace what I believe can be a practical framework for thinking about thinking: practical intelligence.

IQ DOESN’T TELL THE WHOLE STORY

We needn’t belabor the “IQ debate” much further, considering that the multiple intelligence concept is already rather widely accepted, for better or worse. For our purposes, it’s only necessary to put the dimension of abstract intelligence—the IQ kind into perspective with the other intelligences. Having a high IQ is proof of the ability to get a high score on an IQ test, and possibly a few other things, although it’s uncertain exactly what those are. IQ test scores do tend to predict success in life, but only to a small extent and within a relatively small range of scores. The Possible Human 27 A person with a very low IQ test score, say 85 or less, is very likely to have difficulty coping with the kinds of tasks presented by life in a modern society. A person with a mid-range IQ score, say 95 through 120, will very likely cope with life more successfully than people with very low scores. However, scores above 125 or so are only loosely correlated with life success. And even within the “normal” range of 95 to 125, the effects of the differences tend to get washed out by a host of other factors. In other words, it would not be reasonable to expect that a difference of five or ten IQ points would make a direct and measurable difference between two people in terms of income, net worth, or even subjective measures of success. The effect of the IQ differences is too weak, and there are many other factors that contribute to success in life. In highly controlled educational settings, performance differences on written tests may be more noticeable, but in “real life” the other factors come into play in unpredictable ways. Many leading thinkers in the field of developmental psychology have advocated eliminating intelligence testing completely from public schools, but with limited success. Even eminent intelligence psychologist Arthur Jensen has said, “Achievement itself is the school’s main concern. I see no need to measure anything other than achievement itself.” IQ testing suffers from another, perhaps more important limitation—one not necessarily of interest to researchers but one certainly of concern to parents, for example, who are trying to raise kids who can use their gray matter successfully in life.That limitation, or flaw if you prefer, is built right into the method of IQ testing that is almost universally used. Standardized IQ tests typically present questions or problems in a written format—with pen and paper—and with multiple-choice answers.This practice probably came about because of the need to test large numbers of people at low cost, so it became necessary to eliminate any kind of experiential or contextual challenge and get the whole testing process into the multiple-choice format. The unfortunate limitation of the pen-and-paper test design is that the test can only present questions or problems that have one “right” answer. Such a design makes it easy to test what psychologists call convergent thinking skills—narrowing down many possibilities to find the one correct choice. It makes it virtually impossible to test the complementary mental skill of divergent thinking, which is critical for creativity, innovation, imagination, and invention. For example, if you give a coin to a child and ask,“How many things can you think of to do with this coin?” the youngster will probably come up with quite a few possibilities: use it as a guide to draw a circle; use it to turn a screw or pry something open; use it to measure something; flip it to make a decision; give it to someone as a gift; and, of course, use it to buy something.With this divergent thinking proess, the number of possible options is unbounded, and can’t be reduced to a fixed set of “right” answers. Show a picture to a child and ask him or her to tell you a story about the picture. You’ll get lots of different stories from different kids, all of which are “correct,” in that they’re all natural products of the child’s “intelligence.” Yet conventional IQ testing leaves out the entire range of divergent, generative, projective, and inventive thinking processes. Many educators believe that the unconsciously held idea that intelligence is confined to a process of convergent thinking has led to educational approaches based on “right” answers. Many of them—and I agree with them—believe that the skills of “far-out” thinking get systematically eradicated as children go through the educational experience to adulthood.

THERE ARE AT LEAST SIX KINDS OF “SMART”

Enter Harvard Professor Howard Gardner.With Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences, theory may have caught up with common sense. Beginning in about 1980, Gardner had become interested in some fundamental questions arising from psychological testing: Why do some people with very high IQ scores fail miserably in their personal lives? Do tests of mental competence miss certain obvious aspects of human ability, such as artistic, musical, athletic, literary, and social competence? Gardner came to the inevitable conclusion: the outdated concept of “intelligence” as a singular measure of competence has to go. He posited that human beings have a whole range of primary competencies—intelligences—and they exist in various proportions in various persons. His provocative book Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences, published in 1983, dealt a body-blow to the established notion that IQ defines or controls the ability to think, and set in motion a new way of looking at human competence.1 Placing practical intelligence (“PI”) within Gardner’s “MI” framework requires a bit of conceptual acrobatics, inasmuch as Gardner himself—at least at the time of this writing continues to evolve his categories and definitions. The bulk of his early work involved a set of some seven independent intelligences. He has also posited the existence of an eighth dimension, less clearly defined. Some other researchers have diced up the macro-intelligences into other categories. Consequently, for our exploration, we’ll need to settle on some working definition of these multiple intelligences, in order to place PI clearly into that perspective. While Gardner uses rather scientific sounding labels for his categories verbal-logical, mathematical-symbolic, spatial, kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal and musical—we probably do little harm by re-coding them into street language and simplifying them conceptually.With appropriate respect for Professor Gardner and his theory, I’ve found it helpful to rearrange these “multiple smarts” into six primary categories: Others might argue for a somewhat different set of subdivisions, but these six categories work fairly well, and they have the modest extra advantage of spelling out a memorable acronym:ASPEAK. Presumably the “Renaissance human,” the success model most of us admire,would have a strong and well-integrated combination of all key intelligences. Gardner’s notion of multiple intelligences seems to fit with our common experience. Consider the disparity between abstract intelligence—the IQ kind—and social intelligence. I’ve met many members of Mensa, the international society of people with high IQs—the only requirement for membership. I’ve often marveled at the number of them who, despite their impressive cognitive credentials, seemed incapable of connecting with other people and, in some cases, incapable of maintaining a reasonable degree of emotional resilience. IQ intelligence doesn’t necessarily translate to the ability to raise children, plan a wedding, run a business, manage people, or compose a The Possible Human 31 song. Nor, to be fair, does the ability to fly a jet fighter kinesthetic intelligence—necessarily translate to the ability to solve differential equations. Presumably, we can approach each of these six key dimensions as a learning adventure in and of itself. The evidence from developmental research suggests that the basis for each of the six intelligences takes shape early in life. We know less—actually, very little—about the extent to which adults can make significant gains in all of these dimensions. Certainly the hope for that possibility appeals to many of us.

