It is most ironic that the Draw a Man test was invented by a woman and that girls outscore boys, but in the 1920s, women were devalued. The great Florence Goodenough realized that as children got older, their drawings became more sophisticated and thus could be used as a proxy for mental age. Goodenough’s test was not a good measure of IQ, but at times it was good enough (get it?).
When the test was revised in 1962 by Dale Harris, not only did he add a “Draw a Woman” subtest, but he added a quality scale so that rather than spending half an hour going through a long checklist of dozens of different criteria, psychologists could just compare a drawing they were scoring to a progression of drawings ranked from level 1 (crude stick figure) to level 12 (a detailed sketch) and judge which level it most resembled. This may sound subjective, but different judges gave very similar scores (though today machine learning could probably improve objectivity).
What I love about the quality scale is that when they were making it, they instructed the judges to divide all the drawings they reviewed into 12 separate piles such that difference in quality between each pile was equal. This makes the raw scores a true interval scale, unlike most tests which are only ordinal scales.
Please study the progression of drawings from 1 to 12, and notice how as you move up the scale, you get a gradual and consistent improvement in accuracy, detail and proportion (with no sudden jumps in quality). Based on the linear progression, try to imagine a drawing that would merit a level 13 or 14 etc if the scale extended that high:
Now please compare the below drawings which I’ll be discussing in future articles to the quality scale and vote on where they should rank. Please vote before wondering who drew them or reading the comments since that could bias your judgement. Please be as objective as possible. Consider the level of maturity of each drawing (using the above quality scale as a guide), not whether you like or dislike it.
Although all drawings should be of men, in some cases artists took certain liberties (i.e. head of a bird etc). In such cases use your best judgement to decide what score the drawing merits.
I could have scored these myself but it seems more objective and scientific to rely on the wisdom of crowds:
Pumpkin Person 
“Goodenough’s test was not a good measure of IQ, but at times it was good enough (get it?).”
I’d have never gotten it had you not pointed it out. Thanks.
My mother’s IQ must be stratospheric. She’s an artist.
I’d score about a 4 🙂
Why did they mess about with subjective sorting into piles instead of just looking at the averages for certain ages? That way you’d have an inkling of people’s mental age.
Maybe because the developmental growth curve is not a perfectly linear function of age. Take height for example: boys grow three inches from age 13 to 14, but only 0.2 inches from 19 to 20, so age is not necessarily an interval scale throughout the entire growth period. Brain size growth is probably even less linear:
In fact that’s why the mental age concept was abandoned.
Does it really matter if it’s not linear though? If someone scores as the average 10 year-old then it indicates they have the drawing IQ of a 10-year old, which seems more useful than a subjective number. Presumably they still used this system to see if people scored averagely for their age, but had to first to figure out what the average for each age was anyway.
A related question: Is the mental age concept still applicable to modern IQ tests even though they’re not based on it? Let’s say 10-year old scores 130 on the WAIS. 2 SD above the mean on a 16 SD mental age test would be 132. Can that child be assumed to have the same IQ as the average 13.2 year old?
good questions. i’ll quick answer in my next article.
And it keeps getting worse for the just-so storyteller Mr. JP Rushton. Damn. (Dutton is no better; he’s a just-so storyteller himself.)
https://notpoliticallycorrect.me/2019/02/19/jp-rushton-richard-lynn-satoshi-kanazawa-and-michael-hart-the-just-so-storytellers/
Please, don’t strawmane things…
Please read his book. When I say “it keeps getting worse for the just-so storyteller” I mean regarding his r/K selection theory.
”Thompson david
4 dias atrás
This is so much better than Jordan Peterson, yet has only a tiny fraction of the views. This tells us about our average intelligence.”
Symptomatic about the type of people and debate hbd attract, people with huge intelectual insecurity.
Lmao
I can’t pass level 1. It may have a link to lacking minds eyes + something else. Blake Roos, Firefox founder, question 16, shows his « ability » to draw :
Click to access blake_ross_aphantasia.pdf
I am worse than him.
The rankings seem messed up since 6 is a better drawing than 8.
Some of the cave paintings I rated more highly because the medium being used didn’t allow for good details, but the artists nevertheless displayed a good understanding of the subject’s shape. Take the red painting of the woman with the large behind; a similar understanding of the fact that humans have waists and hips doesn’t show up in the sample drawings until number 9, and only with 11 do we see legs that are about the right length.
insightful points
Different types of arts require relatively different criteria.
[Captain Obvious on you]
Puppy whats the explanation for why you wont do macho mans IQ?
The drawings remind me of my assessments on the basis of which the elementary school advised my mother I should skip the first grade. I drew a man who was drowning and a dialogue bubble in which he calls for help. When they saw I can read and write (my mother testifies I was able to do this without external instruction when I was four and half years old), they thought I could skip a grade.
Bugabe on monologue without vaginas
i’d of scored very high. drawing was a passion for me when i was little. i can still draw realistic figures if i’m looking at the them, but not from memory. just follow the line. my mother won a scholarship to study art, but turned it down. the two best artists in my school weren’t the smartest kids and both were left handed and male.
i’d ‘ve scored…
just made a pill mistake their. sad!
there
exactly!
Wer jogginghosen trägt, hat die Kontrolle über sein leben verlören 🙂
an interesting thing is how organic chemistry actually requires some talent at drawing.
there is this assumption that people are roughly as mentally mature as their age but…
i wanted to be a cartoonist when i was 6. i was a militant atheist when i was 7. among other things i rode my bike around the neighborhood screaming, “God is gay!” just to piss people off.
this was NOT from my parents!
so when i think of artists and atheists today i think, “been there done that. i grew up. you didn’t. sad!”
You’re still maturing…
A different you, always extremist, always irrational… always childishsch
Ace of Base reminds me of all the great things sweden has made…like…
i really can’t understand the belgian congo thing, i mean the…that skinny…look slike a boy thing…
i remember now…that Breakfast at Tiffany’s boy-girl…
audrey hepburn???
of course as everyone KNOWS…
the greatest alpine skier of all time was an irishman.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Claude_Killy
for the incognescenti…
killy is the descendant of an irish volunteer for napolean.
killy = kelly
Karl [Carlitos] was my debutt…
Has it been proven that Hitler drew the last one?
I assume he did but I’ve never heard a Hitler expert comment either way.
caffeine and dairy products have been reported to reduce the age at onset of huntington’s disease.
which is a BAD thing btw.
“reduce age at onset” = you get it earlier.
you can see this in your own “life history”…i expect.
in middle school and early hs…crushes and affiances and infatuations are…
much less about CLASS.
later…
capitalism ruins everything.
where;s my comment on musak?
don’t think I’m at risk for Huntington’s but half of the people older than 75 on one side of my family have dementia
reunions are really sad…increasingly so
odd that such a high IQ family would have so much dementia. Were they smart when young?
Pingback: Everyone’s using “social construct” wrong | evolutionistx
Pumpkin, what is the number of points that would be through practice effect from similarities the 3rd time and the 2nd time. Also, if you self administered it without the specific instructions given to you by the psychologist, would you even show a practice effect? Also, how accurate is this study- https://www.researchgate.net/publication/221850021_Effects_of_Practice_on_the_Wechsler_Adult_Intelligence_Scale-IV_Across_3-_and_6-Month_Intervals
Ok, why the hell was the Draw a Person test ever considered an IQ test?