Intelligence and Cultural Environment

Philip E. Vernon

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780415716420
• eBook ISBN: 9781134749867
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Originally published in 1969, Intelligence and Cultural Environment looks at the concept of intelligence and the factors influencing the mental development of children, including health and nutrition, as well as child-rearing practices. It goes on to discuss the application of intelligence tests in non-Western countries and includes both British and cross-cultural studies to illustrate this.

Inevitably a product of the time in which it was written, this book nonetheless makes a valuable contribution to intelligence theory as we know it today.

PART I

Current Conceptions of Intelligence

I

Introduction

Results from tests of general ability and so-called verbal intelligence can be utilized not to cast aspersions upon less civilized peoples or to heap praise upon the more civilized but to establish differences between societies living under different conditions and hence favoring some kinds of knowledge and some ways of living rather than others (L. W. Doob, Becoming More Civilized: A Psychological Exploration, 1960, p. 173).

Psychology, according to some of its critics, consists either of platitudes which everyone knows already, or else of technical trivialities and statistics which nobody wants to know. This is unfair, but perhaps it could be applied to this book, which first of all discusses some problems of mankind that are too complicated for any scientific solution to be possible, and then presents a lot of detailed test results whose relevance and interpretation may strike the reader as dubious.

We start with a glaring platitude, namely that people differ in their abilities and achievements. Within any one country such as England, some people become wealthy executives, others seem unable to rise above the level of unskilled labourers. Some progress rapidly and brilliantly through school and university to a professional career, many others fall by the wayside. Some are rewarded by life because their own capabilities and efforts bear fruit, or through the influence of others or often just because they are lucky, and many are punished because of their weaknesses or through circumstances over which they have no control. Apart from overall success or failure, there are tremendous varieties of talent as between artists, scientists, political leaders and administrators, sportsmen and skilled artisans. Many who are outstanding in one direction are hopeless in others, and there are many who probably never find their niche – the square pegs in round holes. We all realise, of course, that a man’s temperament, character and inclinations are at least as important in determining these outcomes as the abilities that he is born with or acquires, and that in practice capacity and motivation are always mixed up. However, it is much easier to observe and measure what a child or adult can do than it is to find out why he does it. Hence we intend to concentrate on the former – the cognitive characteristics of man, while not forgetting the latter – the orectic aspects.

Within any nation there are many distinguishable subgroups or cultures which clearly differ not only in dress, habits, speech, types of occupation, moral and political attitudes, but also in abilities. Social class differences are pervasive in western societies, and even in such differently organised societies as USSR and India there are differences of wealth and privilege – the haves and the have-nots. Usually the children of the haves are brought up under more favourable conditions and, whether for this or for other reasons, they are more likely to do well at school and to enter the higher-grade careers. Many countries besides England, notably the United States, have their minorities – people of different race, colour or language, who are incompletely assimilated into the community, perhaps discriminated against, and who tend to fall at the bottom end of the scale of achievement. Obviously too there are wide differences within classes or other subgroups: many upper or middleclass children are stupid and many working class children, including negroes within a white community, are upwardly mobile. Indeed a major contribution of psychology has been to bring out the extent of overlapping – that 10 per cent or more of American negroes score better on intelligence tests than the average American white. In Britain, parents who work in semiskilled occupations actually produce a rather bigger total of bright children than professional-executive parents, since the former constitute a very large group, and the latter a relatively small group. But this does not alter the fact that the higher-class parents have an enormously greater proportion of able children who do well educationally and vocationally than the lower classes; their chances in life are vastly better.*

In this second half of the twentieth century there is an ever-increasing need for brain workers, accompanied by decreasing opportunities for manual workers. Previously the western world depended so greatly on hewers of wood and drawers of water that many labourers, farmers and individual craftsmen could achieve a reasonably satisfying life. They were not rich, but their essential needs were met and they could take some pride in their jobs. In our more complex civilisation, particularly with the onset of automation, the ‘lower classes’ may in fact be better off, but they are even less secure, and more aware of the disparities between their lot and that of the more able, the better educated and more favoured. Moreover it has been pointed out that the traditional methods of education and training are inadequate for the modern world. It is not enough to acquire a certain amount of information at school and pick up occupational skills on the job. The successful individual needs to be trained to solve problems, to adapt to new situations; in other words he must be more intelligent (cf. Bloom, Davis and Hess).

