PRETEND INTELLIGENCE 75indication of superior strains or races.” But, he wondered, how do we
mea sure such ability when we do not know what exactly it is?
Th e solution he adopted has been the hallmark of intelligence testing
ever since. First he devised some simple short tests that he imagined
would reveal individuals’ mental functioning. Th ese included sensory
discrimination, memory, perceptual judgment, reaction time, and so
on. He administered them to volunteers and recorded individual diff er-
ences. But how could he prove that these were really diff erences in intel-
ligence? “Th e sets of mea sures should be compared with an in de pen dent
estimate of the man’s powers,” he said. However, the only “in de pen dent
mea sure” of cognitive ability he could think of was social reputation or
class. “Is reputation a fair test of natu ral ability?” he asked. “It is the only
one I can employ,” he concluded, seemingly suspecting that this was
second best.^2
Th is is, of course, an audacious inversion of logic. It means that we are
to take people’s positions on the social scale as a true mea sure of natu ral
ability, and the test score as a mea sure of it insofar as it refl ects such posi-
tions. If test scores parallel such status, then the tests are mea sur ing
intelligence. As Earl Hunt put it in 1983, “We are presumed to know who
is intelligent and to accept a test as a mea sure of intelligence if it identi-
fi es such persons.”^3
In eff ect, then, Galton’s logic was simply that diff erences in existing
social rank and esteem are manifestly ones of intelligence. Any set of tests
that reproduces that rank order (or correlates with it) can also pass as
a test of intelligence. It did not seem to occur to him that a person’s social
rank may be a consequence of unequal wealth and privilege rather than
of intelligence as such.
However, the self- fulfi lling logic is, and remains, the fundamental
strategy of the intelligence testing movement. Th e gloss over test validity
has plagued IQ testing and its ancillary works ever since. Of course, the
quantitative nature of test scores inspired psychologists searching for
scientifi c respectability. Unfortunately for them, they had to wait a little
longer, because scores on Galton’s tests did not actually correlate with
social class as he had hoped. Th e development of the strategy into a suc-
cessful test awaited the invention of diff er ent kinds of test items.
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