Illuminating detailed methods for assessing bias in commonly used I.Q., aptitude, and achievement tests, Jensen argues that standardized tests are not biased against Englishspeaking minority groups and describes the uses of such tests in education and employment.
Emotional intelligence is an important trait for success at work. IQ tests are biased against minorities. Every child is gifted. Preschool makes children smarter. Western understandings of intelligence are inappropriate for other cultures. These are some of the statements about intelligence that are common in the media and in popular culture. But none of them are true. In the Know is a tour of the most common incorrect beliefs about intelligence and IQ. Written in a fantastically engaging way, each chapter is dedicated to correcting a misconception and explains the real science behind intelligence. Controversies related to IQ will wither away in the face of the facts, leaving readers with a clear understanding about the truth of intelligence.
In a series of provocative conversations with Skeptic magazine Ssenior editor Frank Miele, renowned University of California-Berkeley psychologist Arthur R. Jensen details the evolution of his thoughts on the nature of intelligence, tracing an intellectual odyssey that leads from the programs of the Great Society to the Bell Curve Wars and beyond. Miele cross-examines Jensen's views on general intelligence (the g factor), racial differences in IQ, cultural bias in IQ tests, and whether differences in IQ are due primarily to heredity or to remediable factors such as poverty and discrimination. With characteristic frankness, Jensen also presents his view of the proper role of scientific facts in establishing public policy, such as Affirmative Action.“Jensenism,” the assertion that heredity plays an undeniably greater role than environmental factors in racial (and other) IQ differences, has entered the dictionary and also made Jensen a bitterly controversial figure. Nevertheless, Intelligence, Race, and Genetics carefully underscores the dedicated lifetime of scrupulously scientific research that supports Jensen's conclusions.
Jensen is a controversial figure, largely for his conclusions based on his and other research regarding the causes of race based differences in intelligence and in this book he develops more fully the argument he formulated in his controversial Harvard Education Review article 'How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement?'. In a wide-ranging survey of the evidence he argues that measured IQ reveals a strong hereditary component and he argues that the system of education which assumes an almost wholly environmentalist view of the causes of group differences capitalizes on a relatively narrow category of human abilities. Since its original publication the controversy surrounding Jensen's ideas has continued as successive generations of psychologists, scientists and policy-makers have grappled with the same issues.
However, Jensen does not draw back from its most controversial conclusions - that the average differences in IQ and other abilities found between sexes and racial groups have a substantial hereditary component, and that these differences have important societal consequences.
This book celebrates two triumphs in modern psychology: the successful development and application of a solid measure of general intelligence; and the personal courage and skills of the man who made this possible - Arthur R. Jensen from Berkeley University. The volume traces the history of intelligence from the early 19th century approaches, to the most recent analyses of the hierarchical structure of cognitive abilities, and documents the transition from a hopelessly confused concept of intelligence to the development of an objective measure of psychometric g. The contributions illustrate the impressive power g has with respect to predicting educational achievement, getting an attractive job, or social stratification. The book is divided into six parts as follows: Part I presents the most recent higher-stream analysis of cognitive abilities, Part II deals with biological aspects of g, such as research on brain imaging, glucose uptake, working memory, reaction time, inspection time, and other biological correlates, and concludes with the latest findings in g-related molecular genetics. Part III addresses demographic aspects of g, such as geographic-, race-, and sex-differences, and introduces differential psychological aspects as well. Part IV concentrates on the g nexus, and relates such highly diverse topics as sociology, genius, retardation, training, education, jobs, and crime to g. Part V contains chapters critical of research on g and its genetic relationship, and also presents a rejoinder. Part VI looks at one of the greatest contemporary psychologists, Professor Emeritus Arthur R. Jensen as teacher and mentor.
This book is for those of the general public who want to learn more about mental testing and its controversies. It presupposes no background in the specialized terminologies or mathematical underpinnings of psychometrics, statistics, or quantitative genetics that make most of the serious literature on the "IQ controversy" so inaccessible to the educated public who are not professionals in the field of mental measurement.
The cultural-test-bias hypothesis is one of the most important scien tific questions facing psychology today. Briefly, the cultural-test-bias hypothesis contends that all observed group differences in mental test scores are due to a built-in cultural bias of the tests themselves; that is, group score differences are an artifact of current psychomet ric methodology. If the cultural-test-bias hypothesis is ultimately shown to be correct, then the 100 years or so of psychological research on human differences (or differential psychology, the sci entific discipline underlying all applied areas of human psychology including clinical, counseling, school, and industrial psychology) must be reexamined and perhaps dismissed as confounded, contam inated, or otherwise artifactual. In order to continue its existence as a scientific discipline, psychology must confront the cultural-test-bias hypothesis from the solid foundations of data and theory and must not allow the resolution of this issue to occur solely within (and to be determined by) the political Zeitgeist of the times or any singular work, no matter how comprehensive. In his recent volume Bias in Mental Testing (New York: Free Press, 1980), Arthur Jensen provided a thorough review of most of the empirical research relevant to the evaluation of cultural bias in psychological and educational tests that was available at the time that his book was prepared. Nevertheless, Jensen presented only one per spective on those issues in a volume intended not only for the sci entific community but for intelligent laypeople as well.
Among particular issues discussed in this book are the problems of the cultural disadvantaged, the problems of devising psychological tests which are not biased towards any particular culture, the problems of minority groups of children in education and the relationship between heritability and teachability.