What makes some people deeply self-aware while others excel at reading social situations? Why do these two abilities often develop together and influence each other so strongly?
In Frames of Mind, Howard Gardner explores intrapersonal and interpersonal intelligence as complementary forms of understanding. Intrapersonal intelligence entails recognizing your emotions and motivations, while interpersonal intelligence helps you understand and connect with others.
Read on to dive deeper into how these essential personal intelligences shape your relationships, self-awareness, and interactions with the world around you.
Intrapersonal & Interpersonal Intelligence
Gardner discusses a category of intelligence he calls the personal intelligences. These consist of intrapersonal and interpersonal intelligence. Intrapersonal intelligence is understanding yourself, while interpersonal intelligence is understanding others.
Unlike the other forms of intelligence, the personal intelligences develop simultaneously and greatly influence each other, making them nearly impossible to separate. So, we’ll discuss intrapersonal intelligence and interpersonal intelligence together.
Intrapersonal intelligence is your capacity to understand yourself, and to recognize and process your own feelings, motivations, strengths, and weaknesses. If you have high intrapersonal intelligence, you tend to be self-reflective, show strong metacognition (awareness of your own thought processes), and effectively manage your emotional states.
Interpersonal intelligence, on the other hand, is your ability to understand and interact effectively with others. This includes being able to recognize others’ moods, temperaments, motivations, and intentions, as well as knowing how to respond in various social situations.
(Shortform note: Gardner himself notes that intrapersonal and interpersonal intelligences are nearly inextricable from each other. This suggests that they may not be separate intelligences at all. Furthermore, the skills that he attributes to these intelligences could also be explained by a more general emotional intelligence. In his 1995 book of the same name, psychologist Daniel Goleman defines emotional intelligence as the ability to recognize, understand, and manage emotions, regardless of whether those emotions are yours or someone else’s. This ability includes many things that are commonly considered “interpersonal skills,” such as navigating social situations and effectively motivating others.)
Personal intelligences start developing in infancy through the bond between infant and caregiver. Gardner says that this early attachment provides the foundation for both self-awareness and awareness of others.
During the first years of life, children learn to recognize their own emotions and to differentiate between themselves and others. By two years old they have enough self-awareness to recognize themselves in the mirror. Between ages two and five they develop the ability to represent themselves and others through language and play—for instance, a child who says, “I’ll be Batman, and you’ll be the bad guy,” is showing awareness not only of themselves and their playmate, but of other (fictional) people as well. From there, specific intra- and interpersonal skills develop on a largely individual basis.
Finally, Gardner says that the personal intelligences are associated with the frontal lobes of the brain. Studies have shown that damage to these areas can severely impact someone’s personality and social behavior, but leave their other abilities intact.
(Shortform note: More recent research has found that other areas of the brain also play significant roles in a person’s self-awareness, self-regulation, and behavior toward others. While researching psychopathic behavior, scientists noted that damage to the cerebral cortex can affect a person’s self-awareness. For instance, someone might understand psychopathic traits and recognize them in others, but not realize that they have those same traits. Furthermore, damage to the amygdala can impair emotional awareness and regulation, which helps explain why some psychopaths are so sadistic: They may be unable to control their own impulses or might not understand that their actions seriously harm others.)
| The Personal Intelligences and Attachment Theory According to attachment theory, a young child’s relationship with their caregivers isn’t just the basis for self-awareness and other-awareness. Rather, it has a significant impact on how that child will handle important relationships (especially romantic relationships) throughout their life. In Attached, the authors explain that a person’s attachment style—how secure they feel in a relationship—is influenced by how emotionally available and responsive their childhood caregivers were. Furthermore, those relationships are expressions of both intrapersonal and interpersonal intelligence. For instance, someone with an anxious attachment style can’t tell whether their partner truly loves them (an interpersonal skill) and is also unable to manage the anxiety that makes them question their relationship (an intrapersonal skill). |