Differences between nations are still more striking, and here too, while we recognise qualitative differences in type of economy and culture, between the Indian, African, Arab and Polynesian for example, we also naturally tend to grade them on a scale of wealth and technological advancement, of more and less civilised or – in our attempts to be more sympathetic and less self-satisfied – we talk of the developed and the underdeveloped. It is only too clear that such inequalities between nations are increasing, despite financial and technical assistance from the haves to the have-nots. In the former there is an upward spiral: their wealth and technology make possible the production of a better-educated population with higher standards of living, and of more scientists and engineers who improve the technology still further. Whereas in the latter there is a vicious circle of poor or unexploited natural resources, primitive skills and conservative attitudes, undernourishment, disease and overpopulation, poor education and consequent under-production of able and intelligent men who could lead them out of the slough. Most developing countries are doing their best to break this circle at many points; but certainly one of the most fundamental difficulties, being tackled most urgently, is the lack of trained and trainable personnel to provide the professionals, teachers, commercial and political leaders, and technicians, without whom economic viability is unattainable. They no longer wish to, nor can afford to, depend on administrators, advisers and educationists borrowed from the western nations, and indeed often attribute their present backwardness to previous exploitation by the whites and to the shortcomings of benevolent colonialism.

The nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were content to accept:

‘The rich man at his table, the poor man at his gate,

God made them high and lowly, and ordered their estate,’

or to ascribe low achievement and consequent poverty to innate inferiority of intelligence and temperament. In England there was strong opposition to the notion of educating the masses; and when it was first introduced it was cheap and meagre (cf. Vernon, 1957b). The incapacity of more ‘primitive’ races ever to govern themselves effectively or to achieve a western-type education and civilisation is still widely voiced in South Africa, Rhodesia and occasionally in parts of the USA. But the mid-twentieth century has developed a conscience about the underdog, both at home and abroad, and in any case the underdog’s demands for a better deal have become too clamant to be ignored. Thus we find in almost every country a ferment of concern for the ‘underprivileged’, more drastic redistribution of wealth, and improved medical and social services and educational opportunities for those hitherto denied them.

Now where does the social scientist, and the psychologist in particular, come into all this? The value of economic surveys and planning is obvious, and the social anthropologist’s studies of the structure, customs and beliefs of different cultural groups must surely help us better to understand the developing countries and their difficulties. The sociologist and psychologist should not try to set themselves up as experts on the actual measures that can best be taken in relation to other countries, or on the social reforms needed within their own borders. These depend to far too great an extent on value judgments, prejudices and emotions, political, religious and economic considerations to be approached as purely scientific problems. What they can do, though, is to provide relevant facts – facts about the abilities and attitudes of the peoples concerned. They can survey and measure the effects of changes which either occur naturally over the course of time, or are arbitrarily introduced. They can study the nature of the processes underlying changes in individuals or in groups, how and when acculturation takes place, what stimulates or inhibits the growth of abilities, the acquisition of new attitudes, the arousal of group conflicts. Psychological theories of intelligence have altered very drastically since the 1920s, and this has led to a fresh interpretation of individual, social class and ethnic differences. Since psychologists are themselves human beings, their reasoning too is liable to bias in accordance with their particular sympathies; and as middle-class westerners they may misinterpret the psychology of the western working class or the African negro. But at least they are more aware of their liability to ethnocentrism. Much of what the writer has to say will appear politically or socially loaded; very probably he will, despite all his efforts, be accused of snobbery or racialism or both. That is the risk one must accept in trying to trace the implications of observations and measurements in this enormously complex and controversial area.

There is a particular advantage in studying individual differences, subgroup and major group (e.g. ethnic) differences simultaneously, since each raises similar problems and helps to illumine the others. For example it is profitable to investigate how far differences in school efficiency or teaching methods affect achievements in a number of English schools; but far greater contrasts, which may highlight these effects, will be found by cross-cultural comparisons. Sometimes an unusual ethnic group will provide the crucial case which confirms or contradicts a generalisation reached in one’s own culture. *

Turning then to the present book: its major objective is to explore the environmental and other factors which hinder the development of abilities within underdeveloped countries or depressed minority groups. A good deal is already known of the conditions within developed western nations that stimulate intellectual growth, and those which prevent large sections of a community from realising their full potential. Part I examines the concept of intelligence, how far it is genetically determined, how it is built up during childhood, and whether we can talk meaningfully of a general ability or intelligence, especially when comparing different cultural groups. Part II surveys the experimental evidence relating to the main environmental influences on the growth of general intelligence and some other abilities, of nutrition, of stimulation or lack of it during childhood, of family, socioeconomic and school conditions, particularly in the UK and USA.

