Is Practical Intelligence a Real Ability Separate from General Intelligence?
Russell T. Warne
Jun 6, 2025. . . practical intelligence is a construct that is distinct from general intelligence and that general intelligence is not even general but rather applies largely, although not exclusively, to academic kinds of tasks. Moreover, practical intelligence is at least as good a predictor of future success as is the academic form of intelligence that is commonly assessed by tests of so-called general intelligence.
(Sternberg et al., 2000, p. xi)
Everybody knows someone who is smart in the traditional, academic sense – and would presumably have a high IQ score – but who functions poorly in everyday life. The “absentminded professor” stereotype is a good example. People like this are memorable because their foolish behavior is so surprising, given their “book smarts.” From a scientific perspective, these people undermine the claim that intelligence is general and that it helps in all aspects of life. After all, if intelligence really is general, then people who are good at navigating one aspect of their environment (e.g., school) should be good at navigating all of them. If there are people who function poorly in everyday life but function well in school, then it seems plausible that there could be more than one broad cognitive ability.
Because academic intelligence and everyday functioning seem like separate abilities, some people have suggested that g is not a general ability at all. They argue that intelligence may be helpful in school, but that succeeding in the workplace or in a non-academic environment requires a different ability. Foremost among these theorists is a psychologist, Robert J. Sternberg, who has proposed a theory of practical intelligence as an ability that is required to succeed in daily life. According to Sternberg, the separate nature of practical intelligence and academic intelligence is why some smart people seem to perform poorly on non-academic tasks, especially outside the school environment (Sternberg et al., 2000; Wagner & Sternberg, 1985).
(Sternberg et al., 2000, p. xi)
Everybody knows someone who is smart in the traditional, academic sense – and would presumably have a high IQ score – but who functions poorly in everyday life. The “absentminded professor” stereotype is a good example. People like this are memorable because their foolish behavior is so surprising, given their “book smarts.” From a scientific perspective, these people undermine the claim that intelligence is general and that it helps in all aspects of life. After all, if intelligence really is general, then people who are good at navigating one aspect of their environment (e.g., school) should be good at navigating all of them. If there are people who function poorly in everyday life but function well in school, then it seems plausible that there could be more than one broad cognitive ability.
Because academic intelligence and everyday functioning seem like separate abilities, some people have suggested that g is not a general ability at all. They argue that intelligence may be helpful in school, but that succeeding in the workplace or in a non-academic environment requires a different ability. Foremost among these theorists is a psychologist, Robert J. Sternberg, who has proposed a theory of practical intelligence as an ability that is required to succeed in daily life. According to Sternberg, the separate nature of practical intelligence and academic intelligence is why some smart people seem to perform poorly on non-academic tasks, especially outside the school environment (Sternberg et al., 2000; Wagner & Sternberg, 1985).
What is Practical Intelligence?
In Sternberg’s view, practical intelligence is the ability to learn, organize, and use tacit knowledge – the untaught information that is important for a person to flourish in their environment – in order to accomplish their goals (Sternberg, 2003b; Sternberg et al., 2000; Wagner & Sternberg, 1985). People with high practical intelligence are theorized to be able to better learn the unwritten knowledge regarding their workplace, neighborhood, family, or culture. If they can master this information, then a person with high practical intelligence would be able to succeed in their environment better than someone with a similar (or higher) level of g who does not have high practical intelligence.
An informal way of understanding practical intelligence is that it is similar to “street smarts,” a term used in everyday language to refer to the knowledge that people need to succeed in their environment (Sternberg & Hedlund, 2002). Like street smarts, practical intelligence is separate from academic knowledge that people learn in school or from books, but is important for functioning in the real world. One of the reasons that Sternberg and his colleagues theorize the existence of practical intelligence is the same reason that some laymen infer the existence of street smarts: some people who are smart have difficulty dealing with the everyday world (Sternberg et al., 2000; Wagner & Sternberg, 1985).
