Controversy of Intelligence: Crash Course Psychology #23

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So, how many different kinds of intelligence are there? And what is the G-Factor? Eugenics? Have you ever taken an IQ Test? All of these things play into the fascinating and sometimes icky history of Intelligence Testing. In this episode of Crash Course Psychology, Hank talks us through some of the important aspects of that history... as well as Nazis. Hey, I said some of it was icky.

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Table of Contents

Defining Intelligence 00:00:00
Types of Intelligence 01:22:09
G-Factor 01:37:05
Sherlock Holmes 04:44:12
Intelligence Testing 02:26:23
IQ Scores 08:00:21
Eugenics 07:47:05
Intelligence Controversy 09:05:17

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Closed Caption:

Smarty pants, egg head, brainiac. You've heard
terms like these before, maybe you've even
been on the receiving end of one of them.
But actually, defining intelligence is a lot
trickier than just coming up with new names
for smart people.
I mean, intelligence isn't like height or
weight; you can't just toss them on a scale
and give it an exact measurement. It has different
meanings for different cultures and ages and
skill sets.
So what is intelligence? It's a question that
doesn't give us a lot of answers, but it does
open a bunch of other equally important and
interesting questions.
Like, what influences it? And how can it be
assessed?
Is it a single, general ability, or does it
cover a range of aptitudes and skills and
talents?
How do things like creativity and innovation
factor in? Or genetics or environment, or
education?
And what about emotional intelligence?
Most agree that it's best to think of intelligence
not of a concrete thing so much as a concept,
the ability to learn from experience, solve
problems, and use knowledge to adapt to new
experiences.
We've often used intelligence tests, to assess
and compare mental aptitude, but these tests
have a long, complex and dark history. I mean
there are Nazis involved so, yeah.
So as you'll see, there are reasons that intelligence
is one of the most hotly debated subjects
in psychology. It's complicated and controversial.
[Intro]
What if I'm the world's greatest Rubik's cube
solver but a terrible speller? Or a truly
gifted artist who's barely mastered long division?
Could anyone say I was intelligent or not
based on those different aptitudes, or would
it be more accurate to measure my brainpower
on several different scales?
Around the turn of the twentieth century,
British psychologist Charles Spearman suggested
that yes, we do have one comprehensive general
intelligence that underlies all of specific
mental abilities. He called it the G-Factor.
Spearman conceded that while people may have
special talents like basket weaving or saxophone
solos or doing crossword puzzles, those things
still fell under "G". And he helped develop
a statistical procedure called factor analysis
to try to determine how certain clusters of
skills might correlate with another one. Like,
say someone who tests well in spatial skills
might be good with numbers.
We might then refer to that cluster of skills,
that factor, as spatial-numeric reasoning.
But to Spearman, the G-factor was something
of an uber-factor connected to all intelligent
behavior from architecture to healing to survival
skills, and it's why people who do well on
one kind of cognitive test tend to do well
on others. But as you can imagine, reducing
intelligence to a single numerical test score
was and is problematic.
L.L. Thurstone, an American pioneer of psychometrics
and one of Spearman's first challengers, was
not into ranking people on a single scale.
Thurstone administered 56 different tests
to his subjects then used them to identify
seven clusters of mental abilities. By this
system, you might turn out to be great at
like verbal comprehension but less stellar
at something like numerical ability.
Sounds fair. But when researchers followed
up on his findings, they actually did see
that high scores in one aptitude usually meant
good scores in the others, essentially backing
up some evidence for some kind of G-factor.
Even though their ideas did not often align,
Spearman and Thurstone together paved the
way for more contemporary theories on intelligence.
For example, American psychologist Howard
Gardner views intelligence as multiple abilities
that come in different forms. He references
instances of brain damage where one ability
may be destroyed while others stay perfectly
intact. Savants usually have some limited
metal abilities but one exceptional ability
when it comes to like, computing figures or
memorizing the complete works of Shakespeare.
To Gardner, this suggests that we have multiple
intelligences beyond the G-factor. In fact,
he believes that we have eight intelligences,
ranging from our skills with numbers and words
to our ability to understand physical space
and the natural world. American psychologist
