History of the race and intelligence controversy

Alfred Binet (1857-1911), inventor of the first intelligence test

The history of the race and intelligence controversy concerns the historical development of a debate, primarily in the United States, concerning possible explanations of group differences in intelligence. Although it has never been disputed that there are systematic differences between average scores in IQ tests of different population groups, sometimes called "racial IQ gaps", there has been no agreement on whether this is mainly due to environmental and cultural factors, or whether some inherent hereditarian factor is at play, related to genetics.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, group differences in intelligence were assumed to be due to race and, apart from intelligence tests, research relied on measurements such as brain size or reaction times. By the mid-1930s most psychologists had adopted the view that environmental and cultural factors played a dominant role. In 1969 the educational psychologist Arthur Jensen published a long article reviving the older hereditarian point of view, with the suggestion that eugenics was more likely to increase the average intelligence in the US than remedial education for blacks. His work, publicized by the Nobel laureate William Shockley, sparked controversy amongst the academic community and even led to student unrest. A similar debate amongst academics followed the publication in 1994 of The Bell Curve, a book by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray which argued in favor of the hereditarian viewpoint. It not only provoked the publication of several interdisciplinary books on the environmental point of view, some in popular science, but also led to a public statement from the American Psychological Association acknowledging a gap between average IQ scores of whites and blacks as well as the absence of any adequate explanation of it, either environmental or genetic. The hereditarian line of research continues to be pursued by a group of researchers, mostly psychologists, some of whom are supported by the Pioneer Fund.

Early history

Lithograph of a North American skull from Samuel Morton's Crania Americana, 1839

Francis Galton

File:Terman.jpg

Lewis Terman

The idea that there are differences in the brain structures/sizes of different racial groups, and that these differences explain varying rates of intelligence, was widely held and studied during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Through the publication of his book Hereditary Genius in 1869, polymath Francis Galton spurred interest in the study of mental abilities, particularly as they relate to heredity and eugenics.

In 1895, R. Meade Bache of the University of Pennsylvania published an article in Psychological Review claiming that reaction time increases with evolution. Bache supported this claim with data demonstrating increased reaction times among White Americans when compared with those of Native Americans and African Americans, with Native Americans having the shortest reaction time. He hypothesized that the long reaction time of White Americans was to be explained by their possessing more contemplative brains which did not function well on tasks requiring automatic responses. This was one of the first examples of modern scientific racism, in which science was used to bolster beliefs in the superiority of a particular race.

In 1912 the Columbia psychology graduate Frank Bruner reviewed the scientific literature on auditory perception in black and white subjects in Psychological Bulletin, characterizing, "the mental qualities of the Negro as: lacking in filial affection, strong migratory instincts and tendencies; little sense of veneration, integrity or honor; shiftless, indolent, untidy, improvident, extravagant, lazy, untruthful, lacking in persistence and initiative and unwilling to work continuously at details. Indeed, experience with the Negro in classrooms indicates that it is impossible to get the child to do anything with continued accuracy, and similarly in industrial pursuits, the Negro shows a woeful lack of power of sustained activity and constructive conduct."

In 1916 George O. Ferguson conducted research in his Columbia Ph.D. thesis on "The psychology of the Negro", finding them poor in abstract thought, but good in physical responses, recommending how this should be reflected in education. In the same year Lewis Terman, in the manual accompanying the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Test, referred to the higher frequency of morons among non-white American racial groups stating that further research into race difference on intelligence should be conducted and that the "enormously significant racial differences in general intelligence" could not be remedied by education.

In the 1920's psychologists started questioning underlying assumptions of racial differences in intelligence; although not discounting them, the possibility was considered that they were on a smaller scale than previously supposed and also due to factors other than heredity. In 1924 Floyd Allport wrote in his book "Social Psychology" that the French sociologist Gustave Le Bon was incorrect in asserting "a gap between inferior and superior species" and pointed to "social inheritance" and "environmental factors" as factors that accounted for differences. Nevertheless he conceded that "the intelligence of the white race is of a more versatile and complex order than that of the black race. It is probably superior to that of the red or yellow races."

In 1929 Robert Woodworth in his textbook "Psychology: a study of mental life" made no claims about innate differences in intelligence between races, pointing instead to environmental and cultural factors. He considered it advisable to "suspend judgment and keep our eyes open from year to year for fresh and more conclusive evidence that will probably be discovered".

In 1935 Otto Klineberg wrote two books "Negro Intelligence and Selective Migration" and "Race Differences", dismissing claims that African Americans in the northern states were more intelligent than those in the south. He concluded that there was no scientific proof of racial differences in intelligence and that this should not therefore be used as a justification for policies in education or employment. In the 1940s many psychologists, particularly social psychologists, conceded that environmental and cultural factors, as well as discrimination and prejudice, provided a more probable explanation of disparities in intelligence. According to Samelson (1978), this change in attitude had become widespread by then, with very few studies in race differences in intelligence, a change brought out by an increase in the number of psychologists not from a "lily-white ... Anglo-Saxon" background but from Jewish backgrounds. Other factors that influenced American psychologists were the economic changes brought about by the depression and the reluctance of psychologists to risk being associated with the Nazi claims of a master race.