Sternberg first proposed the existence of a practical intelligence ability in the mid-1980s (Sternberg, 1985; Wagner & Stenberg, 1985) in the context of his triarchic theory of intelligence. This is Sternberg’s attempt to create a theory of intelligence that encompasses more than the cognitive abilities in traditional models of intelligence. The triarchic theory consists of three subtheories, which are (a) the contextual subtheory, (b) experiential subtheory, and (c) componential subtheory. Each of these subtheories emphasizes a different aspect of the behavior that differences in intelligence produce. The contextual subtheory focuses on how people react to, change, or leave an environment in order to accomplish their goals. The experiential subtheory is a proposed explanation of how people adapt to novel tasks (e.g., new job duties) and automize learned actions (such as learning to drive without feeling overwhelmed). Finally, the componential subtheory is based in cognitive psychology and is a proposed explanation of how the mind solves problems (Sternberg, 1985).
According to Sternberg (1985, 2003b), practical intelligence is part of the contextual subtheory of his triarchic theory of intelligence. If the triarchic theory is correct, then practical intelligence is an important mental ability that helps a person understand and behave in an adaptive way in their environment. In addition to practical intelligence, g (which Sternberg calls analytical intelligence) and creativity are two other important abilities for helping people cope with, change, or leave their environment in order to achieve their goals (Sternberg, 2003b). The triarchic theory is too broad to critique here (see Hunt, 2008, Kline, 1991, and Messick, 1992, for brief critiques). Instead, what I focus on in this chapter is the evidence for the existence and/or importance of practical intelligence.
Claims about Practical Intelligence
Sternberg and his colleagues make two important claims about practical intelligence. The first is that it exists separately from traditional intelligence, which Sternberg sees as a narrow academic ability (Sternberg et al., 2000; Wagner & Sternberg, 1985). This separation between the academic intelligence that is important for succeeding in the schoolhouse and the practical intelligence needed to succeed in the real world is an essential distinction in Sternberg’s theory (Sternberg, 2004). If these two abilities are not separate and independent, then there is no need for practical intelligence because it would be redundant.
The second claim that Sternberg makes is that practical intelligence is as important as – or more important than – academic intelligence for job and life success (Sternberg et al., 2000). According to the triarchic theory, practical intelligence helps someone succeed in their environment because it causes them to learn the tacit knowledge that g does not help people learn. Much of Sternberg’s evidence supporting his belief in the importance of practical intelligence is based on tests of tacit knowledge that his team has created for specific jobs, such as salespeople and military leaders.
Is Practical Intelligence Separate from g? Sternberg has published several studies that seem to support the existence of a practical intelligence that is separate from g or academic intelligence. An early article (Wagner & Sternberg, 1985) reported that, in three samples of individuals working in academic psychology or business, measures of tacit knowledge were correlated with various measures of career success. However, the authors’ attempt to establish the separate nature of practical intelligence and g was feeble and consisted of giving two subsamples of elite college students a measure of verbal intelligence, which was uncorrelated with the measures of tacit knowledge. However, these sample members were not actually working in their career fields, and the restriction of range in intelligence among sample members almost surely reduced the strength of these correlations. (See the Introduction for an explanation of restriction of range.) Additionally, the average scores on the verbal intelligence test (45.3 and 46.2) were close to the maximum possible score of 50, which also restricted the range and weakened the correlation further. All in all, this was an unimpressive attempt to show that practical and academic intelligences were separate.
In later research projects on practical intelligence, Sternberg merely took it for granted that his practical intelligence was separate from g. However, my factor analyses of his data show that his measures of practical intelligence and other abilities (e.g., creativity, academic intelligence) often produce a general factor: g (e.g., Jukes et al., 2006; Stemler et al., 2009; Stemler, Grigorenko, Jarvin, & Sternberg, 2006; Sternberg et al., 2002; see also N. Brody, 2003). In other words, even though Sternberg denies the general nature of g, his own data often produces the traditional g factor anyway – and no separate factor for practical intelligence. Not only does this support the existence of g, but it also undermines any claim that practical intelligence is separate from g.
