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American psychologist & scholar

Robert J. Sternberg (born December 8, 1949) is an American psychologist and psychometrician. He is a Professor of Human Development at Cornell University. Sternberg has a BA from Yale University and a PhD from Stanford University, under advisor Gordon Bower. He holds thirteen honorary doctorates from two North American, one South American, one Asian, and nine European universities, and additionally holds an honorary professorship at the University of Heidelberg, in Germany. He is a Distinguished Associate of the Psychometrics Centre at the University of Cambridge. Among his major contributions to psychology, the most notable are the triarchic theory of intelligence and several influential theories related to creativity, wisdom, thinking styles, love, hate, and leadership. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Sternberg as the 60th most cited psychologist of the 20th century.

Sternberg was born on December 8, 1949, to a Jewish family, in New Jersey. Sternberg suffered from test anxiety as a child. As a result, he became an inadequate test taker. This upset him and he reasoned that a test was not an adequate measurement of his true knowledge and academic abilities. When he later retook a test in a room that consisted of younger students, he felt more comfortable and his scores increased dramatically. Sternberg later constructed the Test of Mental Ability (STOMA), his first intelligence test. This problem of test taking is what sparked Sternberg's interest in psychology.

Sternberg was an undergraduate student at Yale University. Neither of Sternberg's parents finished high school, and he attended Yale only by achieving a National Merit Scholarship and receiving financial aid. He did so poorly in his introductory psychology class that his professor insisted that he pursue another major. Determined to succeed, Sternberg earned a BA summa cum laude, and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, gaining honors and exceptional distinction in psychology. Sternberg continued his academic career at Stanford University, where he earned his PhD, in 1975. Sternberg returned to Yale as an assistant professor of Psychology in 1975, and would work at Yale for three decades, eventually becoming the IBM Professor of Psychology and Education, as well as the founder and director of the Center for the Psychology of Abilities, Competencies and Expertise. and the University of Iowa, Sternberg was offered a position at Oklahoma State University in 2010, where he remained as provost for three years. In early 2013, Sternberg was named the new president of the University of Wyoming. After resigning from the University of Wyoming in late 2013, Sternberg joined the Human Development faculty of Cornell University. Therefore, Sternberg wanted to change the University of Wyoming's test based selection process of applicants towards an ethics based admission process: "The set of analytical skills evaluated in the ACT [American College Testing] is only a small sliver of what you need to be an ethical leader." After arriving at the University of Wyoming, Sternberg's term was marked by tumult in the faculty. Three weeks after taking in office as Wyoming's new president, the provost and vice president for academic affairs was asked to resign and stepped down. In the next four months, three associate provosts and four deans were asked to resign or resigned voluntarily—many explicitly citing disagreements with President Sternberg's approach. In the Chronicle of Higher Education, November 15, 2013 ("President of U of Wyoming Abruptly Resigns" by Lindsay Ellis), Sternberg's tenure was described as "a period that saw rapid turnover among senior administrators and unsettled the campus." The last dean who stepped down, the Dean of the College of Law, Stephen Easton, accused Sternberg at a university meeting of unethical treatment of staff, professors, and schools. "You have not treated this law school ethically." Sternberg refused to discuss the case at the meeting. The Casper Star Tribune portrayed the situation at the university as "chaos in the college". Additionally, other provosts blamed a lack of respect for and interest in human capital. According to Peter Shive, a professor emeritus, Sternberg asked everyone to wear the school colors, brown and gold, on Fridays. Shive said the farther away from the administrative building he went, the fewer people were wearing brown and gold. Ray Hunkins, a UW Law College graduate, former counsel to the UW trustees, a member of the board of directors of the UW Foundation, and the Republican nominee for governor of Wyoming in 2006, questioned Sternberg's policies that had led to the dismissal or resignation of the administrators. "I think there's chaos in the university," Hunkins said. On November 14, 2013, only 137 days after Sternberg had taken the helm of UW, it was announced at a press conference following a trustees meeting in William Robertson Coe Library that Sternberg had tendered his resignation to the board. In a public statement read by the trustee president, David Bostrom, Sternberg said that despite his care for the university, "It may not be the best fit for me as president." Laughter arose immediately upon the reading of Sternberg's statement. In accordance to university regulations, vice president for academic affairs Dr. Dick McGinity took the office as interim president. His resignation was neither asked for, nor forced by the Board of Trustees. According to the Wyoming News, Sternberg's four month presidency produced more than $1.25 million in administration related costs equivalent to the costs of 31 faculty staff positions for one year. That includes $377,000 for Sternberg's severance pay, including $325,000 that he will be paid 2014; $37,500 in deferred compensation Sternberg is due by December 31; about $89,000 for the next presidential search; $330,000 for search firms to find replacements for administrators and deans who resigned; $265,000 for renovations to the house and garage that Sternberg was allowed to continue to rent at a price of $1,100 a month until May 31.

