Concepts of Intelligence: A Comparison of Chinese Graduates From Chinese and English Schools in Hong Kong*

Abstract

The present study investigated the concepts of intelligence of two groups of Hong Kong Chinese university students. They differed in the secondary schools from which they graduated, one followed the Chinese system and the other the E n a s h system. These two groups were otherwise similar in age, academic achievement, and racial background. Subjects were asked to rate items selected from four popular intelligence tests in terms of their relevance to measuring intelligence and perceived difficulty. The relevance ratings were taken as reflections of the group's concept of intelligence. Factor analysis revealed two major factors and several minor factors underlying the relevance ratings of the two groups. The major ones were Non-verbal and Verbal reasoning skills, and the minor ones were Social, Numerical, and Retrieval skills. The Non-verbal reasoning skill was rated equally relevant by the two groups of subjects and was considered as the most relevant skill to measuring intelligence. The Verbal reasoning and Social skills were next, followed by the Numerical skill with the Retrieval slull being the least relevant. The Chinese-school group tended to rate the Verbal reasoning skill to be less relevant than did the Enghsh-school group. These findings were attributed to the mental effort involved in solving each type of task and to the differences in school instruction.Interest in the concept of intelligence has always occupied an important place in the psychological literature (e.g., see Fry 1984). Researchers have used people's expressed beliefs as data base and are concerned with 'what it is' rather than 'who has it' (Resnick 1976). The emphasis is evident in the contextual theory of Sternberg (1984) who

Cross-Cultural Differences in Self-Assessed Intelligence: A Comparison of British and Chinese Undergraduates

“…Participants were first asked to estimate their overall intelligence, followed by Gardner's (1999) ten multiple intelligences (linguistic, logical-mathematical, spatial, musical, body-kinaesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, existential, spiritual, and naturalistic intelligences), Sternberg's (1997) successful intelligences (adaptive, practical, and creative intelligences), and two items added specifically for the present study (nonverbal-logical intelligence and emotional intelligence). Nonverbal-logical intelligence was added because previous work has shown that Chinese respondents rate verbal skills as less important than their Western counterparts (Chen & Chen, 1988), whereas emotional 1 Although the distinction between individualism and collectivism remains one of the most prominent constructs in cross-cultural psychology (e.g., Vandello & Cohen, 1999), at least one recent review concluded that cultural differences these constructs "were neither as large nor as systematic as often perceived" (Oyserman, Coon, & Kemmelmeier, 2002). This appears to be an ongoing debate within cross-cultural psychology (e.g., see Schimmack, Oishi, & Diener, 2005), and our view here is that collectivism is likely to be related to lower SAI, as evidenced in previous work (e.g., Furnham et al, 2001;Yuen & Furnham, 2005).…”

How smart do you think you are? A meta-analysis on the validity of self-estimates of cognitive ability.

“…For instance, in one study different ethnic groups have been found to feature different conceptualizations of "intelligence"-even though they all lived in North Carolina and were subjected to the same cultural mainstream (Heath, 1983). As another example, in Chinese culture, nonverbal reasoning has been found to be rated as more relevant to intelligence than verbal reasoning (Chen & Chen, 1988). Ultimately, intercultural differences in implicit theories can make it difficult to carry out meaningful comparisons of ability test scores across cultures (Greenfield, 1997).…”

“…Henrich, Heine, and Norenzayan (2010) dubbed the common study sample as WEIRD (participants from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic societies). Cultural differences can be expected to play a huge role, in particular regarding conceptions of intelligence (Chen & Chen, 1988;Heath, 1983;Nisbett, 2003;Sternberg & Kaufman, 1998), test performance (through stereotype threat; e.g., Steele, 1997;Steele & Aronson, 1995), and the importance of selfimpression management (Heine, Lehman, Markus, & Kitayama, 1999). In many Eastern (i.e., primarily Asian) countries, for instance, social interaction abilities are considered to be more important than individual cognitive abilities (e.g., Nevo & Khader, 1995).…”

Competence Versus Performance Models of People and Tests: A Commentary on Richardson and Norgate

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