Others’ efforts to identify a separate ability to cope with problems in the environment have been unsuccessful. One famous organization that has an incentive to identify a separate practical intelligence is the National Football League (NFL). As part of their screening process, the NFL administers a brief written intelligence test called the Wonderlic Personnel Test (WPT) to potential players. The items on the WPT are a mix of applied math, verbal reasoning, and other questions that often resemble school achievement tests. Wonderlic scores do correlate modestly with NFL performance, especially for experienced players who play in more complex positions (Lyons, Hoffman, & Michel, 2009). However, there seems to be no separate practical intelligence that the NFL has found to be valuable in identifying successful players. As a result,
IQ testing [in the NFL] is more widely accepted now. The idea that a guy can be dumb off the field but a genius once he puts on pads and cleats that he can have “football smarts” as opposed to real smarts, is pretty well discredited. (P. Zimmerman, 1984, p. 291)
Does Practical Intelligence Function Better than g in the Real World? The question of whether practical intelligence is more important for real-world functioning is an empirical question that can be answered through scientific inquiry. To his credit, Sternberg has attempted to gather data to support his theory. His studies show that scores on tests of tacit knowledge often correlate positively with job performance (see Sternberg et al., 2000, for a thorough review). However, this is rather weak evidence in support of the theory because in every step of the tests’ creation, they are designed to be customized for the job, and every attempt is made to maximize the correlation between test scores and job performance. If they do correlate better with job success than an IQ score, then that is an artificial consequence of test construction and not because of any predictive power of practical intelligence.
On the other hand, it is impressive that IQ correlates with many non-academic variables because intelligence tests are not explicitly designed to correlate these measures. There is an abundance of evidence (spanning over a century of psychological research) that general intelligence or g – as measured by IQ scores – does help a person function in many environments and in many jobs (see Chapters 22 and 24). Sternberg ignores all this information and instead clings to a small handful of idiosyncratic studies (many of which are unpublished and not peer reviewed) demonstrating that job performance correlates more strongly with scores on extremely context-specific practical intelligence tests than with IQ scores (Gottfredson, 2001). None of these studies favoring practical intelligence has been replicated, whereas studies showing how g can predict job performance and other life outcomes have decades of replications.
Theoretical Problems with Practical Intelligence
To find evidence supporting this claim that practical intelligence is important for helping a person learn the tacit knowledge needed to succeed in their environment, Sternberg and his colleagues often study the context of a group of people to determine what knowledge is important in their environment and then create a test of practical intelligence based on this information. Often, this new test of tacit knowledge will correlate with success in the environment (e.g., job success), and Sternberg sees this as supporting his theory (e.g., Grigorenko et al., 2001; Sternberg et al., 2001; Wagner & Sternberg, 1985). Sternberg then argues (e.g., Wagner & Sternberg, 1985) that the non-academic learning ability needed to become successful in one environment (as a bank manager, for example) is the same as the skills needed to be successful in another environment (e.g., as an academic psychologist). However, there is no reason why g cannot help people succeed in both environments, and Sternberg has not shown that a person moved from one environment/job to another will use the same non-g ability to learn the tacit knowledge needed to succeed in both environments.
The claim that practical intelligence is the same across contexts is often taken to absurd levels when comparing different measures of practical intelligence. For example, in one early study, a test of practical intelligence for managers at large corporations asked examinees to rate 11 different incentives for pursuing a career in management, including “I think my abilities are a good match to this career choice,” “I enjoy working with people,” and “I want to lead others but not be led by others” (Wagner & Sternberg, 1985, p. 458). However, for a test of practical intelligence for children in rural Kenya one question was:
Your younger mother (i.e., the co-wife of the mother) visited your mother’s house and sat for some time, while your mother fed your baby brother. Now they have gone and you are alone with him; he is crying a lot and has stomachache.
