Intelligence Is (Not) What Intelligence Tests Test (After E. G. Boring, 1923)

Reviews the book, IQ: A smart history of a failed idea by Stephen Murdoch (see record 2007-01670-000). The reviewer agrees that this book is a smartly written, informative story for the general public, if perhaps not for specialists. As such, it brings together many of the episodes of this history and adds some interesting sidelights, anecdotes, and judgments here and there to make it a very readable book, ending with a couple of surprises. In over a dozen chapters, beginning a century and a half ago, the book covers the major stages, figures, and episodes in the development of testing, together with its repercussions in society. This book also adds “a good deal to the sociocultural conditions behind the statistical psychometric arguments.” (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2007 APA, all rights reserved)