Transcript Intelligence

Intelligence and IQ
Current Controversy Delinquency, Race, IQ
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What does IQ really measure?
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Innate factors?
Learned factors?
Academic achievement, reading ability, testwiseness?
Is IQ culturally biased?
If there are innate differences, are they caused by
genetics or the environment?
IQ and Crime
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Mental deficiencies  crime
IQ expresses numerical differences in “mental abilities”
Early 1900’s, Simon and Binet, France
– Large number of everyday tasks, by difficulty
 Age levels assigned to tasks
– “Mental age” based on tasks that test-takers can complete
– IQ = Mental age/chronological age X 100
 For example: Test taker is 9-years old, can complete tasks
for a 9-year old, IQ=100
 Smarter 9-year olds, higher IQ; duller, lower IQ
 Binet felt that persons could raise their IQ through training
IQ Testing in America
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Unlike Binet, Americans felt that IQ was fixed (inborn)
Early purpose to sort people into appropriate roles
IQ’s above 115 appropriate for the professions
Identify the subnormal, institutionalize them to prevent reproduction
Goddard
– For an adult, a mental age 13 is the lower limit of normalcy,
mental age 12 is “feeble-minded”
– In one study 70 percent of incarcerated inmates were found to
be feeble-minded
– Goddard - feeble-minded persons are potential criminals,
should be institutionalized & not reproduce
Studies in America
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WWI, military used age 12 & below as disqualifying for service
– 37% of whites and 89% of blacks were disqualified, meaning
that nearly half the population was “feeble-minded”
Goddard’s reaction
– He changed his mind
– Cannot equate IQ tests with native abilities
– Feeble-mindedness can be remedied by education
Later studies
– No difference in IQ scores for prisoners & draftees
– Cannot conclude that most criminals are feeble-minded
1967 - William Shockley
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IQ measures a “fundamental social capacity”
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Differences between Afro-Americans and EuroAmericans due to genetic differences
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Differences in IQ explain differences in poverty and
in crime rates
After Shockley
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1969 article by Arthur Jensen
– IQ measures a factor important in Western industrialized
societies
– 80 percent of differences due to genetics, rather than the
environment
1976, 1987 articles by Robert Gordon
– Variations in delinquency rates best explained by IQ
– Social class does not explain away the relationship (IQ a better
predictor of delinquency than social class)
1977 article by Hirschi and Hindelang
– IQ as important as race & social class in predicting delinquency
– IQ has been ignored because of bias against it
“Verbal” -v- “Performance” IQ
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For most, the scores are similar
Delinquents have large gaps, with poor verbal but “basically”
normal performance IQ’s
Poor verbal ability  Delinquency
– Yes but there’s an intervening variable
 Poor verbal ability  school problems  delinquency
 Poor verbal ability  poor problem-solving abilities 
delinquency
– No - it’s a spurious relationship. The actual cause is...
 Scholastic underachievement  delinquency
 Social conditions  delinquency
Three competing concepts
of what IQ really measures
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Abstract reasoning/problem-solving ability, largely inherited (nature)
– May be affected by environmental factors
– Low IQ parents may poorly rear children, holding back their IQ’s
Qualities related to the dominant culture (cultural bias)
General abilities, largely determined by environment (nurture)
– Performance may be affected in low-income areas
 Ineffective child-rearing
 Poor schooling
 Weak family supports
Personality
What is “personality”?
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Individual emotional and behavioral attributes and
qualities (other than intellectual ability) that remain
relatively constant
– Aggressiveness
– Impulsivity
– Introversion/extroversion
– Friendly/hostile
– Cooperative/uncooperative
Personality studies
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1950 – Gluecks
– Compared 500 delinquent and 500 non-delinquent boys
– Mix of characteristics was different
 Delinquents more extroverted, impulsive, hostile
 Delinquents less fearful of failure, less deferential to authority
– Predictors of delinquency
 Social background
 Character traits (Roscharch test)
 Personality traits (psychiatric interview)
MMPI demonstrates similar results
– 550 statements used for psychiatric diagnoses
– Scale 4 used to predict delinquency. Has been criticized because...
