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Zulu mothers' beliefs about their own and their children's intelligence

Adrian Furnham1, Nhlanhla Mkhize

  • 1Department of Psychology, University College, London. a.furnham@ucl.ac.uk

The Journal of Social Psychology
|March 6, 2003
PubMed

Zulu women (N = 133) were given a structural interview concerning their own and their children's multiple intelligences. The best predictor of their own self-estimated overall intelligence rating was mathematical and spatial intelligence. Mothers showed few significant differences in their estimates of their sons and daughters' overall or multiple intelligences. However, they rated their daughters' interpersonal intelligence higher than those of their sons, and their sons' bodily-kinesthetic intelligence higher than those of their daughters. The mothers believed that overall their children were about 6 IQ points more intelligent than themselves. Although mothers estimated their own spatial, inter-, and intrapersonal intelligence to be higher than those of their children, they also believed that their children had higher mathematical intelligence.

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