Kantor, J. R. (1920).

Intelligence and mental tests, Journal of

Philosophy, Psychology, Scientific Method, 17, 260-268.

INTELLIGENCE AND MENTAL TESTS1

J. R. Kantor
University of Chicago

GRATIFYING at least it is to observe that psychologists are beginning to

weigh the results of work in mental tests, and to deplore in these
results the almost complete absence of returns possessing permanent
psychological value. And hopeful indeed is the discovery that the cause
of the failure of mental testing to contribute to the development of
psychology is the failure to arrive at an understanding of the nature of
the materials with which the mental tester works. 2 At this point one is
moved to comment upon the unhappy divorce between the labors of
those working with mental tests, and the interpretations of the
theoretical psychologist.
The writer fears that we do not carefully enough distinguish between
the traditional speculative psychologist, who based his work upon
assumptions, very remotely, if at all, related to concrete facts, and the
theoretical psychologist who does critically evaluate concrete
psychological facts, and suggests the direction of further observation
of them.3 Essentially, the theoretical psychologist performs the function
of a consulting scientist. To deny that the theoretical scientist is a
scientist because he does not himself conduct an experiment, provided
he is possessed of laboratory training, is exactly like denying that the
consulting engineer is an engineer because he does not himself hold
the contract to build a bridge.
The unfortunate consequence of the early assumption of the applied
psychologist, namely, that it was unnecessary to define intelligence
clearly, was the uncritical acceptance of the view that intelligence was
a permanent entity or a complete faculty. Individuals were looked upon
as analogous to chemical elements, and just as the latter were each
presumed to possess a given chemical affinity for some other
elements, so intelligence was conceived as a metapsychological
property of the person.4 In general, intelligence was looked upon as a
mental force in some manner related to a body, and which adjusted
the body to certain objects in contact with the body. Misguiding in the
extreme appears the analogy referred to, since the valence of a
chemical element is not an occult power, but a fact observed in the

combination of elements, that is, the multiple of unit charges of

positive or negative electricity which an element holds. Unfortunately,
however, the infelicitous anthropomorphic attitude with which
psychologists approached both the data of physics and psychology was
responsible for the adaption of a completely unsatisfactory view
concerning the character of intelligence. Now when we study
intelligence as an observed fact we never find any absolute essence or
faculty performing unique kinds of activities. Traces of such a view in
current psychology are probably vestiges of the theological influence
upon science, from the complete rejection of which psychology would
greatly benefit.
Intelligence is really a name or a scientific category which denotes
certain specific forms of definite reactions. Thus, an intelligent act or
intelligent behavior is comparatively a more effective adjustment
response than are other sorts. Justifiable then appears the view of
some psychologists who consider volitional, voluntary, and even habit
acts to be intelligent, while reflexes and original instincts are not. 5 In
such a view, the fact of performing an act conditioned and perhaps
improved by past experience constitutes an important factor in
intelligence.
Possessing intelligence is, then, the fact of having acquired suitable
reaction systems for the purpose of carrying out definite responses.
Expertness is precisely the possession of intelligence in this sense, and
expertness is a product of the interaction of an individual with some
particular kind of thing or condition. It is for this reason that we are
willing and unashamed to be unintelligent or even stupid concerning
facts and conditions in which we do not specialize or in which we are
not interested. Says James:6 "I, who for the time have staked my all on
being a psychologist, am mortified if others know much more
psychology than I. But I am content to wallow in the grossest ignorance
of Greek."
But here the problem arises why it is that, of two individuals who stake
their all upon being lawyers and who receive the same training, one
becomes a better lawyer than the other. Is it because the one
possesses the better innate capacity? Observations of this type require
always extremely careful analysis. In the first place, when we say a
better lawyer we must be careful to keep our psychological problem
clear of the entangling thicket of social conditions and social
judgments. We must remember that, while it may be a mark of
intelligence to enlist the aids necessary to become a good lawyer and
to seize upon every expedient working for social success, such facts
are beside the specific problem of attaining proficiency in the
understanding and the administration of legal tradition and legal
enactments.

