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Tag Archives: social class

Are IQ tests based on circular logic? A reply to Race Realist

12 Thursday Dec 2019

Posted by pumpkinperson in Uncategorized

≈ 90 Comments

Tags

IQ, Not Politically Correct, predictive validity, Race Reailist, social class, test construction, the BITCH test, the g factor

Commenter Race Realist (RR) wrote yet another article claiming that IQ tests are based on circular logic and just measure social class. He writes:

In sum, what these tests test is what the test constructors presume—mainly, class and racial bias—so they get what they want to see. If the test does not match their presuppositions, the test gets discarded or reconstructed to fit with their biases…At best, IQ test scores measure the degree of cultural acquisition of knowledge; they do not, nor can they, measure ‘intelligence’—which is a cultural concept which changes with the times. The tests are inherently biased against certain groups; looking at the history and construction of IQ testing will make that clear. The tests are middle-class knowledge tests; not tests of ‘intelligence.’

RR is right that IQ tests were originally designed to confirm existing prejudices of who was smart by deliberately selecting test items that so-called smart people did better on. This is ironic because the whole point of creating an IQ test was that teachers’ judgments were considered too biased to trust, so why did the first IQ testers rely on teachers to decide who was smart?

Psychometric tasks are great at being objective, but they’re not always great at measuring intelligence. By contrast teachers are great at judging intelligence, but they’re not always objective. Thus by selecting only those test items that most confirmed teacher judgement, they got the best of both worlds: An objective scale that was great at measuring intelligence.

Of course RR might argue that the teachers were just judging social class, not intelligence, and by extension so were the tests. Further he would argue that if the tests predicted socioeconomic success, it was not because smart people rise to the top, but rather because SES is all the tests were measuring in the first place.

However we now know that IQ tests predict life outcomes, not because they correlate with teacher’s judgments, but because they correlate with g; the general factor of IQ tests.

Thomas R. Coyle writes:

g is one of the best predictors of school and work performance (for a review, see [7], pp. 270–305; see also, [8,9]). Moreover, a test’s g loading (i.e., its correlation with g) is directly related to its predictive power. In general, tests with strong g loadings correlate strongly with school and work criteria, whereas tests with weak g loadings correlate weakly with such criteria. For example, Jensen ([7], p. 280) found that the g loadings of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) subtests were directly related to their predictive power for school criteria (e.g., school grades and class ranks). WAIS subtests with stronger g loadings generally predicted school criteria well, whereas subtests with weaker g loadings predicted such criteria poorly. Consistent with these findings, Thorndike [10] found that g explained most of the predictable variance in academic achievement (80–90%), whereas non-g factors (obtained after removing g from tests) explained a much smaller portion of variance (10–20%). Similar results have been found for job training and productivity, which are robustly related to g but negligibly related to non-g factors of tests (e.g., rnon-g < 0.10, [7], pp. 283–285; see also, [9,11]).

From Non-g Factors Predict Educational and Occupational Criteria: More than g

g is whatever variable(s) causing all cognitive abilities to positively inter-correlate. RR will tell you g is circular logic because any cognitive ability that doesn’t correlate with g is excluded, but this is false.

As Arthur Jensen (1998) noted, there are very clear rules on a) what is an ability, and b) what is a cognitive ability, and none of them require a correlation with other cognitive abilities.

A test measures ability if it a) measures voluntary behavior, b) has temporal stability, c) has a clear standard of proficiency, and d) some generality. There is another set of criteria that determines whether a particular ability is mental or physical.

IQ skeptics can cite tests that don’t correlate with g, but these tests don’t qualify as ability measures. One example are so-called creativity tests where you’re asked to name as many uses for a brick as you can think of in two minutes. Such tests often lack a clear standard of proficiency because silly answers (i.e. use it to comb your hair) get the same credit as good answers (use it to smash a window).

No one to my knowledge has come up with a mental test that actually qualifies as an ability test yet does not correlate with g with the possible exception of the BITCH test (ironic name for a test that’s supposed to fight anti-black bias) however the BITCH test is clearly culturally biased. None of the major IQ tests are culturally biased against any of the founding racial subgroups of the United States (at least as defined by psychometric criteria).

