By knowing our IQ, we do not know how we will respond to this or that particular circumstance any more than knowing our average life expectancy (determined, in particular, by insurance companies) will tell us when we shall die.
On the other hand, character traits, too often neglected, can model in a determinate manner the way intelligence expresses itself. Certain qualities, for example, may partly compensate for a very average IQ: extraversion, level of personal attraction, initiative, commercial sense, obstinacy. Here we enter the domain of character analysis.
Hereditary Intelligence to 80%
The general public often asks whether intelligence is innate or whether it can be acquired through education. In this connection, Hans J. Eysenck relates experiments not only on parents and children, but also on brothers and sisters (or, better, twins) separated at birth and raised in different environments. ‘This kind of research’, he writes, ‘testifies more in favour of the importance of heredity than to that of environmental influence’.
Conversely, it is also possible to keep the environment constant by varying heredity, for example by studying the IQ of children raised in an orphanage. ‘If it is the environment that determines intelligence’, says Eysenck, ‘then all these children should have very similar IQs, and if these IQs differ, the cause can only be imputable to heredity. Now, when this experiment was attempted, it was found that in these orphans, the degree of intelligence was just as variable as in other children under the influence of the most diverse environments. This is why, here again, heredity appears to be the decisive factor in determining the differences of intelligence that exist between individuals’.
‘Around 80% of all factors contributing to individual differences in intelligence are hereditary’, Professor Eysenck concludes, ‘20% come from the environment. In other words, heredity is four times more important than the environment’.
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Exercez votre intelligence, by Werner Kirst and Ulrich Diekmeyer. Casterman, 127 pages.458
Comment calculer votre quotient intellectuel, by Hans J. Eysenck. Mercure de France, 185 pages.459
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Several books have criticised psychometric methods, sometimes virulently. In Les tests en procès (Dunod, 1970),460 Dominique Beriot and Alain Exiga protest against ‘the abuse of psychometrics’. Michel Tort, in a pamphlet on Le quotient intellectuel (Maspéro, 1974),461 affirms, quoting Mao Tse-Tung in support, that the practice of testing is a tool ‘at the service of the bourgeoisie’. See also: Jean Gobet, Les tests démystifiés (Aubier-Montaigne, 1976).462 Hans J. Eysenck, in his various works, notably The Measurement of Intelligence (Medical and Technical Publishing Co., Lancaster, 1973), has done justice to these assertions, whose ideological bias is almost always evident.
Since 1974, the international presidency of Mensa has been held by R. Buckminster Fuller. (Mensa-France: B.P. 114, 75825 Paris Cedex 17).
Race and Psychometry
‘This book is only the beginning. A necessary start. Those who do not appreciate it are those for whom race has replaced sex as the main taboo!’
This quote from the renowned botanist and geneticist Cyril D. Darlington, a former Professor at the University of Oxford, appeared in the Sunday Times, about a book by Professor Hans J. Eysenck entitled Race, Intelligence, and Education.
What is it about?
Originally, the debate is a simple one. The results obtained by blacks in psychometric tests for measuring the intelligence quotient (IQ) have always been clearly below those obtained by whites in both England and the United States. The mean difference is about fifteen points, the ‘normal’ IQ (the ‘standard deviation’) is established at 100.
With a few exceptions, all psychologists admit this fact. But they obviously no longer agree when it comes to explaining the causes. For some, this difference is due to hereditary differences. For others, there are ‘environmental’ differences such as education, social milieu, standard of living, and so on.
It is the age-old conflict between heredity and the environment, the innate and the acquired. Nature and nurture, as the Anglo-Saxons say.
In Race, Intelligence, and Education, Hans J. Eysenck, after presenting the case, affirms that the theses of the ‘environmentalists’, partisans of the influence of the environment, are unsustainable; that the differences in performance between blacks and whites in IQ result from a difference in genetic makeup; and that 90% of scientists know, but they prefer not to talk.
