Race and intelligence

Race and intelligence is a controversial interdisciplinary field studying the nature, origins, and practical consequences of racial and ethnic group differences in intelligence test scores and other measures of cognitive ability. This research is grounded in several controversial assumptions:

Related Topics:
Controversial - Intelligence test - Cognitive

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• the social categories of race and ethnicity are concordant with genetic categories, such as biogeographic ancestry.
• intelligence is measurable (see psychometrics) and is dominated by a unitary general cognitive ability.

Much of the evidence currently cited is based on IQ testing. While the distributions of IQ scores among different racial-ethnic groups overlap considerably, groups differ in where their members cluster along the IQ scale. {{ref|IQdistribution}} Similar clustering occurs with related variables, such as school achievement, reaction time, and brain size. {{ref|otherclustering}} To put this in perspective, though, most variation in IQ in the U.S. occurs within individual families, not between races. Still, even small variance in average IQ at the group level would theoretically have large effects on social outcomes.

Related Topics:
IQ - School achievement - Reaction time - Brain size - Variation

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Many hypotheses have been proposed to explain racial-ethnic group differences in IQ. Certain environmental factors, such as childhood nutrition, are known to modulate IQ, and other influences have been hypothesized, including education level, richness of the early home environment, and other social, cultural or economic factors. The primary focus of the scientific debate is whether group IQ differences also reflect a genetic component. Hereditarianism hypothesizes that a genetic contribution to intelligence could include genes linked to neuron structure or function, brain size or metabolism, or other physiological differences which could vary with biogeographic ancestry.

Related Topics:
Nutrition - Hereditarianism - Brain size

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The findings of this field are often thought to conflict with fundamental social philosophies, and have thus engendered a large controversy. Media portrayal of the role of genetic and environmental factors in explaining individual and group differences in IQ has itself been studied and shown to be misleading regarding mainstream expert opinion. Critics examine the fairness and validity of cognitive testing and racial categorization, as well as the reliability of the studies and the motives of the authors, on both sides. Critics often fear the misuse of the research, question its utility, feel that comparing the intelligence of racial groups is itself unethical, or fear sociopolitical ramifications, whether justified or unjustified. For instance, the disparity in average IQ among racial groups is sometimes mistaken for the idea that all members of one race are more intelligent than all members of another, or that ranking group IQ averages from "high" to "low" implies a moral ranking of races from "good" to "bad" or an overall ranking of "superior" to "inferior". The conclusion that some racial groups have lower intelligence, and the hypothesis that a genetic component may be involved, have led to heated academic debates that have spilled over into the public sphere.

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Race and intelligence: Background information ►