XCMA,
Mike asked me to post this paper of his from awhile back. It is long so I
am sending it in 4 parts.
Nate
The Illusion of Culture-free Intelligence Testing
For almost as long as there have been IQ tests, there have been
psychologists who believe that it is possible to construct "culture free"
tests (Jensen, 1980). The desire for such tests springs directly out of the
purposes for which tests of general intellectual ability were constructed in
the first place: to provide a valid, objective, and socially unbiased
measure of intellectual ability. Our society, founded upon the principle
that all people are created equal, has never lived easily with the
recognition of enormous de facto social inequality. We need a rationale for
such inequality and our traditions strongly bias us to seek the causes of
inequality in properties of the individual, not society. At the same time,
we realize that social and economic conditions, by shaping people’s
experiences, can be the causes of individual intellectual differences, as
well as their consequences. Can' t we find universals in human experience
and construct a test on this basis?
What would be more ideal than a psychological test that could measure
intellectual potential independently of the specific experience provided by
sociocultural and economic circumstance? Such a test would provide an
excellent tool for insuring that unfortunate social circumstances would not
prevent the identification of intellectual potential. Some psychologists
have claimed not only that such tests are possible in principle, but have
been applied in practice (Hernnstein & Murray, 1994).
In this chapter, I will argue that the notion of culture-free intelligence
is a contradiction in terms. I begin by reviewing the historical background
of efforts to understand the relation between culture and thought that
formed the scholarly background against which IQ testing came into being.
After summarizing briefly the strategy developed by the pioneers of IQ
testing, I will present a "thought experiment" to help clarify the issues
and some empirical evidence from research which has sought to approximate
the conditions of the thought experiment. I close by offering some comments
on how to think about culture and IQ testing given the impossibility of a
culture-free test of intellectual ability.
Beliefs About Culture and Cognitive Ability in the 19th Century
The several decades just proceeding this century provide a useful starting
point from which to trace theories of culture and cognitive development,
because it was during this period that both anthropology and psychology, the
disciplines assigned the roles of studying culture and cognition, took
shape as disciplines. Until this time there was no distinctive body of
methods for the study of the "humane sciences," nor had scholars with
different theories been institutionally divided into separate disciplines,
each with its own methods of studying human nature.
Obvious differences in technological achievement between peoples living in
different parts of the world were common knowledge among European scholars.
Their theorizing about sources of these differences had produced rather
general acceptance of the notion that it is possible to study the history of
humanity by a study of contemporary peoples at different "levels of
progress." The “father of anthropology,” E. B. Tylor, summarized (in which
he called a "mythic fashion") the general course of culture that most of his
fellow scholars would have adhered to:
We may fancy ourselves looking on Civilization, as in personal figure she
traverses the world; we see her lingering or resting by the way, and often
deviating into paths that bring her toiling back to where she had passed by
long ago; but direct or devious, her path lies forward, and if now and then
she tries a few backward steps, her walk soon falls into a helpless
stumbling. It is not according to her nature, her feet were not made to
plant uncertain steps behind her, for both in her forward view and in her
onward gait she is of truly human type. (Taylor, 1958, p. 69)
Tylor made another assumption that also won general acceptance: there is an
intimate connection between socio-cultural progress and mental progress.
"...the condition of culture among various societies of mankind," he wrote,
"..is a subject apt for the study of laws of human thought and action"
(Tylor, 1874, p. 1). He even adopted the notion of a "mental culture," which
he expected to be high or low depending upon the other conditions of culture
with which it was associated.
Herbert Spencer, writing at about the same time, shared Tylor's belief in
the fusion of mental and sociocultural progress. He argued that the
circumstances under which the earliest human beings lived provided only a
limited number and variety of experiences. “Consequently,” he argued,
there can be no considerable exercise of faculties which take cognizance of
the general truths displayed throughout many special truths.” (Spencer,
1886, p. 521)
Spencer invites us to consider the most extreme case; suppose that only one
experience were repeated over and over again, such that this single event
comprised all of the person's experiences. In this case, as he put it, "the
power of representation is limited to reproduction of the experience" in the
mind. There isn't anything else to think about! Next we can imagine that
life consists of two experiences, thus allowing at least elementary
comparison. Three experiences add to the elementary comparisons, and
elementary generalizations that we make on the basis on our limited (three)
experiences. We can keep adding experience to our hypothetical culture
until we arrive at the rich variety of experiences that characterizes our
lives. It follows from this line of reasoning that generalizations, the
"general truths" attainable by people, will be more numerous and more
powerful the greater one's experience. Since cultures provide experience,
and some cultures (Spencer claimed) provide a greater diversity of
experience than others, a neat bond between cultural progress and mental
progress is cemented.
Although such evolutionary schemes seemed almost transparently obvious in
the enthusiasm following publication of Darwin's Origin of Species. events
toward the close of the nineteenth century proved that there could be a
great deal of disagreement about the relation between culture and thought,
despite the compelling story constructed by scholars like Tylor and Spencer.