BUILDING OUT: APPLYING THEORIES TO EVERYDAY LIFE

Each of the primary intelligences deserves attention in its own right. Interested experts will eventually “build out” each of the dimensions with diligent study and clear conceptualization. This book will attempt a fairly systematic build-out of only one of them, the PI dimension.To guide our exploration, it may be worthwhile to learn from the progress of the build-out of two of the other important dimensions, emotional intelligence and social intelligence. My friends in the academic community are quick to remind me that the study of the broad field of “intelligence” has been going on for a very long time, and that very few of the key concepts and theories can be fairly attributed to only one individual expert. Even the concept of multiple intelligences has been foreshadowed in earlier research, and certainly the component intelligences such as emotional and social have been specifically identified in the past. Researchers have at least speculated about most of them at some time and to some extent. Books such as Professor Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence and my Social Intelligence have made these topics accessible to a broader populace outside of the academic community, but don’t necessarily advance the theoretical frontiers of their study.The contribution of the “popularizers,” while not always regarded with admiration by academic researchers, can also be to lend clarity by bringing together a number of scattered concepts into a useful body of knowledge. This is largely what I mean when I refer to the “build-out” phase in the life cycle of a concept like any one of the intelligences.

BUILD-OUT 1: EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

Arriving in 1995, Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence:Why It May be More Important than IQ,2 could be considered the first step in bringing the MI concept out of the academic realm and into the lives of ordinary civilians. One could argue that most of the "self help” literature has dealt with EI in some form or another, but Emotional Intelligence deserves credit for crystallizing the idea of an “intelligence” as a useful focus of attention in the popular culture. Goleman’s book became a best seller and very quickly gained a following in the business sector. Executives, personnel managers, trainers, consultants, coaches, and a whole population of human performance practitioners jumped on the wagon and began to sell their services to businesses. Conferences, seminars, books, training materials, and websites sprang up to carry the EI build-out forward. Goleman’s first attempts to frame a practical model of EI identified five dimensions of competence:
1. Self-awareness.
2. Self-regulation.
3. Motivation.
4. Empathy.
5. Relationships.
One of Goleman’s five dimensions, however—the relationship dimension—seemed to stretch the model and the concept beyond its practical boundaries.The four primary competencies do clearly identify The Possible Human 33 elements of the internal emotional landscape, which influence one’s behavior in fundamental ways. And certainly they influence in a very fundamental way a person’s capacity to interact well with others. But trying to force-fit social competence into an already broad model of emotional competence seemed to risk doing too little with too much. Indeed, as previously explained, Professor Gardner clearly separates them in his formulation: he posits an intrapersonal intelligence (emotional intelligence), for all practical purposes, and an interpersonal intelligence—competency in human situations. The value of this clearer delineation of concepts seems to lie in the opportunity to coordinate and inter-relate them, rather than trying to squash them all into a single conceptual container. Goleman and others eventually evolved a conceptual structure for EI that attempted to balance EI and SI, although still trying to keep them fused together under one “brand” name.This dual-concept framework subdivided each of the two dimensions into two sub-scales— awareness and control. The emotional dimension broke down into self-awareness and self-control (or self-management), while the social dimension broke down into social awareness and management of one’s interactions with others. As of this writing, the majority of EI practitioners seem to embrace this four-quadrant view, insisting for the most part that the EI umbrella adequately incorporates the social component and that there is no need for a separately identified dimension of social intelligence. However, Goleman himself has apparently rethought his own approach to EI, and practitioners in the field may have to make some adjustments if they want to stay aligned with the “Vatican view.”