Robert Sternberg

The next theory I want to talk about is called the Triarchic Theory of Intelligence.

And this was developed by a Cornell, of course, psychologist named Robert Sternberg.

And Sternberg agreed with Gardner.

He believed that there were multiple categories of intelligence.

It's interesting because there are few sort of theories that take on these threes.

Like Dr. Robert Sternberg has the triarchic theory of love where he talks about the three pieces of intimacy, passion and commitment.

Dr. Helen Fisher a long time ago wrote about lust, passion and commitment.

And it sort of seems that over time that Fisher's theory has morphed into this three loves theory, right? So anyone who has been through a narcissistic relationship would like to think, and we'd like to believe, it doesn't work this way, but we'd like to think we've built up quite a karmic bank account.

It has to be the Anderson, blah, blah, blah.

It's like like Sternberg's triangular theory of love.

Like you got to get your name on there

because someone else is

The spark was huge, but the structure was weak.

Which is why if your professor asks you how to measure the structural integrity of a relationship, you must turn to Robert Sternberg's triangular model of love.

This one is definitely going to be on the quiz.

Definitely.

Sternberg argued that lasting love is not just a feeling.

It is a structure built on three distinct pillars.

Passion, intimacy, and commitment.

Intimacy is the deep, vulnerable, emotional connection.

And I think around the love thing, if it in any way helps, just as food for thought, depends, there are lots of different theories, um, and frameworks around what is actually love.

And one that I like to, um, follow is one from a, a guy called Dr. Robert Sternberg, um, the triangular theory of love, which is that love is made up of three components, intimacy, passion, and commitment.

And for a really fulfilling, loving, respectful relationship, that intimacy, passion, and commitment needs to be equal and it needs to be present.

And intimacy, so it isn't just as obvious as those three words are, but it might help you to really, um, look into those three components to break down was it actual love, you know, from, from all perspectives in the sense of intimacy.

The fantasy can be kept charged up indefinitely, because nothing in daily life ever arrives to test it.

A 2025 doctoral dissertation, qualitative and small, described anxious and insecure attachment among the women it studied, and reached for psychologist Robert Sternberg's term for intense passion without emotional intimacy – fatuous love.

Megan Comfort, a sociologist, spent years doing fieldwork with women visiting men at San Quentin, published as Doing Time Together in 2008.

What she found was that the women were drawn to qualities in these men that the outside world had not offered them.

And somebody might be strong in one and weak in the other and so forth.

And then you have people like Howard Gardner and Robert Sternberg, who had different takes on different kinds of intelligence.

So there's kinesthetic intelligence, which is like what you do with your hands and understanding the physical world.

And then there's mathematical intelligence and so forth.