One set of disagreements arose when researchers started to examine more
closely the data used to support conclusions about relations between
cultures, especially claims for historical or evolutionary sequences. A
different set of disagreements arose around conflicting claims about mental
processes.
The source of these disagreements concerning sociocultural sequences can be
found in Tylor's own work. The main criteria he used for judging the stage
of a culture were the sophistication of industrial arts (including
manufacturing techniques for metal tools, agricultural practices) and "the
extent of scientific knowledge, the definitions of moral principles, the
conditions of religious belief and ceremony, the degree of social and
political organization, and so forth." However, in Tylor's words, "If not
only knowledge and art, but at the same time moral and political excellence,
be taken into consideration it becomes more difficult to scale societies
from lower to higher stages of culture” (Tylor, 1874, p. 29).
This undeveloped theme in Tylor's work was taken up by Franz Boas, who
submitted the cultural evolution position to a devastating critique at the
close of the nineteenth century. On the basis of his own ethnographic work,
Boas (1911) concluded that a great deal of the evidence apparently
supportive of evolutionary schemes was so deeply flawed that no clear
conclusions ranking one culture above another could be accepted. Boas did
more than show the flaws in evolutionists' data and arguments concerning
culture; he also delighted in showing that examples of "primitive mind"
produced as part of this argument were based on misunderstandings.
Consider the following example from Boas's classic, The Mind of Primitive
Man, which repeats evidence used by Spencer to make some generalizations
about properties of primitive mind:
In his description of the natives of the west coast of Vancouver Island,
Sproat says, "The native mind, to an educated man, seems generally to be
asleep....On his attention being fully aroused, he often shows much
quickness in reply and ingenuity in argument. But a short conversation
wearies him, particularly if questions are asked that require efforts of
thought or memory on his part. The mind of the savage then appears to rock
to and fro out of mere weakness.” (Boas, 1911, p. 111)
Spencer's text goes on to cite a number of similar anecdotes corroborating
this point. But Boas produces an anecdote of his own.
I happen to know through personal contact the tribes mentioned by Sproat.
The questions put by the traveller seem mostly trifling to the Indian, and
he naturally soon tires of a conversation carried on in a foreign language,
and one in which he finds nothing to interest him. As a matter of fact, the
interest of these natives can easily be raised to a high pitch, and I have
often been the one who was wearied out first. Neither does the management
of their intricate system of exchange prove mental inertness in matters
which concern them. Without mnemonic aids to speak of, they plan the
systematic distribution of their property in such a manner as to increase
their wealth and social position. These plans require great foresight and
constant application. (Boas, 1911, p. 128)
Thus, Boas tells us that the entire scheme was wrong. Cultures cannot be
ranked using evolutionary age as a basis for comparison, and "mind" cannot
be seen as rank in developmental age. (Boas also demonstrates the total
hopelessness of deducing cultural differences from any differences, real or
imagined, in genetic makeup.)
Finally, and very importantly, Boas was a leader in a subtle, but essential
change in anthropological thinking about the concept of culture itself.
Educated in Germany, Boas had begun his career imbued with the romantic
concept of "Kultur," the expression of the highest attainments of human
experience, as expressed in the arts, music, literature, and science. This
is the conception of culture that allowed Tylor to talk about "the
conditions of culture among various societies." Tylor, like Boas as a young
man, conceived of culture as something groups and individuals had more or
less of. It was a singular noun: one talked of higher or lower culture,
not more or fewer cultures. By the same route that led him to deny the
basis for ranking cultures in terms of a hypothetical, evolutionary
sequence, Boas arrived at the idea that different societies create different
"designs for living," each representing a uniquely adapted fit between their
past and their present circumstances in the world. This point of view is
central to contemporary anthropology, and it clearly has to be taken into
account if we want to rank the intellectual achievements (levels of mental
development) of people growing up with different cultural experiences. It
renders simple more/less comparisons of cultures difficult and restricted,
with parallel effects on our inferences about mind.
Enter Psychology
The birth of psychology is usually dated back to 1879, when Wilhelm Wundt
officially opened an experimental laboratory in Leipzig. The exact date is
not important, because several laboratories opened almost simultaneously in
different industrialized countries. But the reasons for these laboratory
openings are important for understanding the problems of understanding the
relation between culture and intelligence.
Boas's critique of developmental theories, whether of mind or culture,
produced controversy in both domains of inquiry. Boas earned the enmity of
anthropologists who believed his criticisms of their general theories
unjust; they sought to rescue the more general theories, criticizing Boas
and his students for "historical particularism" (Harris, 1968).
Psychologists were people who took up the other half of the equation, the
problem of specifying mental mechanisms.
The major difficulty facing psychologists was to devise methods for
specifying pretty exactly what happens when an individual when some sort of
"thinking" is going on. Competing claims were evaluated by constructing
settings to control as exactly as possible the kinds of events a person
experienced and to record the kinds of responses these experiences evoked.
