Intelligence quotient
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Race and intelligence is a controversial field which seeks to study whether or not human intelligence can vary between races, and possibly to what extent.
Some recent controversy surrounding intelligence and race focuses primarily on the results of intelligence testing studies conducted since the 1950s and onward in the United States, Western Europe, and other industrialized nations. There are also controversies over the nature of race, the purpose and quantifiability of intelligence, and whether the intelligence quotient (IQ) is a culturally biased measure thereof.
The contemporary debate focuses on the nature, causes, and rectifications of ethnic differences in intelligence test scores. The question of the relative roles of nature and nurture in causing individual and group differences in cognitive ability is seen as fundamental to understanding the debate. However, to this date, genome projects and other biological studies have found no genetic differences which cause differences in intelligence capacity or differences in neural wiring between humans based on race. Theories and hypotheses on racial differences in intelligence are based on circumstantial correlations in test score and socio-economic achievement differences and not on genetic or neural evidence. However, correlations are generally not accepted in the scientific world as "evidence" as generally only concrete causation is accepted as scientific evidence.