 Some items are delinquency (“when I was young I stole things”)
 Other items are non-delinquency (“I like school”)
 Ignores environment
Antisocial Personality Disorder
(psychopathy)
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APA DSM defines (doesn’t explain) criminal and delinquent behavior
APA DSM-4 - Antisocial personality disorder (APD): “pervasive pattern
of disregard and violation of the rights of others that begins in childhood
and continues to adulthood”.
– At least 3 characteristics: repeated lawbreaking, repeated lying
and deceit, impulsivity, repeated physical fights, repeated failure to
work, lack of remorse
– Characteristics must be: inflexible, maladaptive, persistent, cause
significant functional impairment or personal distress
Adult antisocial behavior (criminal behavior in absence of APD)
Some gang researchers see “core” gang members as sociopaths who
use the mob to act out their own aggression
Mc Cord - recidivism rates of delinquents diagnosed as psychopaths
only slightly worse than those for others
Psychiatric prediction of
future dangerousness
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10-year study by Kozol, Boucher and Garofalo of high-risk offenders
being released from prison
– Psychiatric evaluation failed to predict two-thirds of subsequent
violent offending
– Two-thirds of those predicted to become violent did not
Monahan – clinical prediction difficult, requires that individual’s general
situation not change
 Compare context of past offending with new circumstances
 Time since, severity and frequency of past violence
 Yields probability for persons of like demographic
characteristics
“Actuarial” prediction of
crime and delinquency
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Move away from predicting whether individuals will commit violence
– Actuarial prediction: what factors are associated with an increased
likelihood of future offending?
Best predictor of future delinquency is early childhood behavior
– Disruptive classroom behavior, aggressiveness, lying, dishonesty
(tautology problem)
– May be affected by personality characteristics not measured by
testing
Other predictors of future delinquency
– Poor parental supervision
– Separation from parents
– Offending by parents and siblings
– Low intelligence and educational attainment
Optimism about the possibility of intervention
Impulsivity and crime
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Definition
– High level of activity, impatience for rewards, seek immediate
gratification, easily distracted
Wilson & Herrnstein : Impulsivity  Conscience  Crime
– Crime is naturally rewarding
– We must be restrained by internal inhibitions (conscience),
developed in early childhood through family rearing
– Key factor: considering long-term rather than just the short-term
consequences of one’s actions
Contributing factors
– Poor child-rearing produces weak inhibitions
– Membership in deviant subcultures
– Mass media (modeling), learning one is a “victim”
– Economic system/legitimate opportunities to gain rewards
– Schools
Impulsivity and persistence
of criminal behavior
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Walters – “lifestyle criminals”
– Irresponsibility, self-indulgence, chronic violation of social rules
– Feelings of entitlement, being a “victim”
– Power orientation – “dog-eat-dog world”
– Superoptimism – feeling of invulnerability
– Cognitive indolence – not paying attention to life details
– Discontinuity – failing to set goals, carry out commitments
Moffitt – “life-course persistent offenders” - engaging in anti-social
behavior at every stage of life
– Early neurophysiological problems: nutrition, mother’s drug use,
birth complications,
– Home situation: child abuse, lack of affection & supervision
– Disrupts schooling, less ability for legitimate rewards
Caspi, Moffitt et al study of “crime-proneness”
– Children who experience excessive anger, anxiety, irritability may
be “quicker on the draw” (more impulsive)
Policy implications
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Impulsivity seems to be best psychological candidate as a cause of
crime and delinquency (author’s favorite)
Some theories (e.g., Moffitt) specify causes of behavior (e.g., early
psych. problems, poor parenting) & suggesting interventions
– Clinical
– Parenting classes
– Special education
Author downplays psychological causes
– IQ differences & school achievement can supposedly be explained
by environment alone
– Methodological problems – attaching personality labels simply
because of differences in rates of offending
“Crime” is a societal definition, while “behavior” is the end result of a
complex individual process
– Difficulty in using personality to explain crime in general