1960-1980

William Shockley

Arthur Jensen

Hans Eysenck

File:Stephen Jay Gould by Kathy Chapman.png

Stephen J. Gould

In 1965 William Shockley, Nobel laureate in physics and professor at Stanford University, made a public statement at the Nobel conference on "Genetics and the Future of Man" about the problems of "genetic deterioration" in humans caused by "evolution in reverse", in contrast to the capacity for social management and organization of early American settlers. Speaking of the "genetic enslavement" of African Americans, owing to an abnormally high birth rate, Shockley discouraged improved education as a remedy, suggesting instead sterilization and birth control. In the following ten years he continued to argue in favor of this position, claiming it was not based on prejudice but "on sound statistics". Shockley's outspoken public statements and lobbying brought him into contact with those running the Pioneer Fund who subsequently provided financial support though the intermediary Carleton Putnam for his extensive lobbying activities in this area, reported widely in the press. The Pioneer Fund had been set up by W.P. Draper in 1937 with one of its two charitable purposes being to provide aid for "study and research into the problems of heredity and eugenics in the human race ... and ... into the problems of race betterment with special reference to the people of the United States".

According to Tucker (2002), the most significant of Shockley's lobbying campaigns involved the educational psychologist, Arthur Jensen, from the University of California, Berkeley. Although earlier in his career Jensen had favored environmental rather than genetic factors as the explanation of race differences in intelligence, he had changed his mind following extended discussions with Shockkley during the year 1966-1967 spent at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in Stanford.

According to this autobiographical writings, during his year at the Center, Jensen "thought (and wrote) that it was unnecessary to invoke genetic causes for the observed racial differences in IQ, which I thought could be explained in terms of cultural bias in the tests and poor environmental opportunities for acquiring the particular knowledge and skills called for by conventional tests". During that time, an invited presentation titled "How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement?" came to the attention of the editors of the Harvard Educational Review, who asked Jensen to expand the presentation into a more comprehensive article for the Spring 1969 issue. They specifically requested his view on the heritability of race differences, which he had not previously published. The final paper was 125-pages, and according to Jensen covered four topics:

1. "experimental attempts to raise the IQ of children at risk for low IQ and poor scholastic performance by various psychological and educational manipulations had yielded little, if any, lasting gains in IQ or scholastic achievement"
2. "individual differences in IQ have a high heritability (.70-.80, corrected for attenuation), but environment also plays an important part"
3. "most of the exclusively cultural- environment explanations for racial differences in IQ and scholastic achievement were inconsistent and inadequate, so genetic as well as environmental factors should be considered"
4. "certain abilities, particularly rote-learning and memory (i.e.. Level I ability) have only a weak relationship to IQ. which suggests that these Level I abilities might be used to compensate to some extent for low IQ (i.e.. Level II ability) and thereby make school instruction more beneficial for many children, regardless of their racial or social class background, who raw below average in Level II but are average or above in Level I."

According to Jensen, the 5% of the article that covered race difference in IQ, in which he concluded that "The preponderance of the evidence is, in my opinion, less consistent with a strictly environmental hypothesis than with a genetic hypothesis, which, of course, does not exclude the influence of environment or its interaction with genetic factors", aroused much attention because he had violated "the greatest taboo in the latter half of the twentieth century". Jensen says this one aspect was blow up by the mass media, including coverage in TIME, Newsweek, LIFE, U.S. News & World Report, the New York Times Magazine, radio and TV. At Berkeley, where he was a professor, there was an "uproar" that lased for weeks, "with bands of demonstrators disrupting my classes, slashing all the tires on my car, and painting swastikas on my office door". Jensen's mail was screened for explosives and he was placed under police protection. His research at Berkeley was terminated with one school official explaining that "The Berkeley schools are a political unit, not a research institute."

According to Tucker, the 1969 article argues that that racial minorities, because of genetic limitations in intelligence, should be taught, not through conceptual explanations, but instead by relying on their ability to associate rather than understand, i.e. learning by rote. They write that Jensen decried the "misguided and ineffective attempts to improve [the] lot" of blacks. Quoting Jensen: "Is there a danger that current welfare policies, unaided by eugenic foresight, could lead to the genetic enslavement of a substantial segment of our population?"

