ABSTRACT
Some people are never forgotten. What they are remembered for is not their gifts, but the gifts they gave to the world. If we ask what distinguishes four such extremely gifted individuals of the twentieth century-Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King, and Nelson Mandela-we could safely conclude that it is not the kind of giftedness measured by conventional tests of intelligence. The kind of wisdom these individuals share is not even captured by broader theories of intelligence. For example, these individuals may all have been high in interpersonal intelligence (Gardner, 1983), but so was Adolph Hitler. Hitler was certainly able to understand crowds and was masterful at imposing his will on people. Wisdom also is different from social intelligence (Cantor & Kihlstrom, 1987) and emotional intelligence (Goleman, 1995; Salovey & Mayer, 1990). Like practical intelligence, these kinds of intelligence may be used to further one’s own interests to the exclusion of or even systematically against the interests of others.
