West Coast History of Science Society Meeting

University of California, San Francisco

April 11th - April 14th, 2002

[Program]

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How Intellectual "Intelligence"?  Defining and Testing Mentality in Early Twentieth Century Psychology

Richard T. von Mayrhauser
Visiting Scholar in the History of Science
University of California at Berkeley
 

Although the concepts "intelligence"  and "intellectual" bear  an obvious family resemblance, the social history of their relationship shows more likenesses than the intellectual history.  Charles Spearman advanced  "general intelligence," in part, to reenforce the traditional socio-intellectual hierarchy and justify the classical curriculum for training the British imperial elite. Within four years, American psychologists imported both the term "intellectual" and Alfred Binetís method of testing "intelligence" for social purposes: as part of the Progressive Era "search for order," William James called for a class consciousness of the college-educated to counter the materialism of new corporate and political elites;  Henry Goddard translated Binetís test as a means of defining (the limits of) learning ability in order to counter the immoral and criminal propensities (he presumed) in the "feeble-minded."   These psychologists shared the functionalist view that "intelligence" had evolved to help organisms adapt to their environments, as the ability to associate experiences.  This definition of intelligence, as "ability to learn," grew more monolithic with the advance of comparative psychological research and the advent of behaviorism.  Robert Yerkes was a psychobiologist who opposed the functionalist monolith, however, arguing instead that intelligence was a diverse structure that encompassed an active ability to create and cultivate insights as well as the mere ability to learn.  To this end, Yerkes designed early "multiple choice" tests that actually evaluated discernment, an intellectual kind of intelligence, as it were.  As the main critic of the kind of intelligence Binet and his American followers sought to measure, Yerkes attacked Binet-type testing until wartime opportunities and exigencies demanded accommodation.