Multiple Intelligences Test — Free 8-Strengths Profile (24 Questions)

The test asks you to rate 24 statements — 3 for each of 8 intelligences — on a 5-point scale from 'Strongly disagree' to 'Strongly agree'. Each intelligence's score rescales its three answers to 0–100%: 'Neutral' on all three gives 50%, 'Strongly agree' on all three gives 100%. Scores of 60% or more are shown as high, below 40% as low, and the rest as medium. Moving one answer by one step shifts a score by about 8 points, so a gap of a single step between two intelligences deserves little weight. The percentage is your position on your own answer scale, not a percentile compared with other people.

Your type name comes from your highest intelligence — 'The Storyteller' if linguistic is on top, 'The Designer' if spatial. Because scores move in steps of about 8 points, ties are common; when they happen, the intelligence that comes first in the order linguistic, logical-mathematical, spatial, musical, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, naturalist is listed first. 'Areas to grow' are simply your two lowest intelligences, so they can appear even when both are above 60%. Read the result as a map of your intelligences relative to one another, not as a comparison with anyone else.

In Frames of Mind (1983), Howard Gardner argued that intelligence is not one thing but several, initially proposing seven intelligences; the naturalist intelligence was added in Intelligence Reframed (1999). To count as an intelligence, he said, an ability should meet criteria such as being selectively impaired by brain damage, appearing in prodigies or savants, and having its own developmental path and symbol system. Because it gives credit to many kinds of strength, the theory has been widely adopted in schools and education.

Empirical research has been largely critical. Waterhouse (2006) reviewed the evidence and concluded that, despite its wide use in education, the theory lacks adequate empirical support and should not be the basis for educational practice. When Visser, Ashton and Vernon (2006) measured the eight intelligences with ability tasks, the more cognitive tasks moved with general intelligence and formed a large common factor (musical and bodily-kinesthetic tasks were the exceptions); each domain looked like a blend of general ability, other abilities and sometimes personality rather than a separate intelligence. So Soundary offers this test as a self-reflection tool, not an ability measure.

Self-perceived strengths and measured abilities overlap less than people expect. A meta-analysis of 41 studies (Freund & Kasten, 2012) put the correlation between self-estimated and measured cognitive ability at about 0.33 — related, but far from the same thing. So pair this questionnaire with the tasks under 'Check it with real tasks' in your result: if spatial comes out high, try mental rotation or a spatial memory task; if logical-mathematical is high, try matrix reasoning in the IQ test. Where the two disagree, the gap itself tells you something about how you see yourself.

Be wary of conclusions like 'I'm spatial, so I should only study with pictures.' Gardner himself has stated that multiple intelligences are not learning styles (Gardner, 2013), and Pashler et al. (2008), reviewing learning-styles research, found virtually no evidence that matching instruction to a learner's preferred style improves outcomes. Use your strengths as an entry point for interest and motivation, but learn material in the form it calls for, and give your lower areas some use through small habits. Retaking the test after a few weeks shows how your view of yourself has shifted.