Want to Improve Equity in IQ Testing? Start with a History Lesson.

As any mental health practitioner knows, personal history has a way of seeping into daily reality. The same principle holds true for fields of study. The history of psychology influences its current policies, practices, and perspectives. Nowhere is that more evident than in IQ testing.

Intelligence testing has a history fraught with discrimination and even oppression. Through decades of advocacy, education, and justice initiatives, change is happening, but inequities still exist in the way we measure intelligence and use assessment data.

Linda McGhee, JD, PsyD, is at the forefront of the movement to make psychological, educational, and intelligence testing more equitable. She is the co-founder of the Multicultural Assessment Conference, a forum for professionals pursuing greater skill in evaluating people who are culturally and linguistically diverse. And she is host of the upcoming WPS ProLearn™ webinar “Reconsidering Intelligence Tests for Multicultural Populations in Schools,” in which she explores the history of intelligence testing in the U.S., the intentions of credited inventors like Alfred Binet, and guidance for equity-focused assessment practices.  

Understanding a History of Testing Injustice 

“When we look at the history of the IQ test, we see that Mr. Binet created a test merely to measure where fifth graders were in school,” Dr. McGhee says. Despite Binet’s warnings about the potential misuse of IQ tests, when these measures began widespread use in the U.S. they quickly became instruments of discrimination in biased systems.

Intelligence tests have been used to support racist hierarchies in which some citizens benefitted, and others suffered profoundly. IQ test scores have been used to:

• determine who would be allowed to immigrate or seek asylum (Garland, 2006); 
• funnel students into substandard educational “tracks” (Kanaya, 2019);
• justify the death penalty in criminal cases (Sanger, 2015); and
• select thousands of people for involuntary sterilization in the U.S. (National Human Genome Research Institute, 2022).

“That’s the context,” Dr. McGhee explains. “We’re not just going into a room and testing a child. We’re testing in the context of history that cannot be ignored by clinicians.” 

Addressing Current Inequities 

In recent years, many intelligence tests have been reviewed, revised, and re-normed in wider, more representative populations. Even so, the outdated racial and ethnic hierarchies these tests informed are still contributing to health and education inequities today. 

Professional organizations such as the American Psychological Association recognize the historic and persistent damage. Organizational leaders urge practitioners to study the past and move toward a more inclusive, comprehensive view of intelligence. While the list below is not comprehensive, these assessment strategies are a starting place for building more equitable intelligence assessments.  

1. Evaluate each person in context.

Culture is known to affect several cognitive processes, including problem solving, auditory processing, language proficiency, and decision-making speed, among other skills. Researchers say “school psychologists in both research and practice should focus more on examining the broad abilities and subprocesses…from an equity perspective” (Holden & Tanenbaum, 2023).  

Dr. McGhee adds, “We now know that race and ethnicity have a been a proxy for socioeconomics, having less access to quality education, and healthcare. We thought we were measuring IQ, but part of IQ is what you’ve been exposed to and the kind of life you’ve led before you come into Dr. McGhee’s office for that IQ test.” 

2. Take a strengths-based approach.

Deficit thinking is sometimes described as the idea that differences in performance usually stem from personal strengths or weaknesses instead of external influences. Researchers think that deficit thinking may reinforce stereotypes and hide individual variations within groups (Holder & Ziong, 2023).

“We need to be aware of looking for gifts and taking ourselves out of the deficit model,” Dr. McGhee says. Instead, she recommends developing a “habit of describing children and what they’re good at and using language that talks about challenges but also talks about strengths.”  

3. Examine your own perspectives and practices. 

Implicit biases are often described as “mental shortcuts” people take when interacting with others. People in helping professions are not immune from them—and they often lead to inequities in health care and education.

“As clinicians, we want to believe that because we are in helping professions that we don’t have those kinds of unconscious processes—but the existence of these unconscious biases has been proven over and over,” Dr. McGhee says.

For example, a 2023 scoping review found that persistent biases were “widespread amongst health professionals.” In this review, racial biases shaped practitioners’ expectations for patient behavior, the language they used to describe patients’ compliance with treatment, and the amount of “verbal dominance” they used when communicating with their patients (Meidert et al., 2023). Learning about racially based health disparities and cultural competence can reduce these biases, especially when learning is coupled with strategies that change the environment, such as increasing the amount of interracial contact clinicians and educators have (Vela et al., 2022). 

4. Be aware of the uses of testing documents.

The results of intelligence testing can have profound and long-lasting impacts on the lives of clients, students, and their families. For that reason, it’s especially important for clinicians and educators to use care when identifying conditions and making recommendations. It’s also vital that families understand how reports can be used to help or hinder their goals. 

“The testing document should be a living advocacy document,” advises Dr. McGhee. “That document is going to go someplace—into an IEP room, to an employer. So be a smart, culturally aware conduit for your client, taking them through the processes before and after the testing. All of this goes into becoming a culturally aware practitioner.” 

Key Messages

The history of IQ testing is troubling—and there is ample evidence that scores on intelligence tests are still used in ways that harm many of the people they are supposed to help. Fortunately, there is also some evidence that clinicians, educators, and researchers are taking steps to define and measure intelligence in ways that are more equitable to everyone.

“The good news is that we’re learning about more various groups and IQs,” says Dr. McGhee. “The gaps between races are closing. And we also understand that what we are measuring encompasses socioeconomics, quality of education, opportunities in the home, where you live in this country (because school funding is based on home taxes), health care, food, and trauma—all of this goes into what a child could score on a certain test.”