Dr. Robert J. Sternberg

IBM Professor of Psychology and Education

Department of Psychology
Yale University
Box 208205
New Haven, CT 06520, USA

Phone: 203-432-4633
Fax: 203-432-8317
E-mail: robert.sternberg@yale.edu

THINKING STYLES

My research on thinking styles has been motivated primarily by my theory of mental self-government, according to which the forms of government we have in the world are not arbitrary, but rather are external reflections of ways in which we can organize our thinking. These forms of government are reflected in styles of thinking, or preferred ways of using our abilities (as contrasted with the abilities themselves). The theory posits 13 thinking styles: Functions of mental self-government: legislative--people who likes to come up with their own ideas and to do things in their own preferred ways; executive--people who prefer to be given guidelines in their work or to be given a structure within which to work; judicial--people who like to judge people and their products. Forms of mental self-government: monarchic--people who are single-minded and who tend to focus on one thing at a time to the exclusion of others; hierarchical--people who like to set priorities and decide what to do when and for how long; oligarchic--people who like to do multiple tasks, but who do not like to set priorities for doing them; anarchic--people who eschew systems for doing tasks. Orientations of mental self-government: internal--people who like to work on their own and to avoid contact with others; external--people who like to work with others and to avoid being on their own. Levels of mental self-government: local--people who like to deal with details and fine points; global--people who like to deal with the big picture and with general issues Ideologies of mental self-government; liberal--people who like to do things in new ways; conservative--people who like to do things in traditional ways In collaborative research with Elena Grigorenko (funded by the U.S. Office of Educational Research and Improvement), we have found that teachers tend to overestimate the extent to which their students match them in styles, and moreover, tend to evaluate more favorably students who match the teachers' profiles of styles; styles predict school performance beyond the prediction provided by measures of abilities; teachers tend to match the stylistic propensities of their schools, and students tend to match the stylistic propensities of their teachers; older teachers tend to be more executive, local, and conservative than younger ones.