PSY 4130 Lecture 11: Evolution, Intelligence, and Nature v Nurture
5 Jun 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Lecture 11: Evolution, Intelligence, and Nature v Nurture
Galton: intelligence is related to the acuity of our senses, because all of our knowledge of the
world comes through our senses. He believed (a) that sensory acuity was directly related to
intelligence, and (b) that because sensory acuity was inherited, so was intelligence.
To test this notion, he looked for patterns of intelligence in families, comparing the
percentage of eminence among the children of famous parents to the corresponding
percentage among the general population. In 1969 he published the results in Heredity
Genius: An Inquiry into Its Laws and Consequences.
Anthropometry is the measurement of humans. He developed a lab which he measured a
variety of characteristics in over 9000 people. Aside from body dimensions, he also measured
grip strength, weight, lung capacity, etc.
Because intelligence is a heritable trait, he asked if it would not be possible to improve the
general intelligence of the human population by encouraging bright people to breed.
Eugenics
• selective abortions
• ethnic cleansing/genocide
• arranged marriage
Galton: Nature v Nurture
Argued that English schools should adopt the model of Scottish schools, effectively arguing
that the environment has a role in shaping intellegence.
This created a framework for the nature-nurture debate as he went between both.
In his later writing, he argued for twin studies as a useful method, including testing identical
twins raised together in comparison to those raise apart.
• developed a work association test to measure unconscious feelings, to be later used in
psychology by Wundt and psychoanalysis by Jung
• with respect to psychoanalysis, both free association and uncorkious motivation owe a
debt to work association
• moreover, this task, along with Galton's work on imagery, has contributed to the
development of cognition
• asking people to recall images from a specific event in their daily lives, he found a wide
range of imaging ability
• developed the initial scatter plot and pearson correlation
Alfred Binet
• he began studying the intellectual development of his young children, making
observations which pre-dated those of Binet
• the French government appointed Simon and Binet to study the challenges of delayed
Document Summary
Lecture 11: evolution, intelligence, and nature v nurture. Galton: intelligence is related to the acuity of our senses, because all of our knowledge of the world comes through our senses. He believed (a) that sensory acuity was directly related to intelligence, and (b) that because sensory acuity was inherited, so was intelligence. To test this notion, he looked for patterns of intelligence in families, comparing the percentage of eminence among the children of famous parents to the corresponding percentage among the general population. In 1969 he published the results in heredity. Genius: an inquiry into its laws and consequences. He developed a lab which he measured a variety of characteristics in over 9000 people. Aside from body dimensions, he also measured grip strength, weight, lung capacity, etc. Because intelligence is a heritable trait, he asked if it would not be possible to improve the general intelligence of the human population by encouraging bright people to breed.