Sternberg holds thirteen honorary doctorates, including some from universities outside the United States. The list of foreign universities that awarded the degrees includes Complutense University of Madrid (Spain), University of Durham (UK), University of Leuven (Belgium), Tilburg University (the Netherlands), University of Cyprus, University of Paris V (France), and St. Petersburg State University (Russia).

Sternberg began serving as editor of the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science in 2015. As editor he published eight commentaries in his own journal between 2016 and 2018 without peer review. In response to one of these pieces, a letter of concern was drafted, which over 100 psychologists endorsed. In addition to the concerns about the lack of peer review, the letter of concern also mentioned that these articles feature extreme levels of self citation, ranging from 42% to 65%. In the APA Monitor on Psychology, Sternberg has been rated as one of the top 100 psychologists of the twentieth century. The ISI has rated Sternberg as one of the most highly cited authors in psychology and psychiatry (top .5 percent). Sternberg is a fellow of the National Academy of Education, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and other organizations. He is past president of the American Psychological Association and the Eastern Psychological Association, and currently is President of the Federation of Associations in the Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

Many descriptions of intelligence focus on mental abilities such as vocabulary, comprehension, memory and problem solving that can be measured through intelligence tests. This reflects the tendency of psychologists to develop their understanding of intelligence by observing behavior believed to be associated with intelligence. Sternberg believes that this focus on specific types of measurable mental abilities is too narrow. He believes that studying intelligence in this way leads to an understanding of only one part of intelligence and that this part is only seen in people who are "school smart" or "book smart". There are, for example, many individuals who score poorly on intelligence tests, but are creative or are "street smart" and therefore have a very good ability to adapt and shape their environment. According to Sternberg (2003), giftedness should be examined in a broader way incorporating other parts of intelligence.

Sternberg added experimental criteria to the application process for undergraduates to Tufts University, where he was Dean of Arts and Sciences, to test "creativity and other non academic factors." Calling it the "first major university to try such a departure from the norm," Inside Higher Ed noted that Tufts continues to consider the SAT and other traditional criteria.

Sternberg proposed a theory of cognitive styles in 1988. Sternberg's basic idea is that the forms of government we have in the world are external reflections of the way different people view and act in the world, that is, different ways of organizing and thinking. Cognitive styles should not be confused with abilities, they are the way we prefer to use these abilities. Indeed, a good fit between a person's preferred cognitive profile and his abilities can create a powerful synergy that outweighs the sum of its parts. The main three branches of government are the executive branch, legislative branch and judicial branch. People also need to perform these functions in their own thinking and working. Legislative people like to build new structures, creating their own rules along the way. Executive people are rule followers, they like to be given a predetermined structure in which to work. Judicial people like to evaluate rules and procedures, to analyze a given structure. The four forms of mental self government are hierarchical, monarchic, oligarchic, and anarchic. The hierarchic style holds multiple goals simultaneously and prioritizes them. The oligarchic style is similar but differs in involving difficulty prioritizing. The monarchic style, in comparison, focuses on a single activity until completion. The anarchic style resists conformity to "systems, rules, or particular approaches to problems." The two levels of mental self government are local and global. The local style focuses on more specific and concrete problems, in extreme case they "can't see the forest for the trees". The global style, in comparison, focuses on more abstract and global problems, in extreme cases they "can't see the trees for the forest". The two scopes of mental self government are internal and external. The internal style focuses inwards and prefers to work independently. The external style focuses outwards and prefers to work in collaboration. The two leanings of mental self government are the liberal and conservative. These styles have nothing to do with politics. The liberal individual likes change, to go beyond existing rules and procedures. The conservative individual dislikes change and ambiguity, he will be happiest in a familiar and predictable environment. All people have different profiles of thinking styles which can change over situations and time of life. Moreover, a person can, and often does, have a secondary preferred thinking style.

Sternberg, R. J. (1977): Intelligence, information processing, and analogical reasoning: The componential analysis of human abilities. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Sternberg, R. J. (1985): Beyond IQ: A triarchic theory of human intelligence. New York City: Cambridge University Press. Sternberg, R. J. (1990): Metaphors of mind: Conceptions of the nature of intelligence. New York: Cambridge University Press. Sternberg, R. J. (1997): Successful intelligence. New York: Plume. Sternberg, R. J. et al. (2000): Practical intelligence in everyday life. New York: Cambridge University Press. Sternberg, R. J., & Grigorenko, E. L. (2000): Teaching for successful intelligence. Arlington Heights, IL: Skylight. Sternberg, R. J. (2007): Wisdom, Intelligence, and Creativity Synthesized. New York: Cambridge University Press. Sternberg, R. J. (2010): "College admissions for the 21st century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Sternberg, R. J., & Lubart, T. I. (1995): Defying the crowd: Cultivating creativity in a culture of conformity. New York: Free Press. Sternberg, R. J., & Williams, W. M. (1996): How to develop student creativity. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Sternberg, R. J., James C Kaufman, & Pretz, J. E. (2002): The creativity conundrum: A propulsion model of creative contributions. Philadelphia, PA.

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