Here’s an IQ history test. Who came up with the IQ test and why?

A British scientist by the name of Sir Francis Galton is known as the grandfather of intelligence tests. He played around during the formation of modern day psychology during the 19^th century. Galton studied the relation between genetic heredity and human ability. He though that how we think was based on our physical characteristics.

In other words he thought that if you were a great physical specimen you also had superior mental abilities. Much of the development of the IQ test was expanded upon by Alfred Binet. Binet was appointed by the government of France, in 1904 to find a way to differentiate school children who were intellectually superior to those who weren’t. Binet had a passion to learn why some people seemed to fare better in school and life, than others. He administered his test to children in Paris and created the beginnings of the IQ test, based on the results of testing.

The actual terminology of intelligent quotient was announced by a professor of psychology by the name of Lewis Terman. Terman was hired by the US Army in 1917 as one of seven psychologists assembled together as part of a team to devise a way of sorting, over two million draftees, into job that suited them. Terman enlisted the help of one of his students to construct an intelligence test. The student’s name was Arthur Otis.

The seven member psychology team hired by the army decided to use Otis’s test. His test was given to a test group 4000 soldiers. It seemed to work as the army tested over 2 million draft picks by 1917 during the height of World War One.

Intelligent testing became the norm for measuring the smarts of people during the 1960’s. In the 1970’s the test became less and less popular because it was learned that the test scored could be manipulated by how it was administered.  However the evolution of the IQ test continued.

Today we see various forms of testing administered in college entrance exams in the SAT and ACT.  Most colleges use these tests as a deciding factor of whether or not somebody is accepted to their post secondary educational facilities.