Opinions waver. For Hans J. Eysenck is not just anyone. The Sunday Times says that he is ‘one of the most influential scholars’ in England. In 1934, he fled Nazi persecution. It is therefore difficult to accuse him of ‘racism’. (This has not stopped the British extreme-left, however).
His demonstration is principally based on three observations.
(1) All experiments carried out on homozygous twins (that is, ‘true twins’), separated at birth and raised in different environments, show that their intellectual quotient remains substantially the same, a few points apart. This attests that the intelligence is strongly hereditary.
(2) The average difference in IQ is found entirely in the selection of blacks and whites raised under the same conditions, frequenting the same establishments, and enjoying the same socio-economic status. It still exists if we put the whites of the lowest social strata in competition with wealthy blacks. The ‘environment’ is therefore not the determining explanatory factor.
(3) The Chinese, whose social status in the United States is generally much lower than that of whites, obtain the best results from the tests. Conversely, the average IQ of American Indians, who are discriminated against much more heavily than blacks, is higher than the latter.
Professor Eysenck’s conclusion: ‘There are racial differences in terms of anatomy, physiology, and even biochemistry. Why would the brain be an exception? We must face the facts. Intelligence is determined by heredity’.
A Discussion on ‘Jensenism’
The controversy is not new.
In the United States, the first ‘psychometry’ experiments were carried out in the army to evaluate the intellectual capacities of new recruits; they are found in the work of Yerkes, which date back to 1916. Between 1935 and 1950, Professor Frank C. J. McGurk, from Villanova, completed some sixty-three surveys of comparative racial psychology. All lead to the same results. (Audrey M. Shuey gives a detailed presentation in The Testing of Negro Intelligence, Social Science Press, New York, 1966).
At the end of 1968, Professor Arthur R. Jensen, Vice-President of the American Educational Research Association, Professor of Psychology and Education at the University of Berkeley, published a long study in the Harvard Educational Review (winter 1968–69) on the reasons for the failure of the school catch-up programs. He stressed the ‘inability of blacks to pass the tests of conceptual intelligence’.
This study caused a large backlash. A ‘Jensenist heresy’ was spoken of. Two years later, on 17 and 18 August 1970, Professors Jensen and Eysenck met in London during a symposium on the theme ‘Human Differences and Social Problems’.
In his book, H. J. Eysenck speaks at length about Professor Jensen. ‘His works are quite remarkable’, he wrote. ‘They deserved better than the polemic they provoked’.
The validity of psychometric tests has sometimes been debated. They were accused of being ‘culturally impregnated’, that is to say, they have been programmed according to the criteria of ‘middle class American whites’. Professor Eysenck’s response: ‘The results are no better with “non-verbal” performance tests dealing with aptitude in abstract reasoning. Indeed, black schoolchildren still achieved their worst results in this category’.
In fact, if discrimination is to be avoided, it is time to recognise that there are various forms of ‘intelligence’ among peoples and races. Wanting to reduce all human diversity only to the European model is a particularly hateful form of racism. Different peoples have a different mentality according to their given lifestyle, the world
view that conforms to their thought, and the character traits with which they have been endowed during evolution under the pressure of natural selection. We cannot therefore say that there are ‘superior’ or ‘inferior’ races. There are only different races, which are all superior to each other in relation to their own values and rhythms.
