A Nation of Morons

A Nation of Morons by Gould (1982)

Aim

To review Yerkes’ work on IQ testing

Design

A Review Study

Procedure

Gould reviewed Yerkes’ work. Yerkes conducted a mass IQ testing programme on the American army during the first world war. He claimed that his tests measured native intellectual ability, in other words, intelligence that was unaffected by culture or education.

After conducting his tests Yerkes concluded that people from Southern European countries and Africa were less intelligent than people from North America and Northern Europe.

Results

Gould reviewed Yerkes tests and claimed that the tests were invalid. Instead of measuring innate intelligence the tests were measuring cultural knowledge and were dependent on fluency of English. This explains why recent immigrants to America did not do very well in the tests.

He also identified problems with the way in which the tests had been administered