Germany's unrestricted submarine warfare (which led to the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915)
provoked the United States to finally enter the first world war in the same year.
The military had to build up an army very quickly and it had two million inductees to sort out.
Who would become officers and who enlisted men? Psychometricians developed two intelligence
tests that helped sort all these people out, at least to some extent. This was the first major
use of testing to decide who lived and who died since officers were a lot safer on the battlefield.
The tests themselves were given under horrendously bad conditions and the examiners seemed to
lack common sense. A lot of recruits simply had no idea what to do and in several
sessions most inductees scored zero! The examiners also came up with the quite astounding
conclusion from the testing that the average American adult's intelligence was
equal to that of a thirteen-year-old!
Nevertheless, the ability for various authorities to classify people on scientifically
justifiable premises was too convenient and significant to be dismissed lightly,
so with all good astounding intentions and often over enthusiasm, society's
affinity for psychological testing proliferated.
Back in Europe, Sir Cyril Burt, professor of psychology at University College London
from 1931 to 1950, was a prominent figure for his contribution to the field. He was
a firm advocate of intelligence testing and his ideas fitted in well with
English cultural ideas of elitism. A government committee in 1943 used some of
Burt's ideas in devising a rather primitive typology on children's intellectual behavior.
All were tested at age eleven and the top 15 or 20 per cent went to grammar schools
with good teachers and a fast pace of work to prepare for the few university places available.
A lot of very bright working-class children, who otherwise would never have succeeded,
made it to grammar schools and universities.
　　The system for the rest was however disastrous. These children attended lesser secondary
or technical schools and faced the prospect of eventual education oblivion.
They felt like dumb failures, which having been officially and scientifically branded.
No wonder their motivation to study plummeted. It was not until 1974 that the public
education system was finally reformed. Nowadays it is believed that
Burt has fabricated a lot of his data. Having an obsession that intelligence is largely genetic,
he apparently made up twin studies, which supported this idea, at the same time inventing
two co-workers who were supposed to have gathered the results.
Intelligence testing enforced political and social prejudice and their results were used
to argue that Jews ought to be kept out of the United States because they were so intelligently
inferior that they would pollute the racial mix. And blacks ought not to be
allowed to breed at all. Abuse and test bias controversies continued to plaque psychometrics.
Measurement is fundamental to science and technology. Science often advances in leaps and
bounds when measurement devices improve. Psychometrics has long tried to develop ways to
gauge psychological qualities such as intelligence and more specific abilities, anxiety,
extroversion, emotional stability, compatibility with marriage partner and so on.
Their scores are often given enormous weight. A single IQ measurement can take on a
life of its own if teachers and parents see it as definitive.
It became a major issue in the 70s when court cases were launched to stop anyone
from making important decisions based on IQ test scores.
the main criticism was and still is that current tests don't really measure intelligence.
Whether intelligence can be measured at all is still controversial. some say it cannot
while others say that IQ tests are psychology's greatest accomplishments.