There is another area of contemporary psychology that is supportive of Aristotle's thoughts on virtue. We are familiar with the concepts of intelligence and IQ but there are now counterparts of these ideas in the world of emotion. We can be smart in different ways. Our success in life depends not only on our IQ but also on our emotional intelligence or EI, which has been getting a lot of recognition lately.

The idea of intelligence testing goes at least back to Darwin's cousin, Sir Francis Galton, who developed tests of sensory acuity. Believing that keen senses could take in more of the world and therefore better inform the mind, Galton developed the first psychological tests. Later formulations of intelligence replaced sensory acuity with the ability to reason. Today's IQ tests are variations of those alternatives to Galton's acuity tests.

More recently, psychologist Howard Gardener has argued for different kinds of intelligences. He recognizes the traditional linguistic–verbal and logical–mathematical abilities of the standardized intelligence tests but also adds visual–spatial, bodily–kinesthetic, musical–rhythmic, and interpersonal and intrapersonal abilities as well. Just recently Gardener added a naturalist capacity to the list.