‘There is no theoretical obstacle to genetic differences between races’, writes Jean-Louis Lavallard. ‘Why should blacks and whites not be distinguished by intellect as by skin colour? Certain races would not necessarily be inferior to others (...) The qualitative differences of intelligence between races would explain the existence of different civilisations. Each of these would be the reflection of the intellectual capacities of its members. The notions of inferiority or superiority then lose all meaning. The so-called inferiority of certain races is only the consequence of a bad adaptation of a community to a civilisation for which it is not made and which is imposed on it’ (Le Monde de l’éducation, October 1975).463
Against Discrimination
In black Africa, psychometric surveys using (non-verbal) ‘performance’ tests were carried out by R. A. C. Olivier (Kenya, 1929), Niessen and Kinder (Nigeria, 1934–35), J. D. Clarke (Mozambique, 1946–49), R. Maistriaux (Belgian Congo, 1953–54), etc. (See J. R. Clark, Performance Tests of Intelligence in Africa, Overseas Education, London, 1948). In the Revue de Psychologie des peuples, published in Le Havre with the assistance of the CNRS, Gérard Wintringer writes: ‘The difference between the intelligence of blacks and whites is not only of a quantitative order, but also of a qualitative order. The intellectual ‘inferiority’ of the black is explained by mental behaviour which is deeply conditioned by a concrete, intuitive attitude, and riveted to the syncretic perception of sensible reality. Among blacks, sensible knowledge seems to have a preponderance over intellectual knowledge, and efforts that are willed and directed by reflection are less frequent among them than among the white man’.
This distinction was taken up by the President of the Republic of Senegal, Leopold Senghor, when he declared to the Monde: ‘Negritude is characterised by a power of emotion leading to the intuitive assimilation of the object, of the outside world. This intuitive reason is opposed to the discursive reason of the white European. Blacks proceed by induction and intuition; others, by analysis and deduction’.
Hans J. Eysenck also emphasises that that observations like those of Jensen only have a statistic value. To speak of differences in racial IQ of a value of around fifteen points does not mean that all blacks perform less well than all whites. On the contrary, about 40% of blacks have a higher IQ than the average IQ of whites. The comparison is only valid for average values. Therefore, one cannot base an argument for any individual discrimination upon it.
‘What causes racism and hatred,’ writes Eysenck, ‘is stupidity and ignorance. The role of the scientist is not to create morals, but to describe reality and increase knowledge’.
A few years ago, Professor William B. Shockley (Stanford University), Nobel Prize winner, inventor of the transistor, asked the American Academy of Sciences to appoint a mission for gathering facts to determine the respective importance of heredity and environment in the formation of intelligence. His proposal was rejected by 200 votes to 10, with 640 abstentions.
‘The members of the Academy are like the adversaries of Galilee’, said Professor Eysenck. They refuse to look in the telescope for fear of seeing what they have been told’.
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Race, Intelligence, and Education, a study by J. Eysenck. Maurice Temple Smith (37 Great Russell Street, London WC 1), 70 pages.
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The ‘Jensen affair’ and its consequences have aroused polemics of considerable magnitude. Several dozen books have been published on the subject, mainly in Anglo-Saxon countries. Currently, the controversy continues to rage in the columns of specialised journals (American Psychologist, Psychology Today, Science, etc.). In France, a complete dossier on the affair has been published by Jean-Pierre Hébert, Race et QI, (Copernic, 1977).464
The journal, Nouvelle école (Nr. 18 May-June, 1972) also published an interview with A. R. Jensen — who is the author of a dozen works, including Individual Differences in Learning: Interference Factors (U.S. Office of Education, Washington, 1965), Understanding Readiness (University of Illinois Press, Urbana, 1969), Genetics and Education (Methuen, London, 1972), Educability and Group Differences (Methuen, London, 1973), Educational Differences (Methuen, London, 1974).
Genetics and Psychiatry
Rats, which have many weaknesses, were thought to be quite sober. Medical doctors have debunked this reputation. ‘As early as 1940, Richter and Campbell found that rats recognise a 2% alcoholic solution, and that they prefer it to water. Moreover, the descendants of ‘drinkers’ tend to be ‘drinkers’ significantly more than the descendants of ‘non-drinkers’ do, that is, they prefer alcoholic beverages.
‘Alcoholism therefore seems partly hereditary’, says Dr. Quentin Debray, ‘and it is not only through family influence. A depressive tendency, especially among women, is strongly associated with this defect’.
