Robert Serpell

Robert Nicholas Serpell (born 1944) is a British-Zambian Professor of Psychology at the University of Zambia. From 2003 to 2006 he was Vice-Chancellor of the University. He also serves as the current Chancellor of Eden University in Lusaka, Zambia.

He has conducted numerous studies on gaps in academic performance between ethnic groups, finding that even within a given society, different cognitive characteristics are emphasized from one situation to another and from one subculture to another. These differences extend not just to conceptions of intelligence but to what is considered adaptive or appropriate in a broader sense. Serpell's work shows how conceptions of intelligence vary from culture to culture, and that the majority of these views do not reflect Western ideas.

Serpell and others have found that people in some African communities—especially where Western schooling has not yet become common—tend to blur the Western distinction between intelligence and social competence. In rural Zambia, for instance, the concept of nzelu includes both cleverness (chenjela) and responsibility (tumikila).

Personal life

Serpell is married; his wife is an economist. They have a family, including daughter Namwali Serpell, a writer who teaches at the University of California, Berkeley. They lived and worked for a time in Baltimore, Maryland, going there when Namwali was nine. She completed her education in the United States, at Yale and Harvard.

Selected publications

• Serpell, R. (1977) Estimates of intelligence in a rural community of eastern Zambia. In F. M. Okatcha (ed.) Modern psychology and cultural adaptation (pp. 179–216). Nairobi: Swahili Language Consultants and Publishers.
• Serpell, R. (1993) The Significance of Schooling: Life-journeys in an African Society. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
• Serpell, R. (2000). "Intelligence and culture." In R. J. Sternberg (Ed), The Handbook of Intelligence (pp. 549–577). Cambridge, UK & New York, US: Cambridge University Press.
• Serpell, R. (2011). "Social responsibility as a dimension of intelligence, and as an educational goal: insights from programmatic research in an African society." Child Development Perspectives, 5 (2), 126–133.