Race And Intelligence Research Paper

Critics have since proven that the Bell Curve is inaccurate and intelligence is not only measured by tests and is not affected by certain circumstances such as race. Stephen Jay Gould’s “Critique of The Bell Curve” is one of the most popular arguments against the Bell

The question that seems to be an ongoing topic of discussions is whether or not biological differences has any scientific validity when relating to race. The concept of race was established over the years based on physical features and variations of skin tone. These variations stem from environmental conditions causing slight variations in our genome. The essence of Homo sapiens is the same with slight variations in the DNA strands know as alleles. These variations are what cause physical differences that make up what we have defined over the years classified as different races. The variations have not evolved enough to prevent reproduction amongst the races.

Labeling bias exists when a test claims to measure one thing but actually measures something else. Tests that claim to assess such traits as “aptitude” or “intelligence” imply that they are measuring something innate, given that many people assume that these traits are genetic. However, Jencks notes that “almost all psychologists now agree that while an individual’s score on an intelligence or aptitude test depends partly on his or her genetic makeup, it also reflects a multitude of environmental influences” (p. 56). Thus, such tests are racially biased estimates of the innate traits that most laypeople think these tests are purporting to evaluate. Fortunately, this bias can be eliminated by simply changing the names of what these tests claim to measure.

Author Shankar Vedantam, in his article How a Self-Fulfilling Stereotype Can Drag Down Performance suggests how stereotypes can affect the test performance of people who belong to a minority. He supports this claim by first giving the statistics of a study that shows how african americans score worse on a test that is given by a white person than white people taking the same test. Then he says that people who are taking the same test do worse when they are reminded that they belong to a minority. He then explains how people do not really pay attention Vedantam’s purpose is to try and show people that stereotypes can harm and actually do damage to society.

Many theories have been suggested to try to explain the low performance of Hispanic and African American students compared to their white peers. Stereotype threat theory proposes that the possibility of being judged in terms of a negative stereotype in a particular domain negatively affects one’s performance. African American students are even more vulnerable to this social-psychological threat that occurs when students anticipate the possibility of fulfilling a negative stereotype. Some of the effects of stereotype threat include anxiety, low academic standards and low test scores. (Steele,

Stereotyping a person because of their race is a harmful byproduct in our society. Some racial stereotypes are all Caucasian people are racist, all Asians are geniuses, all African Americans are good at sports, and all Hispanics are illegal immigrants. The stereotype of all Caucasian people are racist originated from the Jim Crow era and slavery era. The stigma of discrimination in the South has left an everlasting impression and stereotype upon white people. Now Caucasian people are categorized for being something they aren’t, and no matter how much philanthropy one may do it will never be enough to take away that stereotype. Another belief or stereotype is that all Asians are geniuses. Asian students are stereotyped to be exceedingly smart in the sciences, maths, and arts. One may say how can this stereotype be negative, well a person of Asian descent may be held to higher expectations than they can handle, and if they don’t meet those expectations then they might be seen as a failure. Another stereotype is that all African Americans are good at sports. This stereotype is harmful because now African Americans are categorized as athletes putting them at a

Results from numerous studies suggest that African Americans are likely to experience stereotype threat related to performance in Caucasian dominated tasks. Steele & Aronson (1995) conducted a study that examined the effects of stereotype threat of African Americans on standardized tests. The participants included African American and Caucasian Stanford University students who completed a modified version of the verbal GRE examination (Steele & Aronson, 1995). Participants were randomized into two testing groups, the diagnostic condition, which tested intellectual ability and exposure to stereotype threat, and the non-diagnostic condition, which involved laboratory problem solving tasks unrelated to stereotype threat (Steele & Aronson, 1995).

Is it possible that the way society sees a group can influence how that group performs on tests of intelligence? According to the Stereotype Threat Theory, it can. Stereotype Threat Theory “refers to the conscious or unconscious belief that one belongs to a group stereotypically known for specific performance deficits. The hypothesis is that these beliefs lead to suboptimal performance on tasks specific to the stereotype” (Stoet 94). Stereotype threat leads to a large gap between privileged, un-stereotyped groups and affected groups in society with regards to jobs, education, and social interactions. This gap comes from stereotyped groups feeling they need to act in the way society tells them to, creating societal “chains” on these groups, essentially an unstated law telling them what they can and cannot do. This is because stereotype threat causes groups to identify with what society provides their status to be Experiments show commonly stereotyped groups perform worse on intellectual tests they are told their group generally does bad on. Therefore, commonly stereotyped groups suffer from the stereotype threat on intellectual tests.

