Intelligence cannot be fully or even meaningfully understood outside its cultural context. Work that seeks to study intelligence a contextually risks the imposition of an investigator’s view of the world on the rest of the world. Moreover, work on intelligence within a single culture may fail to do justice to the range of skills and knowledge that may constitute intelligence broadly defined and risks drawing false and hasty generalizations. In this article, we consider the relevance of culture to intelligence and its investigation, assessment, and development. We describe studies from diverse continents, based on the theory of successful intelligence, that show the importance of understanding intelligence in its cultural context and conclude that intelligence must be understood in such context.
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