Shockley conducted a widespread publicity campaign for Jensen's article, supported by the Pioneer Fund. Jensen's views became widely known in many spheres. As a result there was renewed academic interest in the hereditarian viewpoint and in intelligence tests. Jensen's original article was widely circulated and often cited; the material was taught in university courses over a range of academic disciplines. In response to his critics, Jensen wrote a series of books on all aspects of psychometrics. There was also a widespread positive response from the popular press — with the New York Times Magazine dubbing the topic "Jensenism" — and amongst politicians and policy makers.

In 1971 Richard Herrnstein wrote a long article on intelligence tests in The Atlantic for a general readership. Undecided on the issues of race and intelligence, he discussed instead score differences between social classes. Like Jensen he took a firmly hereditarian point of view. He also commented that the policy of equal opportunity would result in making social classes more rigid, separated by biological differences, resulting in a downward trend in average intelligence that would conflict with the growing needs of a technological society.

Jensen and Herrnstein's articles were widely discussed. Hans Eysenck defended the hereditarian point of view and the use of intelligence tests in "Race, Intelligence and Education" (1971), a pamphlet presenting Jensenism to a popular audience, and "The Equality of Man" (1973). He was severely critical of environmentalists whose policies he blamed for many of the problems in society. In the first book he wrote that, "All the evidence to date suggests the strong and indeed overwhelming importance of genetic factors in producing the great variety of intellectual differences which [are] observed between certain racial groups", adding in the second, that "for anyone wishing to perpetuate class or caste differences, genetics is the real foe".

Although the main intention of the hereditarians had been to challenge the environmentalist establishment, they were unprepared for the level of reaction and censure in the scientific world. Militant student groups at Berkeley and Harvard conducted disruptive campaigns of harassment on Jensen and Herrnstein with charges of racism, despite Herrnstein's refusal to endorse Jensen's views on race and intelligence. Similar campaigns were waged in London against Eysenck and in Boston against Edward Wilson, the founding father of sociobiology, the discipline that explains human behavior through genetics. The attacks on Wilson were orchestrated by the Sociobiology Study Group, part of the radical organization Science for the People, formed of 35 scientists and students, including the Harvard biologists Stephen J. Gould and Richard Lewontin, who both became prominent critics of hereditarian research in race and intelligence.

This disruption was accompanied by a high level of commentaries, criticisms and denouncements from the academic community. Two issues of the Harvard Educational Review were devoted to critiques of Jensen's work by psychologists, biologists and educationalists. Broadly there were five criticisms:

• Inadequate understanding of population genetics. Richard Lewontin pointed out that heritability estimates depend on the specific group and their environment, i.e. that a distinction has to be drawn between heritability within groups and between groups. Many other scientists made the same point, including Stephen J. Gould, Walter Bodmer, Gerald Dworkin and Ned Block. Luigi Cavalli-Sforza and Walter Bodmer questioned Jensen's use of socio-economic status as a method of controlling environment. Jensen's inference of racial IQ differences from class differences was criticized by Sandra Scarr-Salatapek.
• Overestimation of the hereditary component of IQ scores. Mary Jo Bane and Christopher Jencks suggested that an estimate of 45% was more realistic than Jensen's figure of 80%. Leon Kamin queried Jensen's reliance on the twin studies of Cyril Burt. Critics were in agreement that the expression of a gene depended strongly on environment and hence so would the development of intelligence.
• Unjustified assumption that IQ scores are a good measure of intelligence. Multiple problems were brought up by critics, including the difficulty in defining intelligence, the form of the tests, acquired ability in doing tests, the variations in IQ during a lifetime and the difficulties in administering tests to minority or disadvantaged children.
• Unjustified sociological assumptions in relating IQ to occupation. Bane and Jencks queried correlating IQ with social status.
• Political criticism and insults from a broad spectrum of scientists. Many critics questioned Jensen's motives and whether his work was an appropriate use of public research funds. The Association of Black Psychologists asserted that this kind of use of IQ tests could result in "Black genocide".

1980-present

James Flynn

Richard Lynn

In the 1980s, the New Zealand psychologist James Flynn started a study of group differences in intelligence in their own terms. His research led him to the discovery of what is now called the Flynn effect: he observed empirically a gradual increase in average IQ scores over the years over all groups tested. His discovery was confirmed later by many other studies. Flynn concluded in 1987 that "IQ tests do not measure intelligence but rather a correlate with a weak causal link to intelligence"

In 1994 the debate on race and intelligence was reignited by the publication of the book The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray. The book was received positively by the media, with prominent coverage in Newsweek, Time, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. Although only two chapters of the book were devoted to race differences in intelligence, treated from the same hereditarian standpoint as Jensen's 1969 paper, it nevertheless caused a similar furor in the academic community to Jensen's article. Many critics, including Stephen J. Gould and Leonard Kamin, pointed out flaws in the analysis and unwarranted simplifications. These criticisms were subsequently presented in books, most notably The Bell Curve Debate (1995), Inequality by Design: Cracking the Bell Curve Myth (1996) and an expanded edition of Gould's The Mismeasure of Man (1996). In response to the debate, the American Psychological Association set up a ten-person taskforce, chaired by Ulrich Neisser, to report on the book and its findings. In its report, published in February 1996, the committee made the following comments on race differences in intelligence:

