Jen Rinaldi

York University

Toronto ON Canada

I intend to demonstrate that the systems we have built in order to measure intelligence are responsible for the construction of a fallacious concept of intelligence, and as such promote discriminatory attitudes.

What is IQ Testing Examples and sample questions

Key Players Binet, Stern, Spearman, Goddard, Burt, Herrnstein and Murray

Gould’s The Mismeasure of Man Construction of Intelligence

As singular, as biological, in relation to race, in relation to behaviour

Critique of Intelligence As singular, as biological, in relation to race, in relation to

behaviour

Implications Surveillance, Immigration Act, military, education, people with

disabilities

IQ : Intelligent Quotient

SAT: Scholastic Aptitude/Assessment Test

LSAT: Law School Admission Test

GRE: Graduate Record Examination

No Child Left Behind Achievement Tests

EQAO: Education Quality and Accountability Office

If 3x – 2 = 7, then 4x =

a) 3

b) 5

c) 20/3

d) 9

e) 12

Frugal : Miserly

a) Confident : Arrogant

b) Courageous : Pugnacious

c) Famous : Aggressive

d) Rash: Foolhardy

e) Quiet : Timid

Enervate:

a) Recuperate

b) Resurrect

c) Renovate

d) Gather

e) Strengthen

Complete the following true/false questions in 60 seconds or less:

1) Two ducks and two dogs have a total of fourteen legs

A pie can be cut into more than seven pieces making four diameter cuts

Two of the following numbers add up to thirteen: 1, 6, 3, 5, 11

Do these questions accurately or adequately represent intelligence?

Is there some aspect of intelligence that is not being measured?

Does a good score mean you are intelligent?

What happens when you take a test? What happens to the score?

Why do you need to take tests? Do you think the tests are important or useful in any way?

French psychologist

Invented the first intelligence test.

Intended to identify students who needed educational assistance.

The Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale established the basis for IQ testing.

German psychologist and philosopher.

Coined the term Intelligence Quotient, or IQ: score derived from standardized tests that are meant to measure intelligence.

English psychologist.

Developed a model for measuring intelligence:

General intelligence factor (g): quantifies what standardized intelligence tests share in common.

American psychologist and eugenicist.

Developed classifications for mental deficiency based on IQ scores.

Regarded IQ as static and inheritable.

Claimed low intelligence and moral depravity were related.

English psychologist.

Claimed to be the inventor of factor analysis.

Used Spearman’s g factor to argue that intelligence is innate.

Used fraudulent research data to prove his theory.

Written in 1994 by psychologist Richard J. Herrnstein and scientist Charles Murray.

Chapters 13 and 14 devoted to the establishment of intelligence as genetic and the correlation between intelligence and race.

Are you confused by any of the history or concepts?

What do you think about the theories these psychologists have developed?

Do you think the key players were motivated by good intentions?

Biologist and historian of science.

Campaigned against creationism.

Opposed socio-biology on the grounds that the paradigm is reductionist.

Presents and critiques the development of IQ testing in The Mismeasure of Man

Purpose of the book:

“response to bio-determinism”

IQ according to biological determinism: “genetically fixed and unitary intelligence, what is quantifiable or locatable”

“Biological determinism is, in its essence, a theory of limits. It takes the current status of groups as a measure of where they should and must be”

Mismeasure’s account of IQ testing:

“the abstraction of intelligence as a single entity, its location within the brain, its quantification as one number for each individual, the use of these numbers to rank people in a single series of worthiness, invariably to find that oppressed and disadvantaged groups – races, classes, or sexes – are innately inferior and deserve their status”

Fallacy of reification: “tendency to convert abstract concepts into entities”

Fallacy of ranking: “propensity for ordering complex variation as a gradual ascending scale”

Does Gould go too far?

What do you think intelligence is? What do you identify as intelligence?

What do you think of people you would identify as unintelligent?

Do you think intelligence differs according to sex? Race? Class?

Testing aided in the construction of intelligence as a singular entity. As long as intelligence can be targeted as something tangible and fixed, it can be measured. Those who swear by IQ testing argue that it is difficult, indeed impossible, to challenge measurements and quantities, for statistics are supposed to be value-neutral and unwavering.

IQ tests were meant to measure something tangible, hence physical, in human beings. Intelligence thus came to be understood as part of our brain, and as something inherited, thus transcendent of environment and human control. Scientific studies allegedly provided evidence in support of this position. For instance, there were cases where twins shared the same level of intelligence even when each was adopted by a separate family and raised in a different social context. Cases like these seemed to be ironclad proof that context had no bearing on intelligence, indeed that intelligence was a biological given, innate and inflexible.

As an established genetic trait, intelligence served as justification for racial inequality. Scientists made the case that intelligence could be generalized, that is, was a feature of race, and that black people were intellectually inferior to white people. Insofar as intelligence was measureable, it was possible to argue that one person is less intelligent than another, and as long as intelligence was innate, it was possible to contend that one race is intellectually inferior to another.

