Eugenics: The Well-Born Science · Episode 4 of 9 · 49 min
The Racist Origins of IQ Testing
A tool French psychologist Alfred Binet built to help struggling schoolchildren was carried to America and turned into a yardstick of racial worth. Goddard, Terman and Yerkes used intelligence tests, including the World War I Army tests, to claim a mental hierarchy that fed immigration restriction. The episode separates testing's legitimate uses from its eugenic abuse and the circular reasoning behind it.
Who's who
- Alfred Binet+2 more episodesFrench psychologist who built the first practical intelligence test in 1905
- Henry H. Goddard+3 more episodesBrought the Binet test to America, tested immigrants at Ellis Island
- Lewis Terman+1 more episodeStanford psychologist who created the Stanford-Binet test
- Robert Yerkes+1 more episodeHarvard psychologist who ran the Army Alpha and Beta tests
- Carl BrighamAnalyzed Army data into a racial ranking; later helped create the SAT
- Stephen Jay Gould+2 more episodesCritic whose The Mismeasure of Man exposed the circular reasoning
- Aleš Hrdlička+1 more episodeSmithsonian brain and skull collector in the measuring tradition
Where it happens
- Vineland, New Jersey+1 more episodeTraining school where Goddard tested and promoted the Binet scale
- Ellis Island, New York+3 more episodesWhere Goddard tested arriving immigrants
Timeline
- 1905Binet and Simon publish the first practical intelligence scale
- 1916Terman publishes the Stanford-Binet
- 1917-1918Yerkes tests about 1.75 million Army recruits
- 1923Brigham's A Study of American Intelligence ranks racial stocks
- 1924Army-test findings cited in immigration restriction debate
- 1981Gould publishes The Mismeasure of Man
Still debated
That intelligence has some heritable component is mainstream; the eugenic error was the leap to fixed, racially ranked heredity. How much the SAT's origins taint it is debated, and Gould's critique of Morton's skull data has itself been re-examined.
← PreviousHow Elite Money Built American Eugenics: The Eugenics Record OfficeNext →The University Presidents Who Led American Eugenics
Connected episodes in other series
Measuring MindsThe Way We Learn · Episode 2Also features Alfred Binet, Henry H. Goddard
Was the IQ Test Ever Neutral? The Hidden History of Intelligence TestingThe Politics of Intelligence · Episode 2Also features Alfred Binet, Henry H. Goddard
Three GenerationsThe Payor of Last Resort · Episode 4Also features Stephen Jay Gould
A Uniformed but Unarmed Service (1870–1912)The U.S. Public Health Service · Episode 2