Robert Sternberg tends to agree with Gardner,
though he boils them down into three intelligences:
analytical, or problem-solving intelligence,
creative intelligence, or the ability to adapt
to new situations, and practical intelligence
for everyday tasks.
Both of these models seem reasonable, too,
and Gardner and Sternberg's work has helped
teachers appreciate students' variety of talents.
But research has suggested that even these
different ways to be smart are also linked
by some underlying general intelligence factor.
So what about other less tangible forms of
intelligence, like creativity, our ability
to produce ideas that are both novel and valuable?
How can a test that demands one correct answer
account for more creative solutions, so-called
"divergent thinking".
Well, traditional intelligence tests can't,
and so far, while we do have some tests that
look at creative potential, we don't have
a standardized system for quantifying creativity.
But Sternberg and his colleagues have identified
five main components of creativity, which
are useful for framing our understanding of
what creative intelligence is and how it works.
If you go through the list, you know who I
think is really great at almost all of them?
Sherlock Holmes. Hear me out.
First we've got expertise, or a well-developed
base of knowledge. This just means knowing
a lot about a lot. Whether it's arcane poisons,
jellyfish behavior, or how to recognize a
secret passage behind a book shelf, expertise
provides the mind with all sorts of data to
work with and combine in new ways.
Obviously Sherlock has incredible imaginative
thinking skills, too, which provide him with
the ability to see things in new ways, recognize
patterns and make connections. He loves nothing
more than rehashing these breadcrumb trails
for the dopey constables at the end of the
case.
Sternberg also thought a venturesome personality
contributes to creativity. By hanging around
opium dens and chasing thugs and generally
courting danger, Sherlock routinely seeks
new experiences, tolerates risk, and perseveres
in overcoming obstacles.
And everyone knows he's driven by intrinsic
motivation. I mean, he wants to help the widow
discover the thief and everything, but really,
Sherlock is driven by his own interest and
sense of challenge. He gets pleasure from
the work itself.
And finally, Sherlock benefits from a creative
environment which sparks, supports, and refines
his ideas. For so affectionately maintaining
this environment on Sherlock's behalf, we
largely have Dr. Watson to thank.
Sherlock was obviously an academic and creative
genius, but he was pretty weak in another
form of intelligence: the emotional kind.
Emotional intelligence, defined in 1997 by
psychologist Peter Salovey and John Mayer
-- no, not, not that one-- is the ability
to perceive, understand, manage, and use emotions.
I don't know about you, but I know plenty
of smart people who have a hard time processing
social information. The most brilliant mathematician
may struggle to communicate with colleagues,
neighbors, or staff at the local deli. Likewise,
Sherlock often annoys, offends, or even baffles
those around him.
Perceiving emotions means being able to recognize
them in faces, and even in music, film, and
stories. Understanding emotions relates to
being able to predict them and how they might
change. And managing emotions comes down to
knowing how to appropriately express yourself
in various situations. And finally, emotional
intelligence also means using emotions to
enable adaptive or creative thinking; like
knowing how to manage conflict or comfort
a grieving friend or work well with others.
Much like creative intelligence, emotional
intelligence can be measured to some degree
through testing, but there's no standardized
way to, like, assign a numerical value. So
if we can't perfectly quantify things like
creativity or emotional smarts, how did we
come up with a way to measure intelligence?
Well, as I mentioned earlier, it's a sordid
story. The first attempts to do it in the
western world began with English scientist
Francis Galton in the 1800s. Taking a page
from his famous cousin Charles Darwin's theories
on natural selection, Galton wondered how
that premise might extend to humans' natural
ability when it came to intelligence. He suggested
that our smarts have a lot to do with heredity,
so if we encouraged smart people to breed
with each other, we could essentially create
a master race of geniuses.
If that sounds a little sketchy, it's because
it was, like, really, really sketchy!! This
study of how to selectively and supposedly
improve the human population, especially by
encouraging breeding in some people and discouraging
it in others, is called "eugenics". A term
Galton himself coined, and I'll get back to,
in a minute. But around the turn of the twentieth
century when eugenics was taking off, the
French government mandated that all children
must attend school. Many of these kids had
