Intelligence and Personality Tests: Validity, Bias & Ethics

Defining Intelligence: Complexity and Controversy

The concept of intelligence — and the practice and practicality of testing for it — has been one of the more controversial areas of psychology and psychometrics since the first tests were developed and administered a century ago. Far from there being a consensus in the scientific community on exactly what constitutes intelligence, the characteristics that comprise it have instead been a matter of extreme and ongoing debate. Measuring intelligence in individuals has attracted an even greater share of disagreement and controversy. Even when researchers are able to agree on what aspects should be measured to develop an accurate picture of intelligence, the methods proposed and implemented for testing those areas have often been widely disputed. The controversy surrounding intelligence testing reached new heights in the era of cultural diversity, as it became clear that the standard intelligence tests in use for the better part of the twentieth century had an inherent bias in favor of white, Euro-centric thinking, to the detriment of other cultural and ethnic backgrounds.

Nonetheless, there are several standard working definitions of intelligence that, while not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, have still proven consistent and reliable enough to produce tests that measure intelligence with some accuracy. One widely used definition from the American Psychological Association includes the ability to understand complex thoughts, adapt to environments, learn from experience, and engage in various types of reasoning. This definition makes it clear that intelligence is not a simple phenomenon — not merely how "smart" someone is — but rather a wide and varied set of considerations that must be taken into account in order to arrive at an idea of "true" intelligence, a feat which the American Psychological Association acknowledges has still not yet been fully achieved.

Challenges in Measuring Intelligence Fairly

According to many authorities, even the above definition is not inclusive enough to capture true intelligence, even setting aside the issue of cultural bias. Creativity is one of the most common and most disputed additions to definitions of intelligence. Not only is the concept of creativity at least as difficult to define as intelligence itself, but measuring creativity through standardized testing is entirely antithetical to the idea of creativity. Other problems with measurements of intelligence — beyond simple cultural, gender, and personal differences in what should count as necessary constituent parts of intelligence — include how to design a test that does not depend on any pre-existing knowledge or knowledge of a particular language. These concerns can often be counted as aspects of cultural barriers to fair and accurate testing, but at times they appear even within a single culture.

Despite these difficulties, several tests purported to measure intelligence have existed for the better part of a century, and continued adjustment and redefinition of both intelligence and the tests themselves has led to an increasingly accurate picture of intelligence. Among the first of these tests to be developed was the Stanford-Binet test of an individual's intelligence quotient, or IQ. Other tests have largely followed the same model, containing a series of questions that involve verbal ability, mathematical reasoning, and pattern recognition, among other common areas of intelligence. There are also less scientific intelligence tests that can be better at measuring certain types of creative thinking and social proficiency, and many examples of these tests can be found online.