(1) What do you think he is suffering from?
i. Mosquitoes have bitten him.
ii. He has eaten rotten food.
iii. He has worms in the stomach.
iv. He is affected by the evil eye (sihoho).
v. He has eaten food restricted by food taboos (ichiema mokwero).
(Sternberg et al., 2001, p. 408)
Astonishingly, Sternberg and his team stated that any answer is correct, except the first option. Thus, believing in superstitions (e.g., that a child can be sickened by the evil eye or breaking a food taboo) is a sign of practical intelligence in this population, according to Sternberg and his colleagues. While the last two options might be considered correct in this rural African culture, using this tacit knowledge (gathered via practical intelligence) to apply a remedy is unlikely to cure a sick baby. It might even harm the child. Yet this behavior would supposedly be an exercise of practical intelligence that helps a person succeed in their environment. Somehow, this is the same practical intelligence that would help a person become a successful manager in an American company!
These examples demonstrate an inherent problem with practical intelligence: it is context-specific, but must also apply across contexts (Gottfredson, 2003a, 2003b). In her withering critique of practical intelligence theory, Gottfredson (2003a) called this a “heads-I-win-tails-you-lose” strategy because if results showed that practical intelligence applied to multiple contexts, then it supports the theory; if results showed that practical intelligence was context-specific, then it supports the theory, too. This makes the theory unfalsifiable – and therefore unscientific (Gottfredson, 2003a). In practice, Sternberg and his colleagues (2000, Chapter 10) explicitly stated that it is necessary to create tests that measure the fruits of practical intelligence for each individual job. This shows the context-specific nature of practical intelligence and precludes it from being a general ability the way g is (assuming practical intelligence exists at all).
Another theoretical problem with practical intelligence is that Sternberg’s description of what practical intelligence does is extremely similar to the mainstream view of g’s function, and it is not clear how the two really differ. Recall from the Introduction that many scholars believe that intelligence “is not merely book learning, a narrow academic skill, or test-taking smarts. Rather, it reflects a broader and deeper capability for comprehending our surroundings – ‘catching on,’ ‘making sense’ of things, or ‘figuring out’ what to do” (Gottfredson, 1997a, p. 13). Compare that with Sternberg’s definition that “Practical intelligence is what most people call common sense. It is the ability to adapt to, shape, and select everyday environments” (Sternberg et al., 2000, p. xi), and that “Practical ability involves implementing ideas; it is the ability involved when intelligence is applied to real world contexts” (Sternberg et al., 2000, p. 31). These similar definitions do not prove that the mainstream view of general intelligence and Sternberg’s practical intelligence are the same ability.
However, they do put the burden of proof on Sternberg to explain why the functions of practical intelligence are not (or cannot be) performed by g. If practical intelligence really is a separate ability, then it is necessary to describe why g cannot or does not also solve real-life problems or help people function in their environment outside school (Gottfredson, 2003a). So far, the results have been unconvincing (Hunt, 2011, pp. 215–216).
If practical intelligence and g are truly separate, then Sternberg must also solve a basic evolutionary problem: it is not clear how a separate academic intelligence that is only useful in school environments would evolve. Traits can only evolve in an environment in which they are useful for surviving. However, academic environments did not exist for the vast majority of humans’ evolutionary history. So, any intelligence that is unique to academic environments must have evolved after much of humanity started attending school, but that is not enough time for a new psychological ability to have developed.4 Sternberg has failed to reconcile his theory with this basic tenet of evolutionary theory.
Astonishingly, Sternberg and his team stated that any answer is correct, except the first option. Thus, believing in superstitions (e.g., that a child can be sickened by the evil eye or breaking a food taboo) is a sign of practical intelligence in this population, according to Sternberg and his colleagues. While the last two options might be considered correct in this rural African culture, using this tacit knowledge (gathered via practical intelligence) to apply a remedy is unlikely to cure a sick baby. It might even harm the child. Yet this behavior would supposedly be an exercise of practical intelligence that helps a person succeed in their environment. Somehow, this is the same practical intelligence that would help a person become a successful manager in an American company!