F. Allan Hanson illustrates that “the ills of society- poverty, unemployment, unmarried parenthood, crime- are causally connected to the low intelligence of people who manifest them”. He goes on to say that intelligence justifies the affluence of the elite insofar as lower level intelligence is causally linked to poverty and moral depravity. IQ testing could be used, therefore, to determine who would be more predisposed to social deviance.

Why do I keep saying ‘construction’? Do you think there is anything essential about intelligence, something not constructed?

What do you think of this construction of intelligence?

What is wrong with this construction, if anything?

Do you think IQ testing plays a role in shaping this construction of intelligence?

Job performance depends on “common sense, intuition, experience, creativity and…social intelligence, that is, the smarts to work well with other people” (Allman). IQ testing also ignores kinds of intelligence such as spatial, musical, and personal intelligences (Gardner). These very different ways of thinking challenge the notion that there is a singular, quantifiable intelligence. IQ testing cannot adequately measure intelligence because it is impossible to reduce intelligence to something that can be located and monitored according to a measuring tool.

The scientific evidence for innate intelligence is unsatisfactory. Biological determinism is arguably meant only to immunize status quo, for it legitimizes social groups as the way the world should or must be. According to Gould, science is a social activity that reflects social movements and because of this science ought not to be simply trusted and reified. Instead, scientists should always question the assumptions driving them to confirm hypotheses that correspond with social trends.

While scientific studies might find a correlation between intelligence and poverty or race, the correlation is not enough to make a causal connection. Indeed, factors that might have led to this correlation ought to be considered, such as variables found in one’s social context. Scientists who believe in the doctrine of innate intelligence err to the extent that they dismiss environmental factors that might give way to the correlation.

Herrnstein and Murray argue: “upper class people on average are more intelligent than lower class people [and] this goes a long way in explaining the affluence of the one group and the chronic crime, dependence on welfare, unmarried parenthood, and other social problems of the other”. Arguments like these are deeply problematic insofar as they lay the blame for poverty on the innate immorality and low intelligence of the poor. Oppression and prejudice are excusable within this paradigm on the grounds that the oppressed persons can be genetically proven to be intellectually inferior.

IQ testing has been used as a widespread surveillance system used in order to develop a taxonomy of human beings according to intelligence levels. Categories have been in place in order to develop or justify social inequalities. The act of fitting people into classifications, therefore, is a method of control.

A concrete example of an implication to IQ testing would be the 1924 Immigration Restriction Act in the United States. The rationale for this act was that immigrants belonged to ethnic groups who had lower intelligence levels, and low intelligence was causally linked to social deviance. Hence, immigrants should not be so readily welcomed into the country lest they become a social burden. Immigrants performed poorly on IQ testing and because intelligence was characterized as innate, there was no grounds for arguing that poor performance could be based on education, cultural background, or language.

Category four recruits were people who scored low in IQ testing and were classified as borderline retarded. They were not welcome in the army military because they were considered bad for morale. During WWII, there was a need for manpower and so the US military relaxed its standard and let in category four recruits. In 1980s, it was discovered that a category fours was erroneously classified as category ones, and these soldiers excelled in training.

Standardized testing still, in various forms, persists today. Standardized tests are not adapted to account for children’s particular learning needs or their social contexts. For instance, scores and rankings do not take into account that the lowest ranking schools are in bad neighbourhoods or are underfunded and understaffed. Students experience frustration and a lack of self-confidence when they perform poorly. Furthermore, their chances of acceptance into their colleges of choice are hindered by poor test scores.

People with disabilities have been sorted according to categories such as Goddard’s ‘moron’, his invented term for high-grade defectives. Granted, classifications might be useful if their purpose is to determine how to design social policies that accommodate people with disabilities, and classifications are impossible without some system of measurement, even if that measuring system has limitations. However, the purposes of IQ testing do not seem to be nearly so philanthropic.

Indeed, the social policies that have been based on IQ testing in no way enabled people with disabilities to better their lives, for the poverty, unemployment, and criminality they faced were claimed to be consequences of their moral deficiency. Educational reform would also not have been included in social policy suggestions because intelligence was thought to be genetic and therefore inevitable and unchangeable. Therefore, because of IQ testing, it is possible to curtail the range of choices made available to people with disabilities.

Not everyone who scored low on IQ testing necessarily had a disability since testing is often inaccurate. However, the category in which people who performed poorly on IQ tests were placed and the connotations attached to that category reflect a prejudice towards intellectual and developmental disabilities. The category was associated with social deviance and poverty. There was a lack of social mobility, a kind of inevitability for what people in this group could expect in their social situations. Therefore, regardless of whether everyone who scored low on IQ tests really did have disabilities, IQ testing affected the attitude towards disability.

Questions?