Intelligence testing can be a useful means of measuring certain skills. However, intelligence tests are highly contextualized and also have the potential to be culturally biased. Although intelligence tests are “here to stay,” they can be administered, adapted, and used in ways that fairer and more representative of a diverse population (Ford, 2005). One of the ways intelligence testing can be culturally biased is that there are different types of intelligence, and some cultures favor some types more than others. According to Benson (2003), Western cultures—namely those located in North America and Western Europe—tend to favor categorization and rational debate over synthesis, collaboration, and complexity. Likewise, most non-Western cultures including those in Africa and Asia value social skills intelligence and also practical intelligence far more than Western societies (Benson, 2003). Cultural bias may also be evident in the ways children from families with high cultural capital may have access to the cognitive frameworks needed to perform better on intelligence testing. Therefore, the substantive content of the intelligence test may be culturally constrained. Another issue with cultural bias in intelligence testing has to do with context and test administration. Some of the types of intelligence tests administered in American schools are abstract, but “people who are unable to solve complex problems in the abstract can often solve them when they are presented...
References
Benson, E. (2003). Intelligence across cultures. Monitor in Psychology 34(2): 56.
Ford, D.Y. (2005). Intelligence testing and cultural diversity. The National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented, Retrieved online: http://nrcgt.uconn.edu/newsletters/winter052/
Warne, R.T., Yoon, M. & Price, C.J. (2014). Exploring the various interpretations of test bias. Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology 20(4): 570-582.
Young, E. (2013). Intelligence testing: Accurate or extremely biased? Retrieved online: http://www.theneuroethicsblog.com/2013/09/intelligence-testing-accurate-or.html
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