Involves creating, communicating, and understanding meanings made out of sound (music composition, production, and perception)
Includes ability in dealing with patterns of sound
A great deal of musical intelligence is required if you are a musician, conductor, sound engineer, or choreographer. Musical intelligence is not engaged by playing music "in the background." In fact, background music often interferes with the work of those who excel in this area because they tend to focus actively on the music.
Involves the ability to understand the natural world
Includes the ability to work effectively in the natural world
Allows people to distinguish among, classify, and use features of the environment
Is also applied to general classifying and patterning abilities
A great deal of naturalist intelligence is required if you are a botanist, biologist, gardener, farmer, chef. The naturalist intelligence is also brought to bear in other non-natural classification and pat terning activities.
Involves the capacity to recognize and make distinctions among the feelings, beliefs, and intentions of other people
Allows the use of this knowledge to work effectively in the world
A great deal of interpersonal intelligence is required if you are a teacher, mediator, salesperson. Interpersonal intelligence is not simply working, or preferring to work, in a group, being well liked, or having manners. Rather it emphasizes an individual's ability to understand social situations and the actions of others within that context.
Enables individuals to understand themselves and to draw on that understanding to make decisions about viable courses of action
Includes the ability to distinguish one's feelings and to anticipate reactions to future courses of action
A great deal of intrapersonal intelligence is required if you are a therapist, poet, minister. Intrapersonal intelligence is not related to comfort with or preference for working alone. Consider the individual who knows that he is or she is the type of person who likes to work in groups.
Existential ability remains under consideration for designation as an intelligence. It refers to the human inclination to ask very basic questions about existence, such as: Who are we? Where do we come from? At this time this ability does not sufficiently meet the criteria discussed earlier to be considered an intelligence (Gardner, 1999, p. 9). The question remains as to whether existential abilities are not an amalgam of logical and linguistic intelligences.