African American IQ scores have long averaged about 15 points below those of Whites, with correspondingly lower scores on academic achievement tests. In recent years the achievement-test gap has narrowed appreciably. It is possible that the IQ-score differential is narrowing as well, but this has not been clearly established. The cause of that differential is not known; it is

apparently not due to any simple form of bias in the content or administration of the tests themselves. The Flynn effect shows that environmental factors can produce differences of at least this magnitude, but that effect is mysterious in its own right. Several culturally-based explanations of the Black/White IQ differential have been proposed; some are plausible, but so far none has been

conclusively supported. There is even less empirical support for a genetic interpretation. In short, no adequate explanation of the differential between the IQ means of Blacks and Whites is presently available.

From the 1980s onwards, the Pioneer Fund continued to fund hereditarian research on race and intelligence, in particular the two English-born psychologists Richard Lynn of the University of Ulster and J. Philippe Rushton of the University of Western Ontario, its president since 2002. Rushton returned to the cranial measurements of the nineteenth century, using brain size as an extra factor determining intelligence; in collaboration with Jensen, he most recently developed updated arguments for the genetic explanation of race differences in intelligence. Lynn, long time editor of and contributor to Mankind Quarterly and a prolific writer of books, has concentrated his research in race and intelligence on gathering and tabulating data about race differences in intelligence across the world. He has also made suggestions about its political implications, including the revival of older theories of eugenics, which he describes as "the truth that dares not speak its name".

References

• Bean, Robert Bennett (1906), "Some racial peculiarities of the Negro brain" (PDF), American Journal of Anatomy, 5: 353–432, doi:10.1002/aja.1000050402
• Benjamin, Ludy T. (2006), Brief History of Modern Psychology, Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 188–191, ISBN 140513206X
• Hothersall, David (2003), History of Psychology (4th ed.), McGraw-Hill, pp. 440–441, ISBN 0072849657
• Loehlin, John C.; Lindzey, Gardner; Spuhler, J.N. (1975), Race Differences in Intelligence, W H Freeman & Co, ISBN 0716707535 {{citation}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)
• Lynn, Richard (2001), The science of human diversity: a history of the Pioneer Fund, University Press of America, ISBN 076182040X
• Mackintosh, N.J. (1998), IQ and Human Intelligence, Oxford University Press, ISBN 019852367X
• Mall, F. P. (1909), "On several anatomical characters of the human brain, said to vary according to race and sex, with especial reference to the weight of the frontal lobe", American Journal of Anatomy, 9: 1–32
• Maltby, John; Day, Liz; Macaskill, Ann (2007), Personality, Individual Differences and Intelligence, Pearson Education, ISBN 0131297600
• Morton, Samuel George (1839), Crania Americana; or, A Comparative View of the Skulls of Various Aboriginal Nations of North and South America: To which is Prefixed An Essay on the Varieties of the Human Species, J. Dobson {{citation}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |1= and |2= (help); Unknown parameter |city= ignored (|location= suggested) (help)
• Neisser, Ulrich; et al. (1996), "Intelligence: Knowns and unknowns" (PDF), American Psychologist, 51: 77–101 {{citation}}: Explicit use of et al. in: |first= (help)
• Richards, Graham (1997), Race, racism, and psychology: towards a reflexive history, Routledge, ISBN 0415101417
• Richardson, Angélique (2003), Love and eugenics in the late nineteenth century: rational reproduction and the new woman, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0198187009
• Rushton, J. P.; Jensen, A. R. (2005), "Thirty years of research on race differences in cognitive ability" (PDF), Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 11: 235–294
• Samelson, Franz (1978), "From "race psychology" to "studies in prejudice": Some observations on the thematic reversal in social psychology", Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 14: 265-278
• Segerstråle, Ullica Christina Olofsdotter (2001), Defenders of the Truth: The Battle for Science in the Sociobiology Debate and Beyond, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0192862154
• Shurkin, Joel N. (2006), Broken Genius: The Rise and Fall of William Shockley, Creator of the Electronic Age, # Macmillan, ISBN 1403988153
• Tucker, William H. (2002), The Funding of Scientific Racism: Wickliffe Draper and the Pioneer Fund, University of Illinois Press, ISBN 0252027620
• Wooldridge, Adrian (1995), Measuring the Mind: Education and Psychology in England c.1860-c.1990, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0521395151

See also

• Race and intelligence
• Pioneer Fund
• The Bell Curve
• Henry Garrett