What is intelligence? Do we all have it? How do we know how intelligent we are? Many have tried to answers these questions with complete accuracy, but to this day we cannot be completely sure whether intelligence testing is a strong indicator of our actual level of intelligence. The theory of intelligence has been around since Ancient Greece, but amazingly it was not until the late nineteenth century that intelligence became the focus of formal research. Intelligence and intelligence testing to this day remain two of the most controversial and criticised topics in the field of psychology. The introduction of intelligence testing into the army’s recruitment procedures caused the limitations and flaws of intelligence testing to be revealed to …show more content…
Yerkes argued that performance on the tests unveiled a clear social hierarchy among social groups, like the rich being more intelligent than the poor and while people being more intelligent than African Americans. This theory was known as the eugenics movement which was a movement that believed that intelligence was innate and unchangeable. The eugenicists also advocated the advancement of reproduction of people thought to be ‘superior’, while wanting to limit the reproduction of the ‘inferior’. The principles of eugenics were especially evident in both Yerkes conclusions as he allowed political bigotry and unwarranted convictions to drive how the scientific evidence was interpreted. Yerkes’s findings about the apparent ‘difference’ in intelligence among groups in society were consumed by the political agenda and prejudices that were reflected by the eugenics movement at the time.
In drawing his conclusions, Yerkes decided to ignore more logical and persuasive interpretations of the evidence. Instead, Yerkes used the results of his study to give an unjustified aura of the credibility of scientific research to the racist, anti-immigrant expression that was extensively advocated during this time. This was the major limitation and flaw of his research, which had the greatest public impact. The result of the army testing programme was one of failure and has been widely criticised for the manner of which the tests were created and how the results of the tests were