The Politics of Intelligence · Episode 2 of 9 · 46 min
Was the IQ Test Ever Neutral? The Hidden History of Intelligence Testing
The intelligence test began as a French tool to help schoolchildren who needed extra support, then was turned in America into a ranking device. Goddard, Terman and Yerkes used it to label immigrants and Black Americans as inferior by nature, most notably in the World War I Army tests. The episode asks whether the so-called neutral yardstick ever was one.
Who's who
- Alfred Binet+2 more episodesFrench psychologist who designed the 1905 scale to identify children needing help
- Théodore Simon+1 more episodeBinet's collaborator on the Binet-Simon scale
- Henry H. Goddard+3 more episodesAmerican psychologist who brought the Binet test to the United States
- Lewis M. TermanStanford psychologist who created the Stanford-Binet test
- Robert M. YerkesHarvard psychologist who organized the WWI Army testing
- Charles SpearmanBritish psychologist who introduced the concept of g
- Richard Lewontin+2 more episodesGeneticist whose heritability thought experiment frames the discussion
Where it happens
- Ellis Island, New York+3 more episodesWhere Goddard tested immigrants and reported many as feebleminded
- Vineland, New Jersey+1 more episodeSite of Goddard's training school for the feebleminded
- Stanford University, California+8 more episodesWhere Terman adapted the test and began a study of gifted children
Timeline
- 1904Spearman publishes his theory of general intelligence
- 1905Binet and Simon publish their scale for French schools
- 1912Goddard publishes The Kallikak Family
- 1916Terman publishes the Stanford-Binet test
- 1917-1918Yerkes' Army Alpha and Beta tests reach about 1.75 million recruits
- 1924Immigration Act sharply curtails immigration, with Army test data cited
Still debated
Mainstream psychology holds that IQ tests have real predictive validity, while early tests were demonstrably culturally biased. Heritability estimates have been revised downward, and what g represents biologically is still unsettled.
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