Scientific Inquiry into Human Potential: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives Across Disciplines

Scientific Inquiry into Human Potential explores the intellectual legacy and contemporary understanding of scientific research on human intelligence, performance, and productivity. Across nineteen chapters, some of the most eminent scholars of learning and psychology recount how they originated, distinguished, measured, challenged, and adapted their theories on the nature and nurture of human potential over decades of scientific research. These accessible, autobiographical accounts cover a spectrum of issues, from the biological underpinnings and developmental nature of human potential to the roles of community, social interaction, and systematic individual differences in cognitive and motivational functioning. Researchers, instructors, and graduate students of education, psychology, sociology, and biology will find this book not only historically informative but inspiring to their own ongoing research journeys, as well.

David Yun Dai is Professor of Educational Psychology and Methodology in the Department of Educational and Counseling Psychology at the University at Albany, State University of New York, USA.

Robert J. Sternberg is Professor in the Department of Human Development in the College of Human Ecology at Cornell University, USA, and Honorary Professor of Psychology at Heidelberg University, Germany.