Asian students do not always have positive impacts from positive stereotypes because they are stressed out and lose motivations when they do not meet the high expectations. People more likely doubt Black students’ intelligence or are indifferent whether they need help or not because they unconsciously think that Black students do not have potential. These different types of stereotypes make both Asian American students and Black students feel unworthy and not valuable. These feelings directly lead them to fail or do poorly at school. Especially, stereotypes have negative impacts on the development of the young students who are still in the process of identifying themselves or their egos and

There have been many studies on stereotype threat and self-esteem and their negative effects on task performance. These studies have focused primarily on minorities such as women, blacks, Latinos and Asians and have found that stereotype threat and self-esteem have influenced negatively in task performance. Steele (1997) investigated how self-esteem and stereotype threat affects task performance and has found that most of task failures have to do with the individual social environment. For instance, a study was conducted in which black students completed a difficult task with either a black or white experimenter. The task was described as intelligent test (Steele & Aronson, 1995). When the experimenter was white, the student performed more

This concern can have ironic effects on performance and behavior that inadvertently increase an individual’s likelihood of confirming the stereotype. In their seminal research on this phenomenon, demonstrated that when the stereotype that Blacks are low in intelligence is salient, Black students underperform relative to White students on standardized tests.” (Najdowski 564) Therefore if Najdowski were to discuss this research question, she would elaborate on the fact that really the stress that the victim and the person who stereotypes is great, as due to stereotype threat, the victim would subconsciously act in such a way that conforms with the claims of the stereotype, while those who do stereotype will see the pattern, which will in turn make it even the more difficult for them to control this forced habit.

There is a relationship between intelligence and culture because intelligence is culturally shaped and defined and some cultures support and identify it as very vital in the context of social and ecological aspects. In the early years, there was a bias towards intelligence tests because they used English language and culture. The formation of Wesler Adult Intelligence Scale, Fourth Addition (WAIS,IV) in 2008 by David Wesler was meant to minimise the bias. According to Westen, Burton and Kowalski (2006), intelligence assists human beings to take control of their lives and it varies cross culturally because the power dynamics differ in each society and this leads to differences in behaviour and line of thinking. These authors describe intelligence as multifaceted, functional and can be defined by culture because it is universal and studying intelligence using different culture as a sample that can be used to question Western ideas about intelligence with some emphasis on the assessment of skills and abilities using culturally appropriate methods (Benson, 2003)

The stereotypes derived from ethnic differences are a crucial source of inequality found in education outcomes. According to Steele and Aronson (1995, p. 808), the concept of stereotype threat refers to the condition of individuals at risk of conforming to the negative stereotypes associated with them, which lead to self-characterisation. This analysis of stereotype threat is important because ethnicity plays a role in reproducing unequal academic performances. For instance, past research has identified poorer mathematical performance in white men who were confronted with the stereotype of Asian superiority in maths, compared to those without such confrontation (Aronson et al. 1999, pp. 37-38). Similarly, a study has proven how the cultural stereotype of black’s intellectual inferiority is an affecting factor to the academic performances of African American college students, as they perform poorer when stereotype was reinforced (Steele & Aronson 1995). These studies contend how ethnicity plays a part in categorising individuals into separate identities, which have the ability to generate inequality in educational outcomes. Additionally, the different cultural orientations of certain ethnic groups may either encourage or discourage an individual’s academic achievements (Kao & Thompson 2003, p. 419). To illustrate, in the United States (US), Asians represent the 54 per cent of individuals with bachelor’s degree, whereas Hispanics reported the lowest

However, the effects of stereotype effect on learning relating to performance are not too clear. In a series of studies described in a paper by Ganley, Mingle, Ryan, Ryan, and Perry (2013), researchers examined gender stereotype threat effects on math ability between on grade school students by giving a math test. Consistent between the three studies performed, the results found that there was no significant difference between the groups exposed and not exposed to the stereotype effect but they did find a slight main effect for gender - male scoring higher than female on their math test in two out of three of the studies (Ganley et al, 2013). This leads to the conclusion that either there is no measurable performance effect due to stereotype effect, or that there already stereotype effect has already taken hold on some of the participants. In the second of a series of experiments by Rydell, Rydell, and Boucher (2010), the experimenters taught female participants a novel mathematical operation and manipulated exposure to a negative gender stereotype threat, difficulty of the test and time spent studying. The results of the study suggest when learning a novel task, exposure to stereotype threat may influence how quickly the task can be accurately performed (Rydell et al, 2010). However, the data suggested that stereotype threat depended on the difficulty of the problem itself (Rydell et al, 2010). This is consistent with what most people would think. It would be

Over time, the tests were standardized to correspond to a priori conceptions of intelligence by including items that correlated well with school performance. Test items that differentiated between gender