never been in a classroom and teachers wanted
to figure out how they could identify kids
who needed extra help. Enter Alfred Binet
and Theodore Simon, two French psychologists
who were commissioned to develop a test to
measure a child's so-called mental age.
The concept of a kid's mental age is essentially
the level of performance associated with a
certain chronological age. So if six year
old Bruno tests as well as the average six
year old, he'd have a mental age of six.
Binet believed that his tests could measure
a child's current mental abilities, but that
intelligence wasn't a fixed, inborn thing.
He believed a person's capabilities could
be raised with proper attention, self-discipline
and practice. In other words, he was no eugenicist.
He was hoping that his tests would improve
children's education by identifying those
who needed extra attention. But Binet also
feared that these tests would, in the wrong
hands, be used to do just the opposite: labeling
children as "lost causes", limiting their
opportunities. And wow, was he on to something
because that is pretty much exactly what happened.
German psychologist William Stern used revisions
of Binet and Simon's work to create the famous
intelligence quotient, or IQ measurement.
At the time, your IQ was simply your mental
age, divided by your chronological age, multiplied
by a hundred. So for example Bruno is six,
and so is his mental age, so his IQ ranks
at a hundred, but his little sister Betty
is a four year-old with a mental age of five,
so her IQ would be 125.
That formula works pretty well for measuring
kids, but it falls apart when it comes to
adults who don't hit measurable developmental
steps like kids do. I mean there's no real
difference between a mental age of 34 and
35.
But Stanford professor Lewis Terman started
promoting the widespread use of intelligence
tests in the early 1900s, and with his help
the US government began the world's first
massive ministration of intelligence tests,
when it assessed World War I army recruits
and immigrants fresh off the boat.
Unlike Binet, Terman did use these numerical
findings as a kind of label, and he thought
his tests could, as he put it: "ultimately
result in curtailing the reproduction of feeble-mindedness".
This kind of testing played right into eugenicists'
sensibilities, and soon the eugenics movement
in the US had a pretty good fanclub, raising
money from the Carnegie's and Rockafeller's
and with proponents working at Harvard and
Columbia and Cornell.
In the first half of the 21st century, intelligence
tests were used to enforce the sterilization
of about 60,000 people, around a third of
whom were in California. Most were poor white
women, often unwed mothers or prostitutes.
Other eugenics efforts persisted later into
the century, and there is evidence of poor
African American, Native American, or Latina
women being forcibly or covertly sterilized
in large numbers as recently as the 1970s.
But do you know who really loved their eugenics?
The Nazis.
Hitler and his cronies took the idea of intelligence
testing to even darker conclusions. The Nazis
were all about selecting against so-called
"feeble-mindedness" and other undesirable
traits as they sought to strengthen what they
saw as their Aryan nation. They sterilized
or simply executed hundreds of thousands of
victims based of their answers to IQ test
questions that were really more abut adhering
to social norms than measuring actual intelligence.
Questions like: "Who was Bismarck?" and "What
does Christmas signify?" So you can see how
this terrifying history still makes some people
leery of how such tests are administered,
interpreted, and weighted.
Today we understand that intelligence, as
defined by all the people we've talked about
here, does appear to be a real and measurable
phenomenon. But no one can say that they've
disentangled all of the would-be genetic,
environmental, educational, and socio-economic
components of it. In the end, it's best to
think of intelligence as something about which
we've still got a lot to learn. And next week,
we'll talk about how we test intelligence
today and the problems we still face in doing
it.
Today, your intelligent mind learned about
the history of how we think about and define
different types of intelligence, what the
G-factor is, and how Sherlock Holmes is incredibly
intelligent but emotionally unintelligent.
You also learned about the history and methods
of intelligence testing, IQ scores, and how
eugenics turned to the dark side, and has
since made even talking about intelligence
kind of controversial.
Thank you for watching, especially fto our
Subbable subscribers who make Crash Course
possible. To find out how you can become a
supporter, just go to Subbable.com/crashcourse.
This episode was written by Kathleen Yale,
edited by Blake de Pastino, and our consultant
is Dr. Ranjit Bhagwat. Our director and editor
is Nicholas Jenkins, the script supervisor
is Michael Aranda, who is also our sound designer,
and the graphics team is Thought Cafe.