These examples demonstrate an inherent problem with practical intelligence: it is context-specific, but must also apply across contexts (Gottfredson, 2003a, 2003b). In her withering critique of practical intelligence theory, Gottfredson (2003a) called this a “heads-I-win-tails-you-lose” strategy because if results showed that practical intelligence applied to multiple contexts, then it supports the theory; if results showed that practical intelligence was context-specific, then it supports the theory, too. This makes the theory unfalsifiable – and therefore unscientific (Gottfredson, 2003a). In practice, Sternberg and his colleagues (2000, Chapter 10) explicitly stated that it is necessary to create tests that measure the fruits of practical intelligence for each individual job. This shows the context-specific nature of practical intelligence and precludes it from being a general ability the way g is (assuming practical intelligence exists at all).
Another theoretical problem with practical intelligence is that Sternberg’s description of what practical intelligence does is extremely similar to the mainstream view of g’s function, and it is not clear how the two really differ. Recall from the Introduction that many scholars believe that intelligence “is not merely book learning, a narrow academic skill, or test-taking smarts. Rather, it reflects a broader and deeper capability for comprehending our surroundings – ‘catching on,’ ‘making sense’ of things, or ‘figuring out’ what to do” (Gottfredson, 1997a, p. 13). Compare that with Sternberg’s definition that “Practical intelligence is what most people call common sense. It is the ability to adapt to, shape, and select everyday environments” (Sternberg et al., 2000, p. xi), and that “Practical ability involves implementing ideas; it is the ability involved when intelligence is applied to real world contexts” (Sternberg et al., 2000, p. 31). These similar definitions do not prove that the mainstream view of general intelligence and Sternberg’s practical intelligence are the same ability.
However, they do put the burden of proof on Sternberg to explain why the functions of practical intelligence are not (or cannot be) performed by g. If practical intelligence really is a separate ability, then it is necessary to describe why g cannot or does not also solve real-life problems or help people function in their environment outside school (Gottfredson, 2003a). So far, the results have been unconvincing (Hunt, 2011, pp. 215–216).
If practical intelligence and g are truly separate, then Sternberg must also solve a basic evolutionary problem: it is not clear how a separate academic intelligence that is only useful in school environments would evolve. Traits can only evolve in an environment in which they are useful for surviving. However, academic environments did not exist for the vast majority of humans’ evolutionary history. So, any intelligence that is unique to academic environments must have evolved after much of humanity started attending school, but that is not enough time for a new psychological ability to have developed.4 Sternberg has failed to reconcile his theory with this basic tenet of evolutionary theory.
Conclusion
Ironically, every attribute Sternberg has claimed for practical intelligence actually is an attribute of g. Unlike practical intelligence, g is real (see Chapters 1 and 3), important for functioning in everyday life (see Chapters 22 and 24), and applicable across contexts (see Chapter 4). Conversely, the claims that Sternberg makes about g – that it is a narrow ability, solely useful in academic settings, or a trivial ability – are only believable if one ignores (or is not aware of) over a hundred years of research on intelligence (Gottfredson, 2003a; Ree & Earles, 1993). In claiming that practical intelligence exists and is at least as important as g, Sternberg has advanced an argument that is at odds with a century of data about the importance of g outside academic settings.
Where does this leave people with high intelligence but poor skills on the job or in everyday life? Most psychologists just chalk this up to the fact that IQ does not correlate perfectly with other traits (e.g., r ≠ 1.0) and that other, non-cognitive traits are important for success in everyday life (such as motivation or personality). As a result, exceptions to the general trend are inevitable. It is not necessary to claim that there is another intelligence at work in the human mind. Indeed, the evidence is very scarce that there is any general cognitive ability besides g, though there are many other abilities in Stratum I and Stratum II in both the CHC and bifactor models (see the Introduction).
From Chapter 6 of "In the Know: Debunking 35 Myths About Human Intelligence" by Dr. Russell Warne (2020)
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