In the 1960s psychologist Hans Eysenck published two popular books on IQ testing, then still a hot topic, centre stage in the nature/nurture debate.
Check Your Own IQ carried an introduction which discussed the essence of what it is that IQ tests set out to measure, illustrated by a question in the form of a story.
A dwarf lives on the 20th floor of a New York skyscraper. Each morning he gets into the lift, pushes the correct button, is taken to ground level & goes off to work.
Each evening he comes home, into the lift, presses the button for the 10th floor where he gets out. He continues his upward journey via the staircase.
Why?
Imaginative answers, such as ‘To keep fit’ or ‘Because he visits his mistress who lives on the 10th floor’ will not earn you good marks.
The tester of IQ is looking for those who understand that the required answer makes use only of the information which is helpfully contained within the question.
So it really does matter that he is a dwarf. Once you realise this you will reply that he is too short to reach up to the button for the 20th floor – 10 is the highest numbered button he can reach.
A burst of angry irritation made me fling aside the book – not in a fit of politically correct reaction against the use of the word dwarf, but at this final piece of proof that, contrary to what we had always been told, IQ tests do not measure some fundamental underlying ability to reason which is independent of culture or general knowledge, & so can be used to make valid inference about differences between groups.
In those days, even if your language was English & you were familiar with the idea of a skyscraper, it was perfectly possible that you had never been in a lift, especially not one which was self-service, automatically controlled with buttons. I lived in a country which had only one building – built within the last few years – with such a lift. It was all of four storeys tall. Locals used to go in simply for the experience of going up in the lift – just to the first floor, which was as far as public access could take them. (A decade later I observed a similarly unique building - the Bali Holiday Inn, then & perhaps still, the only structure which was ‘taller than a coconut tree’- which actually had organised tours for locals keen to experience the lift).
And if, like me, you tended to think that lift buttons were arranged in two vertical columns, & were used to the English system of numbering floors, you might wonder why he did not go to the 11th floor.
Even more importantly it taught me how motivation can have a major effect in one’s ability to perform well in these – or any – tests. To this day I flinch at the very idea of being asked to undertake one, in complete contrast to the enjoyment I used to get from meeting the challenge. These days I have much more sympathy for those who feel mutinous when asked to do ‘stupid’ or ‘useless’ things at school – it is not hard to think of tasks or activities which would have made me react that way at that age.
We studied IQ testing as part of 6th form General Studies. One boy in the class specialised in thinking up ingenious , but usually laboured, reasons for choosing an answer which was not the one obviously expected by the tester. He was also an annoyingly inveterate punster, but that was no bar to his getting a place at Cambridge.
A friend who teaches English & drama maintains that she truly prefers teaching the no-hopers in Class 4G to the A* girls in the 6th form. This on the grounds that a question about Romeo & Juliet will produce 30 different answers from the supposedly less able group but 28 identical answers out of the 30 from the latter, who are smart enough to know what answer is required & to repeat it dutifully.
