Spiritual intelligence

Spiritual intelligence (SI) is a term used by some philosophers, psychologists, and developmental theorists to indicate spiritual parallels with intelligence quotient (IQ) and emotional intelligence (EI).

Origins

Danah Zohar coined the term "spiritual intelligence" and introduced the idea in 1997 in her book ReWiring the Corporate Brain.

In the same year, 1997, Ken O'Donnell, an Australian author and consultant living in Brazil, also introduced the term "spiritual intelligence" in his book Endoquality - the emotional and spiritual dimensions of the human being in organizations.

In 2000, in the book Spiritual Intelligence, author Steven Benedict outlined the concept as a perspective offering a way to bring together the spiritual and the material, that is ultimately concerned with the well-being of the universe and all who live there.

Howard Gardner, the originator of the theory of multiple intelligences, chose not to include spiritual intelligence in his "intelligences" due to the challenge of codifying quantifiable scientific criteria. Instead, Gardner suggested an "existential intelligence" as viable. The contemporary researchers continue to explore the viability of Spiritual Intelligence (often abbreviated as "SQ" or "SI") and to create tools for measuring and developing it. So far, measurement of spiritual intelligence has tended to rely on self-assessment instruments, which can be susceptible to false or unreliable reporting.

However, in his 2009 doctoral dissertation, Yosi Amram found that the self-reported measure of spiritual intelligence predicted leadership effectiveness as rated by outside observers. In this research, he also deployed 360-assessments of spiritual intelligence and emotional intelligence, finding observer ratings of SI to predict the leadership effectiveness ratings from other observers, offering predictive validity for SI even when controlling for emotional intelligence.