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IQ, social environment & DNA

17 Thursday Oct 2019

Posted by pumpkinperson in Uncategorized

≈ 156 Comments

Tags

Arthur Jensen, equal environment assumption, IQ, James Flyyn, shared environment, social class

Commenter RR argues that IQ tests measure social class. If by social class he means the home one grew up in, the following author begs to differ:

First, family has little effect on whatever cognitive abilities you have after the age of 17. While family environment is potent early on, its effects fade away to low level by age 17 and become insignificant by maturity. As you grow up, you move outside the family and go to school, become a member of a peer group (your close friends), find a job, and marry. You enter a current environment that swamps the lingering effects of family environment. Current environment is surprisingly self-contained: it influences one’s current cognitive abilities with very little interference from past environments. Most of us assume that your early family environment leaves some indelible mark on your intelligence throughout life. But the literature shows this simply isn’t so.

Second, once the influence of family disappears, the cognitive quality of your current environment tends to match your genetic quality. This is often called the tendency toward “gene-environment co-relation”. This means simply that if your genes are at the 90th percentile for cognitive ability, your current environment tends to be at the 90th percentile of the population for cognitive quality…In other words, chance events aide, genes and current environment tend to match, so whatever genetic differences exist predict cognitive performance without any need to take current environment into account.

You might think the above was written by Arthur Jensen, but it was written by Jensen’s most formidable opponent, James Flynn. It’s from pages 5 to 6 of Flynn’s book Does Your Family Make You Smarter?

Evidence in support of Flynn’s comments is a 2010 study by Haworth et al, where an astonishing 11000 pairs of twins from four different countries were intelligence tested. The results: heritability was 41% at age nine, 55% at age 12, and 66% by age 17.

66% is very similar to the WAIS IQ heritability found in the Minnesota study of twins reared apart, but Haworth et al compared the IQ correlation of MZ twins raised together with the correlation of DZ twins raised together (the classical twin study). If one assumes that both types of twins are equally similar in their environments (including prenatal), the greater IQ similarity found among MZ twins can only be explained by their greater genomic similarity. This is known as the equal environment assumption.

Critics claim that MZ twins raised together enjoy more similar environments than DZ twins raised together and so genes are getting undeserved credit for an environmental effect. However Arthur Jensen notes:

…some same-sex DZ twins look much more alike than others. In some cases their parents even wrongly believe that their DZ twins are identical twins, and they treat them as such by dressing them alike and giving them the same hairstyles and so on. But DZ twins whose parents and others had mistaken them for MZ twins are no more alike in IQ than other DZ twins or ordinary siblings who don’t look much alike.

Source: Intelligence, Race and Genetics by Frank Miele, pg 98

Indeed if people think MZ twins have more similar environments than DZ twins because they look identical, then it follows that same sex DZ twins should have more similar environments than opposite sex DZ twins because they too look more similar (and are treated more similarly) and yet the IQ correlation between same sex and opposite sex MZ twins are virtually identical.

Further support for the equal environment assumption comes from a study of 1,030 female-female twin pairs from the Virginia Twin Registry with known zygosity. About 15% of the twins disagreed with their actual zygosity, however perceived zygosity had no impact on the correlation between twins when it came to any of the five psychiatric disorders studied.

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Was John Carpenter’s Michael Myers autistic?

04 Wednesday Jun 2014

Posted by pumpkinperson in Uncategorized

≈ 13 Comments

Tags

autism, executive function, Halloween, John Carpenter, nerds, Rob Zombie, social class

 

myers.PNG

An idea, I’ve had for years (and I’m not the only one who has thought this) is that that the Michael Myers character from John Carpenter’s Halloween (and its sequels) was autistic.  I realize it was not the film maker’s intention to make him autistic (autism was not well known in the 1970s) but characters take on a life of their own.  Autism is a developmental disorder characterized by impaired communication skills, repetitive ritualistic restricted behavior, obsessive interests, and poor physical coordination.

Myers clearly fit the criteria.  His communication skills were so impaired he went completely non-verbal, and facial expressions displayed only what his psychiatrist Dr. Loomis called a “blank, pale, emotionless face” with no understanding of human concepts like “life or death, good or evil, right or wrong”.  A key deficit in autism is impaired “Theory of Mind” (ToM).  ToM is the ability to understand that other people have minds just like you do and to form theories about what they’re thinking and feeling; why they behave the way they do.  Because of this, many autistic people are said to relate to other people more like objects than like living entities.  If Myers lacked ToM, it would explain why he couldn’t grasp the difference between life and death, since he was oblivious to the mental states of living creatures.  Also, the scene in Halloween (1978) where he pins the teenager Bob to the wall and then Myers tilts his head to the left and right looking at the hanging corpse, seems to suggest Myers was viewing a person as just another object. Autistic people also struggle to make eye contact and communicate with appropriate facial expressions, so it’s no wonder Myers avoided both by always wearing a mask.

