Prof. Robert J. Sternberg

Wisdom involves the seeking of an ethical, meaningful common good – a good for everyone – over the long- as well as the short-term.  Whereas people of high IQ are a dime a dozen, comparatively speaking, wise people are hard to find.  How many wise leaders can you identify?  Regrettably, many of the intellectually gifted ones are simultaneously very unwise, downright foolish, or toxic.

Wisdom is particularly important in STEM disciplines because, while their innovations can create great good, they also can create great harm.  Weapons of mass destruction, medications that turn out to have biological destructive long-term side effects, junk food advertised as nutritionally beneficial, and AI that spews out poisonous lies in support of extremist and destructive ideologies are only a few examples of how STEM can go wrong.  Regrettably, many of the purveyors of bad-STEM innovations are gifted but choose to deploy their gifts to benefit themselves at the expense of others.

In this talk, I will discuss what STEM wisdom is, how STEM wisdom can be measured, and how STEM wisdom can be developed in young people.  What teaching techniques ensure that young people learn now only about STEM, but about how wisely to deploy it?  STEM wisdom may seem like a metaphorical “pie in the sky,” but when one thinks of how the microbes that will cause the next pandemic may be brewing in a scientist’s test-tube right now, one must realize that STEM wisdom is necessary, now.

Robert J. Sternberg is Professor of Psychology at Cornell University and Honorary Professor of Psychology at Heidelberg University, Germany.  Sternberg is a Past President of the American Psychological Association and the Federation of Associations in Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

Sternberg’s BA is from Yale University summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, his PhD is from Stanford University, and he holds 13 honorary doctorates from 11 nations. Sternberg has won the Grawemeyer Award in Psychology, the James and Cattell Awards from the Association for Psychological Science, the National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC) Distinguished Scholar Award, and the NAGC E. Paul Torrance Award. He has about 2000 publications and has been cited over 240,000 times.  He has been listed as #1 in lifetime ranking in the field of Human Development and Family Studies by ScholarGPS, 2024, and #15 in the world and #7 in the United States for “Top Scientists in the Field of Psychology” by research.com, 2024. 

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  Prof. Robert J. Sternberg Wisdom involves the seeking of an ethical, meaningful common good – a good for everyone – over the long- as well as the short-term.  […]