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Who came up with the idea that intelligence could be distilled down into a single number (IQ), and why is such an obviously flawed concept still bandied about i
by photochemsyn 3y ago
Who came up with the idea that intelligence could be distilled down into a single number (IQ), and why is such an obviously flawed concept still bandied about in the modern era?
Nobody tries to do this with physical capabilities - assign a single score to someone's physical capabilities - because gains in one area, e.g. strength training with the goal of increasing muscle mass, are counterproductive in other areas, e.g. long-distance running. A generalized fitness score for an individual would tell you very little about their real-world capabilities.
In general, the whole idea of scoring IQ smells of eugenic theories of inherited intellectual capabilities, designed to promote concepts such as 'minority populations are genetic inferiors so educating them is a waste of effort'.
Fundamentally, mental abilities are just as trainable as physical abilities are, and if you want to discover individuals with unique mental and physical capabilities, you don't want to eliminate anyone from the pool of candidates based on non-correlating factors like race, sex, ethnicity, etc.
- tlb 3y agoIf you don't believe in aggregating different measures of intelligence, you can simply not aggregate the different categories of questions in IQ tests. For example, you can separately average just the shape rotation or language questions. One reason that's unpopular is that there's a gender difference: males (on average) score higher at shape rotation and women score higher at language. The standard IQ tests carefully balance questions to make the average IQ of men and women equal. If a school said "we think the only thing that matters for our program is shape rotation ability, so we'll just look at the score on those questions" they'd be introducing a big gender bias, which is Problematic.
- photochemsyn 3y agoI really doubt there's a gender-based difference in shape rotation that is based on inherited genetic factors and not on early childhood development and education. This is in sharp contrast to gender-based differences in strength development, i.e. I'm sure a cohort of male teenagers would develop more muscle mass than a female cohort when exposed to identical training regimens for several years, whereas I'd be very surprised if boys and girls exposed to identical mathematical training programs for several years displayed such clear gender bias in outcomes.
- tlb 3y agoThis topic has been studied extensively. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_cognition#Sex_differences_in_spatial_abilities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_cognition#S... for a summary.