Gould

• IQ - intelligence quotient - measurement of certain abilities

  Gould is describing and evaluating work carried out by Yerkes and conducted review article and an og work on Yerkes
• Aim

  • Prove psychology was a rigorous science and there was a scientific way to test intelligence on a mass scale
• Method

  • study is a review article that looks at history of Yerkes intelligence
  • Testing of recruits for US army in WW1
  • Attempt to establish psychology as a science discipline
  • IV = ethnicity
  • DV = average mental age of intelligence
• Participants

  • 1.75 million participants
  • Army recruits in USA
  • White Americans . Negroes . European . Immigrant . Only males
• Procedure

  • May to July 1917
  • Him and colleagues who all shared view on hereditary nature of intelligence, wrote army mental test
• ARMY ALPHA TEST

  • Literate recruits - included analogies and filling in sequence
  • Requires basic understanding of English language skills
  • They were extremely biased
  • Questions would've helped someone with white American background - president questions
• ARMY BETA TEST

  • Illiterate or failed army alpha
  • Picture completion task - pictures are extremely biased - maze tests and counting number of cubes
• Individual examination

  • supposed to be given spoken exam but ti rarely happened as the sample was too big
  • Each individual was carded from A to E. C- low average intelligence
  • Suitable for ordinary private
  • A D grade meant rarely suited for task required for skill
• Administration of tests

  • Recruites who were illiterate or failed alpha should've been given beta straight away but it rarely happened
  • often just given score of 0
  • No standardisation of what.makes them eligible to be illiterate
  • Some black men not allowed to resit beta
  • only 1/5 of those who failed beta got to take individual
• Results

  Data analysis by one of Yerkes lieutenants who manipulated results

  only used selected 160,000 cases

  Group Mean mental Age

  White American 13.04

  Black American 10.41

  Russian Immigrant 11.34

  Italian Immigrant 11.01

  Polish Immigrant 10.74
• Results

  White Americans have declining mental age - nation of morons. showed interbreeding with negroes and immigrant

  European Immigrant could be graded by country - darker they are the less intelligent they are

  Black Americans has lowest mental age - further analysis showed those with lighter skin scored higher
• IMPACT ON ARMY

  Those who performed well - 2/3 got promoted

  Supported intelligence being hereditary

  Ideal propaganda for being racist and promoted in book

  cultural bias - alpha and beta both requited cultural knowledge - even beta test which was designed for illiterate people required you to hold a pen

  Yerkes admitted results showed there was a problem for those not familiar with English

  Condition in which tests taken was unsanitary
• Immigration Restriction Act

  Shaped by Yerkes finding

  People who had a low score no longer welcome

  Jews couldn't escape to America

  6 million people denied entry into America - fate of them as a result of Nazi regime is well known
• Strength

  • Psychometric test considered standardised and objective and scientific measures and attempt to show psychological constructs can be measured scientifically
  • Supposed to be retrieved same way and enable replication
  • Qualitative data and its objective and easily analysed
• Limitation

  • Redcutionist measure of intelligence and assume intelligence is fixed and unchanging - no full measure of IQ
  • Lacks ecological validity - IQ test with a war going on so lots of EV
  • socially sensitive research