Customer Reviews

Bias in Mental Testing

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Jensen's "Bias in Mental Testing" has only one object: to examine and evaluate the common charge that the reason certain groups have lower average intelligence test scores is because the tests used to measure that intelligence are "culturally biased." It is not an effort to prove the "superiority" or "inferiority" of any racial group, nor is it in any meaningful sense "hereditarian," and its misuse by racialist groups, harped on by one reviewer who doesn't seem to have read the book himself, is completely irrelevant. In over 700 pages of scholarly and judicious writing, Jensen effectively demolishes the comfortable rationalization that "cultural" or other bias in the tests used offers even a partial explanation for group IQ testing differences---even demonstrating for example that minority test takers still score lower on average on tests that are specifically designed to be biased culturally in favor of minority test takers. No material in this study has been superseded or effectively challenged, and the claim made by another reviewer that it is "of historical interest only" would be ridiculous if it weren't so obviously deceitful. The book is in fact essential reading for those interested in issues of human intelligence and its testing, and should not be used as a polemical football either by "racists" or "anti-racists."

Jensen's book is the best intoduction to psychometric bias I have found. When the book was written, it was the tops in the field. Now it just needs a few chapters addendum on latent-trait methods to make it complete.

Still a very well respected work among psychologists despite what Mr. isreal (see below) wants you to believe. Don't take my word for it. Search the web for this and all works by A Jensen. Modern research has still yet to refute the well founded and scientifically supported claim that there are real differences in intelligence between races. Egalitarians are driven frantic by this but nothing is more important than truth.

Dr. Jensen is one of the great educational pyschologists of our time and this is his classic treatment on a topic of IQ testing. It is enormously detailed and comprehensive which is both a virtue and a defect. There is just too much information for the casual reader. Even I had some tough going in getting through all he material contained therein. A good working knowledge of statistics is required if one is to fully appreciate the book's contents. I found I had to break out my old statistics tests in order to get through the more theoretical patches. Yet. all in all, this is a book that one can deeply respect and value and that one from which one can benefit, even though you might strongly disagree with Dr. Jensen's basic position. In his chosen field, In find him nothing less than a national treasure whose work needs a much wider audience.I suggest that, before you read this book, you first read Dr. Jensen's later work "The g-Factor," which is newer and a much more accesible introduction to the field of intelligence testing than the present volume and contains information on more current research in the field.

Superb concision and simplicity in expressing such an obfuscated subject matter in our egalitarian day and age. I'm a sixteen year old who's harbored a fascination with human cognition, specifically IQ. Before reading this book I did not have an accurate model of human cognition; I was always theorizing in vain.Reading books by charlatans like Gardner or like Guilford or Sternberg (or whomever who doesn't accnowledge g) just left me hanging as when someone does not see the light they can come up with an infinitude of possible explanations for something. The truth shall set you free.

This book engendered considerable controvery when it first came out. It was a serious attempt by the author (a respected educational psychologist and scholar) to try to unravel the relative contributions of heriditary and envirnomental factors to intelligence.

Jensen claimed in this book that Level II intelligence ( conceptual learning and problem solving) is most common in Asians and least common in blacks and is of intermediate frequency in whites. He bases this on "culture free tests" that he administered in 1962 to various minority group school-children.

Unfortunately these statements were used by others to claim that blacks are inferior to whites. Rather strangely though, nobody claimed that whites are inferior to Asians. I first came across this book when it was used by a member of Aryan Nation to buttress his thesis of white superiority.

In this context, it is rather unfortunate that Jensen's declared hero is Francis Galton, a pioneer of the intelligence testing movement. Galton historically was closely linked with the eugenics movement. Galton also had a rather unfortunate habit of referring to natives as " baboons " and "pigs" .

The book takes over 700 pages to finally deliver Jensen's conclusions. Much of the research in this book is dated.
Having been published nearly three decades ago it has been largely rendered irrelevant by work by Renzuli, Sternberg, Gardner and Carrol. Special mention should be made of Prof Leon Kamin of Princeton who has done considerable work debunking the racial -IQ-link hypothesis.

As Prof Booker Peek of Oberlin University says :
" Arthur R. Jensen, in Bias in Mental Testing, marshals a massive array of data to bolster his contention that blacks are inherently inferior to whites in terms of mental potential. In over 700 carefully crafted pages, he challenges anyone to refute his position.

Allan Chase, in The Legacy of Malthus: Scientific Racism, argued no less persuasively in almost 700 pages that there is no scientific basis to categorize any race as being inferior or superior to another."

So , finally is the book worth reading ?

Well if you are studying the history of psychology I guess that it is essential reading at a graduate level ( If might even be worth reading if you are a member of Aryan Nation ! ) Otherwise, don't waste you time, read someting that is more representative of modern scholarship.