Cultural Biases in Intelligence Testing Essay

Intelligence testing can be a useful means of measuring certain skills. However, intelligence tests are highly contextualized and also have the potential to be culturally biased. Although intelligence tests are “here to stay,” they can be administered, adapted, and used in ways that fairer and more representative of a diverse population (Ford, 2005). One of the ways intelligence testing can be culturally biased is that there are different types of intelligence, and some cultures favor some types more than others. According to Benson (2003), Western cultures—namely those located in North America and Western Europe—tend to favor categorization and rational debate over synthesis, collaboration, and complexity. Likewise, most non-Western cultures including those in Africa and Asia value social skills intelligence and also practical intelligence far more than Western societies (Benson, 2003). Cultural bias may also be evident in the ways children from families with high cultural capital may have access to the cognitive frameworks needed to perform better on intelligence testing. Therefore, the substantive content of the intelligence test may be culturally constrained.

Another issue with cultural bias in intelligence testing has to do with context and test administration. Some of the types of intelligence tests administered in American schools are abstract, but “people who are unable to solve complex problems in the abstract can often solve them when they are presented in a familiar context,” (Benson, 2003). Contextualizing questions or administering the test using different tools or environmental cues can be helpful. For example, Young (2013) found that test takers perform “better in the medium to which they were more accustomed,” such as pencil and paper versus oral tests. Cultural bias may also be an issue when it is considered alongside socio-economic class and privilege. Test takers who have been exposed to methods of learning and practice in their home and neighborhood environments may be predisposed to high performance on intelligence tests versus their counterparts from disadvantaged families or communities. Finally, intelligence testing could be culturally biased in terms of how the results are used. Most intelligence tests can be considered “high stakes,” in that performance on a single test early in life may guarantee placement in a gifted program (Ford, 2005). Tracking students using intelligence tests can therefore lead to systematic bias throughout the school system.

Warne, Yoon, & Price (2014) point out that cultural bias manifests in different ways. For example, if there is a score gap between two or more cultural groups, it will be easier to reinforce stereotypes about those groups and thereby perpetuate inequality (p. 571). Rather than point ot the intelligence tests as the problem, some educators have assumed that score gaps indicate relative superiority or inferiority…