Since the presumed processes were not observable (they were, as we say,
"psychological"), psychologists spent a great deal of time and ingenuity
devising ways to pin down what these nonobservable processes might be.
The rapidly growing ability to control electricity and to build precision
machinery was exploited to the fullest; the early psychology laboratories
were marvels of inventions. Their instruments allowed psychologists to
present people carefully controlled lights and tones for carefully
controlled intervals and to measure precisely the time it took to respond.
In their search for ways to make mind observable, they used
electrophysiological devices to record internal, organic functioning. The
discipline of "psychophysics" advanced appreciably in its quest to relate
psychological phenomena of an elementary order (discriminating tones,
judging hues). There were even hopes of uncovering a "cognitive algebra" by
carefully comparing reaction times to stimuli of various complexities
arranged to reveal steps in the thought process.
The activities of psychologists and anthropologists soon contrasted very
dramatically. Psychologist brought people into the laboratory where
behavior could be constrained, events controlled, and mind made visible.
Whereas the anthropologists continued to concentrate on gathering data that
would permit them firm statements about historical relations between
cultures, scholars who came to identify themselves as psychologists
concentrated on resolving arguments about thinking such as those illustrated
in the passage quoted by Boas. Just as anthropology evolved careful field
techniques to disambiguate competing claims about "culture," psychologists
developed the laboratory experiment as a way to test competing claims about
"mind."
There occurred, in effect, a division of labor in the "humane sciences," a
division that was primarily a matter of scientific strategy in the
beginning: progress required some concentrated work on specialized
subtopics. The overall task remained the same for everyone: how do human
beings come to be the way they are?
Enter Testing
Despite an increasing gulf between scholars who called themselves
psychologists and those who called themselves anthropologists, it was not
long before those two areas of inquiry were brought together again. At the
end of the nineteenth century, Francis Galton, in England, set out to test
hypotheses about mental differences among people, using the newly devised
psychological techniques. His concern was not differences between people
growing up in different cultures. Rather, he studied people growing up in
different families. Significantly, his tests were theoretically motived; he
believed that speed of mental processing was central to intelligence so he
created tests to measure the rapid processing of elementary signals. Galton
succeeded in finding differences among Englishmen on such tests as simple
reaction time to a pure tone, but he did not succeed in relating these
"psychological test" differences to human characteristics of greater
interest to him such as scientific excellence or musical ability. Galton's
tests, based on an oversimplified model of the human mind and the highly
controlled procedures adopted from the laboratory appropriate to testing his
theory, were not taken up by society. However, in creating an early
precursor of existing IQ tests, Galton did begin the development of the
statistical techniques that would be necessary to show how test differences
correlate with interesting behavioral differences.
Galton did all of his work in England, but other Englishmen, including W. H.
R. Rivers (1901), traveled to the Torres Strait northeast of Australia, to
see if psychological tests could be used to settle disputes over cultural
differences in cognition. Rivers was in some senses an antique. He was
both anthropologist and psychologist, which meant that he considered both
the evidence of his tests and evidence provided by observation of the people
he went to study when he made statements about culture and thought. His
conclusions were consistent with Galton's data on individual differences;
natives differed from each other on such simple tasks as their ability to
detect a gap in a line, or their recognition of colors. But there were no
impressive differences between the natives of the Torres Strait and
Englishmen.
It would appear on the basis of this evidence that there are no cultural
differences in thinking, at least no differences consistent with the pattern
proposed by Tylor, Spencer, and others. However, it could be (and was)
argued, that the important ways in which cultural differences cause mental
differences were not even tested by Rivers and his associates. After all,
Galton had found no relation between responses to his psychological tests
and other presumed indicators of intelligence. Why would anyone, then,
expect cultural differences in elementary senory abilities since these
depended on a physiological mechanisms common to all people? What seemed
necessary were tests of higher psychological processes that could be used to
compare people from different cultures or different people in the same
culture.
This distinction between elementary and higher processes pinpoints a
weakness in the basic foundations of experimental psychology, a weakness
acknowledged by Wundt, its founder. It is impossible , Wundt believed, to
study higher psychological functions in experiments because such functions
always depend on prior, culturally organized, experience that differs from
one individual and society to another, and these differences undermine the
purity of the experiment. Wundt believed that scientists should use
ethnological evidence and folklore if they want to discover the properties
of the mind that get constructed on the basis of the elementary processes
that he studied in the laboratory.
Wundt's doubts about the experimental method were not accepted because they
put psychologists in a difficult bind. Psychology had been founded on the
principle that carefully controlled environments are required to make
legitimate statements about how the mind works. But a great many of the
questions about how the mind works that interested psychologists and
anthropologists alike clearly refer to "higher" psychological processes such
as logical reasoning and inference. When Wundt gave up on the idea that
such processes could be studied in the laboratory, he was, it seemed,
robbing psychology of most of its interesting subject matter. For
psychologists, the inability to study higher psychological processes in the
laboratory meant that they could not be studied at all.
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