![]() They pointed to the contribution of environment (such as speaking English as a second language) to test results. Many scientists reacted negatively to eugenicist claims linking abilities and moral character to racial or genetic ancestry. In the 1920s, some US states enacted eugenic laws, such as Virginia's 1924 Racial Integrity Act, which established the one-drop rule (of ' racial purity') as law. The results were widely publicized by a lobby of anti-immigration activists, including the conservationist and theorist of scientific racism Madison Grant, who considered the so-called Nordic race to be superior, but under threat because of immigration by "inferior breeds." In his influential work, A Study of American Intelligence, psychologist Carl Brigham used the results of the Army tests to argue for a stricter immigration policy, limiting immigration to countries considered to belong to the "Nordic race". Laughlin, and Princeton professor Carl Brigham wrote that people from southern and eastern Europe were less intelligent than native-born Americans or immigrants from the Nordic countries, and that black Americans were less intelligent than white Americans. Based on the Army's data, prominent psychologists and eugenicists such as Henry H. The US Army used a different set of tests developed by Robert Yerkes to evaluate draftees for World War I. In 1916 Terman wrote that Mexican-Americans, African-Americans, and Native Americans have a mental "dullness seems to be racial, or at least inherent in the family stocks from which they come." Binet's test was translated into English and revised in 1916 by Lewis Terman (who introduced IQ scoring for the test results) and published under the name Stanford–Binet Intelligence Scales. Binet warned that results from his test should not be assumed to measure innate intelligence or used to label individuals permanently. The first practical intelligence test was developed between 19 by Alfred Binet in France for school placement of children. In recent decades, as understanding of human genetics has advanced, claims of inherent differences in intelligence between races have been broadly rejected by scientists on both theoretical and empirical grounds.Īlfred Binet (1857–1911), inventor of the first intelligence test Early IQ testing Later observations of phenomena such as the Flynn effect and disparities in access to prenatal care also highlighted ways in which environmental factors affect group IQ differences. However, other studies soon appeared, contesting these conclusions and arguing instead that the Army tests had not adequately controlled for environmental factors, such as socioeconomic and educational inequality between black people and white people. In turn, they used such beliefs to justify policies of racial segregation. In the 1920s, groups of eugenics lobbyists argued that these results demonstrated that African Americans and certain immigrant groups were of inferior intellect to Anglo-Saxon white people, and that this was due to innate biological differences. The first tests showing differences in IQ scores between different population groups in the United States were the tests of United States Army recruits in World War I. Pseudoscientific claims of inherent differences in intelligence between races have played a central role in the history of scientific racism. ![]() ![]() Today, the scientific consensus is that genetics does not explain differences in IQ test performance between groups, and that observed differences are environmental in origin. The validity of IQ testing as a metric for human intelligence is itself disputed. ![]() Further complicating the issue, modern science has shown race to be a social construct rather than a biological reality, and intelligence has no undisputed definition. With the inception of IQ testing in the early 20th century, differences in average test performance between racial groups were observed, though these differences have fluctuated and in many cases steadily decreased over time. Discussions of race and intelligence – specifically, claims of differences in intelligence along racial lines – have appeared in both popular science and academic research since the modern concept of race was first introduced.
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