Such knowledge, combined with studies of underdeveloped countries as such, should enable us to help these countries towards technological progress. Already, by the adoption of psychological testing techniques which have proved their worth in the western nations, we can assist them in selecting their more able adults and children, those who are most likely to be trainable for skilled and clerical jobs, and those most likely to benefit from advanced education (cf. P. A. Schwarz). But it would be still more useful to discover what factors of diet and health, cultural tradition and family upbringing, schooling and job training, most require attention, if they are to produce sufficient highly skilled personnel for their needs. However, there are very serious technical problems in taking over tests from other cultures, or in constructing tests more suited to local conditions – the more so the more backward and illiterate the people concerned. Many social scientists would say that the kinds of test data that the present writer and others have collected are too superficial and too equivocal to be worthwhile. Part III deals mainly with such problems of the applicability of tests in different cultural groups.

Part IV describes the battery of tests assembled by the writer and the results obtained in the UK. A considerable assortment of tests of varied abilities was given to samples of boys aged around n years in England, Scotland (the Hebrides), Jamaica and Uganda, and to Eskimos and Indians in Canada, 375 in all. The samples were small, mostly 40s and 50s, since it seemed more useful to concentrate on individual testing in order to reduce misunderstandings between tester and testee, than to give group tests to larger and more representative groups. (There is plenty of room for both types of research.) While it would have been preferable to test at various ages, or to assess children growing up in each ethnic group over a considerable period, cross-sectional surveys at a particular age are more feasible. The age of 11 was chosen since, in all the countries visited, pupils have acquired a moderate facility with English and are approaching the end of their primary schooling. In most of the samples the mother tongue was not English but, with suitable precautions, it was not necessary to work through interpreters. Admittedly it would be far more difficult to extend such testing to ethnic groups in which English is not the main medium of school instruction. Only boys were included for two good reasons, first that having girls would have involved doubling the numbers and further complicated the analysis and interpretation; and secondly that there is a good deal of evidence from child studies (e.g. Schaefer and Bayley) that cause-effect relationships are on the whole more straightforward in the male sex. Girls seem to react more to the immediate social situation, hence it is more difficult to trace their present behaviour back to past experience.

Part V, then, gives a sketch of each of these overseas groups, attempting to analyse the main handicaps that affect the development of their abilities, and to link these observations with the observed test results. It is realised, of course, that this type of evidence does not prove causal relationships; but by comparing groups and subgroups with one another, as well as with English standards, it is hoped that some progress has been made. Throughout the emphasis is laid, not on whether some groups are generally superior or inferior to others, but on the patterns of scores on different tests which reflect their cultural characteristics. Moreover, within each group, assessments were obtained of important environmental variables, and these were correlated with the boys’ test scores, so that ‘within-group’ differences could be considered alongside ‘between-group’ differences.

The final Part provides a general summary and a discussion of the main implications of the research.

* See J. L. Gray; Anastasi 1958; Vernon 1960.

Note that references to the bibliography are made by date when an author has made two or more contributions. But if only a single book or article is cited, dates are often omitted in order to simplify the text or to avoid footnotes.

* Cf. Price Williams, 1966. He cites as examples the variations in weaning practices, and in Oedipus formation, in different cultures.

II

Intelligence A, B and C

Discussions of the intelligence of different social classes or different ethnic groups have been, and still are, characterised by bitter controversy and misunderstandings, though we are beginning to realise at last that much of the trouble is due to people using the term intelligence in different senses. In the first place ‘intelligence’ conveys the meaning – innate capacity, something which the child inherits from his ancestors through the genes, and which determines the mental growth of which he is capable. It is educability as distinct from acquired knowledge or skills. But secondly we use the term ‘intelligent’ to refer to the child or adult who is clever, quick in the uptake, good at comprehending and reasoning, mentally efficient. Yet a third meaning for intelligence is Mental Age or IQ or score on one of the widely used intelligence tests. Each of these three concepts is, as we shall see, highly complex; but it will save a great deal of confusion if we agree to label them Intelligence A, B and C, respectively.

The distinction between Intelligence A and B was formulated by D. O. Hebb, and it corresponds to the geneticist’s familiar distinction between the genotype and the phenotype. The genotype does refer to the genetic equipment of the individual (or group), his inherited potentialities for growth. But it can never be directly observed, let alone measured. It is an hypothesis, albeit one for which very convin...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Part I Current Conceptions of Intelligence
• Part II Factors Influencing the Mental Development of Children
• Part III The Application of Tests in Non-Western Cultures
• Part IV Studies in Britain
• Part V Cross-Cultural Studies
• Part VI Summary and Implications