IQ Testing
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Katrina Strese IQ TESTING FRANCIS GALTON Read Darwin’s On the Origin of Species Began analyzing mental abilities and went into three-year nervous breakdown Wrote Hereditary Genius Analyzed family trees of distinguished men to see if their relatives were also successful Believed this proved that ability is inherited GALTON CONTINUED Believed that social class determined your worth Decides he wants to apply natural selection to human breeding EUGENICS Greek roots for “well” and “born” It was hard to recognize people with talent while they were young Needed an exam to figure it out GALTON’S IDEA Those who score well should be encouraged to marry and given respect in society Young women should be tested for grace, beauty, health, temper, housewifery, and intelligence Young men should be paired with these well scoring women If they chose to marry, they would be presented £5,000 and their children’s education would be discounted TESTING BOOTH Set up a booth at a health exhibition and paid people to come in to get tested Measured their height and middle finger Tested hearing, ability to throw a punch, power to breath, and power to pull and squeeze Believed measurements of physical ability showed who had natural talent Tested about 9,000 people this way NEGATIVE EUGENICS Galton believed that when people learned that talent was inherited, they would voluntarily stop having kids People should only be given respect if they don’t reproduce If they did have children, then they would become “enemies to the state” and wouldn’t be treated well BINET AND SIMON Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon created a test in 1905 to test the “general intelligence” of children based on their age First test was on concentration Second test was to name things and repeat back to examiners Third part was to describe differences, draw designs, and rank items HENRY HERBERT GODDARD Used Binet tests on students at Training School for Feeble-Minded in New Jersey Compared results of tests to descriptions from teachers Idiot= Performs worse than average 2 year old Imbecile= Between mental ages of 3 and 7 Moron= Between mental ages of 8 and 12 *Felt that “fool” was too harsh of a word GODDARD AND EUGENICS Around this same time, people feared that the feeble-minded were more likely to commit crimes and be social burdens Goddard made people believe that parents passed down the genes for feeblemindedness People wanted them separated from society and prevented from reproducing STUDY OF HEREDITY: KALLIKAK FAMILY Employed Elizabeth Kite who ‘studied’ 480 of Deborah Kallikak’s relatives Met with family members and based judgements off of social interaction Judged deceased relatives off of family memories, reputation, and in one case on the condition of furniture Goddard signed off on this methodology RESULTS OF KALLIKAK FAMILY 143 are feebleminded 36 illegitimate kids, 33 prostitutes, 3 epileptics, 82 dead infants, 3 criminals, 8 “kept houses of ill fame” Only 46 normal people The feebleminded had married into other families and exposed 1,146 others to the “destructive feebleminded gene” Published results in book without telling methodology ELLIS ISLAND Congress gave U.S. Public Health Service a list of types of people to exclude from America Lunatics, idiots, insane, epileptics, beggars, anarchists, diseased, imbeciles, feeble-minded and those with physical defects that might affect their ability to make a living Doctors walked through lines and had seconds to spot people TESTING AT ELLIS ISLAND Binet-style questions Define justice, pity, truth, happiness Count backward from 20 Tell time Changed to “cube imitation” and jig-saw puzzle 1908: 186 out of 600,000 deemed feebleminded After tests change in 1914: 1,077 out of 800,000 deemed feebleminded https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaUK8V-5dBk ALPHA AND BETA TESTS Alpha= Written exam for literates Test vocabulary Unscramble sentences Remember number sequences Beta= Picture exam for illiterate and nonEnglish speaking Maze test Shape matching Finish pictures missing key element Ex. Add steam coming out of a tea kettle TESTING IN THE ARMY March 1917, U.S. Army had 190,000 men November 1918, swelled to 3.6 million men Signed Robert Yerkes, a psychologist, to testing program in August 1917 Administered test and had officers rank soldiers based on their own opinion Compared test results to opinions and found that they correlated Believed this suggested that intelligence is the most important factor in determining men’s value in the service CARRIE BUCK’S STORY Her father was dead and her mother was poor and uneducated At age 3 she was sent to live with foster parents Her foster parents, the Dobbs, left town one summer, and their nephew raped her at age 17 She became pregnant from the rape The Dobbs wanted to cover up for their nephew, so they went to the courts saying she was epileptic and feeble-minded BUCK CONTINUED The Dobbs lied about her conditions and she was sent to the State Colony for Epileptics and Feeble-Minded in Virginia where her mother was already incarcerated Superintendent, Albert Priddy, wanted to have sterilization of inmates legalized His friend, Aubrey Strode, drafted the law and got it passed through the House BUCK CONTINUED Priddy wanted to test the laws and make sure they were official Decided that Carrie Buck was the perfect candidate Set it up so that Buck would “sue” the colony for sterilizing her Strode represented the colony Hired their friend, Whitehead, to “represent” Buck. However, he did not defend her at all BUCK V. BELL DECISION (1927) Went up to supreme court, who agreed that this was legal By 1932, twenty seven states had sterilization programs About 60,000 people were sterilized Decision influenced some European countries to sterilize as well ALMA, WI Arnold Gesell was from Alma and graduated from UW-Madison where he studied psychology Believed that ¼ of Alma’s 1,000 residents were “heredity defectives” Advocated for the town to be sterilized He manipulated his evidence and used photos to make the town look worse than it was Published an article that became famous NAZIS AND IQ Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases in 1933 Feeble-Minded Schizophrenic Manic-Depression Epilepsy Huntington’s chorea Blind Deaf Physical deformities Alcoholism NAZIS 388,000 sterilization cases Majority were for feeble-minded, which required IQ test IQ tests were not scientific What does Christmas signify? Who discovered America? What would you do if you won the lottery? NAZIS Eventually turned sterilization into killing the ‘genetically unworthy’ Killed 200,000 Germans, majority based on the IQ tests showing feeble-mindedness IQ IN TODAY’S WORLD SAT Derives from the IQ tests, but without the physical performance problems Relies strongly on verbal and mathematical skills University of California found that SAT predicts freshman student’s scores about 13% Power to predict scores gets worse as they become upperclassmen High school grades are better predictors of college grades STERILIZATION LAWS California’s sterilization laws were in place for 70 years An OB at the Los Angeles County hospital believed in population control, so immediately after labor he coerced people into tubal litigation STERILIZATION LAWS Women were falsely mislead to agree Signed consent when in distress Some didn’t even give consent Were told that husbands already signed form 10 women filed a lawsuit in 1978 Law was finally repealed in 1979 CALIFORNIA PRISON Between 2006 and 2010, at least 148 women were illegally sterilized Did not get state authorization State reviews cases and makes sure that the sterilization is consensual Were considered “social undesirables” because they are prison inmates, and they didn’t want them reproducing DISCUSSION Do standardized tests accurately measure students’ abilities? Should we continue using them to decide students’ placement? Some states allow shorter prison sentences to inmates who agree to sterilization. Is this ethical and should we allow it?