If we are to believe ‘anti-psychiatrists’, there are no mental illnesses, but only ‘social alienations’ and ‘psychoses of civilisation’. ‘Anti-psychiatrists thus make the environment solely responsible for mental disorders’, says Dr. Abramow. They thus deny the role played by constitutional factors, by the way in which the brain is formed during its development. And yet recent research shows that certain mental illnesses can be transmitted to the offspring not by psychological dysfunctionality of the family environment, but rather by the laws of genetics’ (Le Soir, Brussels, 23 September, 1972).
It is these factors that Dr. Debray, an intern in the psychiatric hospitals, reviews in a book on Génetique et psychiatrie,465 which received the second prize of the Confrontations Psychiatriques Special in 1972.
The laws of genetics determine the functioning of genes, to which most physical and mental characteristics correspond; they are carried by the chromosomes in cell nuclei.
In the human species there are forty-six chromosomes. Coupled two by two, in twenty-three pairs, they are all identical with the exception of the two gonosomes, or sexual chromosomes. These may be of two kinds: either XX, characteristic of the female sex; or XY, characteristic of the male sex.
When these chromosomes are ‘defective’ (due to hereditary disease, malformation, ‘breakage’, presence of an extra chromosome, etc.) the organism is generally affected by a defect. This defect is said to be constitutional or innate.
‘If we find’, says Dr. Abramow, ‘a disease that affects different members of the same family by precisely following the (highly complex) path of certain characteristics called ‘genetic markers’, that is to say if any person possessing the marker(s) is affected by the disease under study and if the persons to whom the markers have not been transmitted are not affected by the disease, it can be said that this disease is linked to a defective gene, that the gene is located in the same chromosome as the marker, and the closer it is to the marker the more the transmission will have corresponded.
To carry out such work, experiments on twins prove to be crucial. We distinguish ‘true twins’ (homozygotes), derived from the same egg, and the ‘false twins’ (heterozygotes), which are born at the same time, but come from two different eggs. (Twins with different gender are necessarily heterozygotes). Only the former are the bearers of the same material heredity. By following them in the course of their existence, specialists can accurately measure the respective importance of heredity and environment in the formation and development of their personality.
The most serious mental illness is perhaps schizophrenia, which was once called ‘premature dementia’. It exists in all races, all cultures. The schizophrenic refuses (or neglects) the reality that surrounds him. He lives in a distorted inner world, where intellectual discord reigns. He will say, for example, ‘I am not going to walk under the trees, because I am
too young to die’. The idea of tree being associated, here, with that of wood, and ‘therefore’ a coffin.
In the general population, the proportion of schizophrenics is only 0.9%. However, ‘according to Kallmann, a child whose parent is schizophrenic is 16.4% more likely to be schizophrenic. If both parents are affected, the percentage will be 68.1%’.
An Obsessive Neurosis
‘As yet, there is no precise, verified theory on the biochemistry of schizophrenia’, writes Dr. Debray. But numerous, irrefutable facts indicate that a metabolic pathway appears to be disturbed in schizophrenics; that it is even more the case in the periodic catatonic; it is less so in paranoid delirium. In other words, the day approaches when schizophrenia finds a biochemical and genetic explanation’.
Authors such as Malacarne and Dallapicola have already detected immunological abnormalities in the serum of schizophrenics.
Dr. Georges Heuyer, author of a remarkable essay on La schizophrénie, also points out ‘the very high probability of hereditary transmission’ of the illness.
Another example is manic-depressive psychosis or bipolar disorder. This affects mood. The patient is unable to control bouts of unbridled joy followed by crises of total depression. Suicide is common. In the United States, the average frequency is 0.4%. According to Kallmann, the illness, when present, occurs simultaneously in ‘false twins’ in 25.5% of cases, and 100% among true twins.
Recent work has been done at the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York by a researcher from the Free University of Brussels, Dr. Mendlewicz and his team. Their results were presented in August 1972 at a scientific congress held in Copenhagen. In many cases, manic-depressive psychosis is associated with some form of color blindness (color confusion) and blood group XgA. Since these two characteristics depend on a defective gene in the sex chromosome X, women (XX) are twice as likely as men (XY) to be affected.
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