PSYA02H3 Chapter Notes - Chapter 9: James Mckeen Cattell, Sexual Sterilization Act Of Alberta, Lewis Terman

• School: UTSC
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYA02H3
• Professor: Steve Jordens

Document Summary

Forced sterilization -> not an uncommon practice in canada and united. States, sexual sterilization act in 1928 allowed doctors to sterilize people deemed genetically unfit without consent, one of criteria that could qualify a person was getting a lower that 70 score on an iq test. Calculated by comparing the person"s test score with the average score for people the same age, one first had to establish the norm (psychologists gave out tests to lots of people), iq of 100 is still average. Reasoning indices) and cognitive proficiency index (cpi, based on the working memory and processing speed subtests) Theory of evolution allowed social visionaries to assume that caucasian"s are genetically superior, social darwinism gave rise to eugenics ( good genes ) (francis galton coined term, made an extensive study of the heritability of intelligence) Many people viewed eugenics as a way to improve human gene pool, good breeding .