A review of:
R. J. STERNBERG &
J. KOLLIGIAN (eds), 1990, Competence Reconsidered, New
Haven, Yale University Press, pp. 420, £25-00
It
is axiomatic to trait accounts of human differences that behaviour,
abilities, preferences and expectations will co-vary across individuals.
Left-handers, for example, will tend, behaviourally, to use their
left hands, whether according to observation or to self-report;
they will tend, when tested, to be more skilful with the left
hand, perhaps even at novel tasks; and they will have correlated
preferences and expectations as to future performance. It is when
such phenomena of co-variation are observed that trait explanations
of individual and group differences come to be proposed, whether
invoking genes, brain mechanisms, early learning or response to
social norms and reinforcers.
The present volume is concerned
with human differences in 'competence.' So one could reasonably
expect a sustained consideration of trait approaches to the question
of why some people are markedly more employable, productive and
apparently successful than others. Now, this is a sensitive topic
for psychologists; so such consideration would have to be critical.
One would expect to hear of un-trait-like cases such as
tortured geniuses, modest scholars, dullards who succeeded by
hard work alone, and boastful victims of their own intellectual
pretensions. Such cases, if they occurred with any frequency,
would tend to undermine any 'simplistic' idea that there are real,
trait-like differences between people in anything that can properly
be called competence; and they would point the way to more advanced
theorizing, perhaps involving such delights as multivariate conceptualizations
and unspecifiable complex interaction effects.
The authors of Competence
Reconsidered, however, are not at all concerned to argue against,
or to give evidence for dismissing an account of human competence
that might trace lasting differences in ability largely to some
one source.. They simply assume that there is no such reality.
For them, "competence is not itself an objective phenomenon";
"competence and incompetence represent labeling phenomena"
and are only intelligible "with reference to a particular
social milieu." Here are the good fairies of 1968 indeed
-- now plump and frumpy, but still promising rapid social-psychological
change once the scales drop from our eyes and we embrace subjectivism,
relativism and utopianism and honour their harbingers. The 'guiding
premise' of these bearers of yesterday's gifts is that it is personal
impressions and self-attributions of competence that are the key
variables in this field. They believe that apparent incompetence
reflects regrettable misperceptions and expectations -- induced
as often as not by an overly competitive society. And, consistent
to the end in their idealism, they propose to remedy even literal
eyesight problems by a psychological approach -- supported, they
claim, by some ophthalmologists. Let the editors speak: "….at
all points in the life cycle, it is one's construal of reality,
rather than reality itself, that most accurately predicts self-concept,
goals, academic performance, and overall mental health."
With the honourable exceptions
of Deborah Phillips and Marc Zimmerman, the authors thus dismiss
any possibility that people really differ in competence -- and
only thus in perceptions of competence. There could be advantage
in this stratagem. Rapid progress might be made with multivariate
or interactionist theorizing. Yet dismissing trait accounts --
rather than proving them wrong -- has the disadvantage that the
original question is forgotten together with the unwanted answer.
Too frightened to ask whether and why some people are generally
more competent than others, the authors are left with little to
get their teeth into. Thus their only readily comprehensible concern
is with how people themselves dimensionalize their own worlds
-- for example, with the possibility that, just like psychometricians,
people distinguish between 'fluid' and 'crystallized' intelligence.
Such demotic constructions of reality can themselves be liberally
offered trait-like characterizations: for example, the authors
believe some people suffer undue ego orientation (as opposed
to more worthy task orientation) even though little evidence
is presented here for the existence of this hypothetical dimension.
Yet competence itself cannot be envisaged as trait-like within
the limits of these authors' piety.
This flight from years of
educational, vocational and clinical psychology could still have
been well advised if it delivered some coherent new theory or
even some interesting findings. Unfortunately, the authors are
able to make little progress beyond their innocent celebration
of the assumptions that have guided them off the beaten track.
There are no breakthroughs as to how our perceptions of competence
are developed. Merely, we become a little more discriminating
(between luck, effort and skill) through childhood -- while still,
even as university students, priding ourselves chiefly on our
physical attractiveness. And the serendipitous findings that parents
do not have low expectations of girls, that self-esteem
correlates at +.80 with cheerfulness vs depression, and
that elderly athletes prefer to compare their competencies with
those of other, similarly elderly athletes will provoke only yawns
from those readers who manage to plough through the book's dog's
breakfast of such scraps.
It is a pity that the authors
did not address themselves to the more manageable question of
what, precisely, is wrong with a trait approach to competence.
For there is indeed a problem -- one that has long been known
to psychometricians. It is this. For all that general intelligence
(g) provides by far the best predictor of competence known
to psychology, another relevant variable, neuroticism (n)
is largely independent of g in empirical research. Sir
Cyril Burt had drawn this conclusion by 1940; and the idea that
n is a major personality dimension, akin to g in
the realm of abilities, has subsequently been massively vindicated.
Thus, we do indeed find tortured geniuses, gifted students who
dread examinations, and people at the other extreme who have remarkably
little anxiety about their own intellectual mediocrity. Just why
such personal angst as people feel has so little relation
to actual incompetence is a very good question. It could be that
we only compare ourselves with people of similar intelligence
in the modern West -- streamed as we all are by age 25 (despite
modern educators' obstinate egalitarian efforts in our earlier
years) into well-recognized ability groups. It could be that,
for almost philosophical reasons, it is impossible to doubt seriously
one's own intelligence -- thus leaving only other forms
of self-doubt as possibilities. Or it could be that g and
n are simple, independently given biological variables
-- one conveying competence and the other conveying a variability
in behaviour that makes for long-term adaptivity even if not for
that easy predictability for which higher-n people often
profess they would settle.
Whichever account is correct,
the present authors seem unlikely to identify it unless they take
to using some measures of g and n in their empirical
work. It is sad to see the question of human competence so unproductively
addressed as in this book. In their latter-day philosophical idealism,
believing that perception is all, these authors will seriously
distort perceptions of psychology. This disservice will only be
remedied by other psychologists providing attentive accounts of
the conspicuous competencies of such high-g and high-n
groups as the Jews, the Germans and the Japanese. Feeling of competence
and the realities of competence are only loosely linked; and this
militates against any idea that perception determines reality.
In subsuming reality to perception, the present authors manage
to miss out not just one, but two major realities of the human
condition.
CHRIS BRAND
Publication reference:
BRAND, C. R. (1992). Review. Behaviour
Research & Therapy 30, 4, 422-423.
What about Howard Gardner and Robert Sternberg?
For comments on the recent work of these and
other modern academic psychologists concerned with intelligence,
learning and education, see this review of the London CIBA Symposium
on giftedness. (Mike Anderson, Douglas Detterman and Robert Plomin
all feature. Oh -- and Mystery Michael Who!)
Original: 1991
Last modified: 1998.