Myers also had repetitive ritualistic restricted behavior and obsessive interests.  He repetitively killed people over and over again in very much the same way, making a ritual of only killing them on Halloween while always wearing a mask.  Indeed he spent his whole life doing nothing but obsessing about his childhood crime of killing his older sister Judith.  Myers killed his older sister when she was 17 on Halloween and then spent 15 years planning to kill his younger sister when she too was 17 on Halloween and ritualistically brought along the big sister’s grave stone to make it more ceremonial.  When he failed to kill the younger sister (Laurie) when she was 17 on Halloween, he then waited 20 years to try to kill her when her son was 17 on Halloween.

This kind of repetitive obsession with symmetry (both sisters, both 17, both Halloween), numbers (17) and calender dates (Halloween) seems classically autistic.   Indeed some autistic people are so obsessed with numbers and calenders that despite being mentally disabled, can multiply huge numbers in their head or calculate the day of the week for almost any date you can throw at them.

Myers also lacked physical coordination.  He seemed incapable of running, despite being physically fit, and had terrible aim and hand-eye coordination: In Halloween (1978) he tried to stab Laurie but ended up stabbing the couch.

Also, the fact that Laurie was his sister, also reveals autism.  As I explained on my other blog, there seems to be a genetic link between autism and nerdiness, so many autistics tend to have nerdy family members.  This happens because nerds and autistic people have certain overlapping traits: interest in numbers and systems, social and physical awkwardness etc.  The main difference between nerds and autistic people is that the latter seem to have a mental disability called executive dysfunction which prevents them from living a normal life.  By contrast, nerds can be extremely high functioning and successful (i.e. Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg), however because nerdiness and autism are genetically linked, it’s not uncommon to see a hyper-successful silicon Valley millionaire, with a child so autistic he requires life-long supervision.  This was clearly the pattern with Laurie and Michael.  She was the successful high functioning nerd while he was too low functioning to live anything like a normal life.  Despite being high functioning, Laurie’s nerdiness was revealed by the fact that despite being pretty, she couldn’t get a date because boys thought her too smart (she was probably better at nerdy subjects like math and science than they were) and was treated like a freak by her friend Annie.  And like her brother Michael, she was a virgin.

However while Michael Myers seemed clearly autistic, in Rob Zombie’s remake, Myers was schizophrenic.  Some horror fans hate Rob Zombie’s remake because they feel Rob Zombie turned Myers from a middle class person they could relate to (scary thought) to what these people call “white trash”.  It’s fascinating that Myers went from seeming autistic in the original series when he was middle class, to being schizophrenic in the remakes, when he was lower class.  As I’ve previously explained, autism is more common in the higher social classes, while schizophrenia is more common in the lower social classes.

What’s fascinating is that autism and schizophrenia appear, in my opinion, to be opposite sides of the same coin.  When someone with a nerdy middle class or upper class personality has executive dysfunction, it tends to turn into autism.  When someone with a cool lower class personality (like the long haired heavy metal fan Myers of Zombie’s versions) has executive dysfunction, it tends to turn into schizophrenia.  Isn’t it interesting that the Halloween franchise so perfectly fits the pattern?

 

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Autism, schizophrenia & social class

03 Tuesday Jun 2014

Posted by pumpkinperson in Uncategorized

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

autism, cool people, mental illness, nerds, schizophrenia, social class

I’ve come across some fascinating research showing that autism is more common in higher social classes and schizophrenia is more common in lower social classes.  In my opinion, this is because the higher social classes tend to be more nerdy (K selected) and the lower social classes tend to be more cool (r selected).  The higher classes are nerdy in that they are more educated, more monogamous, more scrawny, and less sexually active.  By contrast, the lower classes are “cool” because they are more blue collar, more muscular, more likely to get arrested, more into sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll.

Nerds tend to be more focused, less social, more scientific, more rational, and more logical.  These traits are all quite useful, but when a nerdy child is born with executive dysfunction, the result might be autism.

By contrast, cool people tend to be more distracted, more social, more spiritual, more emotional, and more intuitive.  But when a cool child is born with executive dysfunction, the result might be schizophrenia.

As I’ve previously explained, autism and schizophrenia might be the same disorder, just applied to humans at opposite ends of the evolutionary spectrum.  

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