That we can not, in such a case, completely avoid this thicket of social
conditions makes us pause. Nothing is more pertinent than the
question as to whether it is not precisely the surrounding conditions
which really make, not only for betterness in the social scale, but also
for greater intelligence of any specific sort, since the surroundings offer
the occasion to develop more and more relevant responses for legal
situations. Moreover, is it possible to speak of intelligence at all
excepting in terms of definite forms of response which have been
naturally acquired in concrete interaction with definite forms of
stimulating objects? As a matter of fact, when studying concrete
behavior the notion of an absolute general ability becomes dissipated.
And, further, what can be meant by the same legal training? Is training
merely a casual contact of a person with things producing an
indifferent effect upon him? Rather, is it not true that any present
training is a definite characteristic function of a given person because
such training depends upon previous acquisition of reaction systems?
For this reason it is almost impossible for two individuals to undergo
the same training. This fact is clearly apparent when we consider the
numerous differences in what is commonly miscalled the same
environment of two people, for instance of two members of the same
family. It follows then that if two persons are to have the same training
they must have previously acquired the same type and quantity of
reaction patterns which are relevant to the present situation. In point of
fact when we have separated the normal from the abnormal or feebleminded person, that is to say, the person of poor biological stock, we
can readily convince ourselves that intelligence is entirely the product
of a long series of cumulative trainings.
Nor is it possible to minimize the subtlety and the effectiveness of our
acquisition of reaction patterns. Perhaps this is indicated most clearly
by the fact that much of such acquisition passes for inherited talent.
Confusion of acquired response systems with hypothetical inherited
talent is exemplified in the following case. A child from early infancy is
exposed to a musical environment, in which music and its cultivation
are glorified, and as a consequence develops interests, technique,
sentiments, and other forms of reaction patterns making for
musicianship, but, in spite of this development, is looked upon as an
inheritor of musical talent.
And so if talents are essentially acquisitions we must rephrase some
popular expressions so that they will more exactly conform with the
facts. Actors and other men of talent are made more readily when they
are born into a theatrical or other characteristic environment, than
when they are brought into such an environment after having
developed in some alien milieu which made them into anything but
actors. Much light is thrown upon the intricate problems of intelligence

by the consideration that certain of the factors which contribute to the

making of a good actor are common to other occupations. Clear it is
then that the individual previously a machinist can not receive the
same training from an identical law course as the individual who spent
the corresponding time in the study of political and social history. 7 And
so while the machinist is inferior in legal intelligence we have no
indication that he is deficient in native ability.
Turning for a moment to the criterion of intelligence which is probably
most prevalent, namely, that intelligence enables us to adjust
ourselves to new situations, let us examine what is here meant by new.
Is it not an obvious fact that we are entirely helpless in the face of a
totally new situation? Psychologists unanimously agree upon this in the
dictum that we can not even conceive anything absolutely new. What
our intelligence criterion really means, then, is that, having developed
many forms of reaction systems by contact with surrounding objects
and conditions, we can now adapt ourselves to similar situations
without additional learning. The implication here is of course that the
intelligent individual is one who has acquired many of these necessary
reaction patterns.
Paradoxical as it may seem, intelligence is so decidedly not an entity or
a faculty, that we may look upon it as being precisely as much a
function (in the mathematical sense) of the environment 8 as of the
person. What is meant is this, that so little in our intelligent behavior
can be traced to an original unacquired factor that we must accredit
the environing circumstances with their full share in the development
of intelligence. And so while it is fundamentally false, on the surface it
yet seems true that women have less intelligence than men. For you
can not find women who are capable of doing many kinds of work
which men can do. The rapidly decreasing number of such examples
offers good evidence that what the lack of intelligence means in such
cases is the absence of opportunity to develop intelligence, that is to
say reaction patterns to perform certain adaptations to particular kinds
of stimulating objects and situations. Immigrant women are notoriously
less intelligent and less able to adjust themselves to their surroundings
than their husbands, provided always that the former do not become
wage earners and thus embrace the opportunity to develop more
intelligence. To the credit of mental tests be it said that to a
considerable extent it was through them that the superstition of male
superiority was exploded. And let us not forget that it was through the
definite study of actual environmental opportunity for development
that the metaphysical belief in the preeminence of the civilized mind
was dethroned.
Also we must note that the inferiority of intelligence in women and in
so-called primitive people was not a fact observed, but a religio-

politico-economic pronouncement concerning the relative values of

souls. The writer ventures the opinion that with the passing of a
subjectivistic psychology and its replacement by an extensive study of
concrete human reactions the need for a native intelligence, whether
omnicompetent, multicompetent or merely unicompetent, will
disappear.9 Such an intelligence, whether described as a general
faculty or a multiplicity of specific abilities, belongs with those
mysterious elements, the instincts, to the class of psychological
impedimenta which not only do not add to our understanding of
psychological phenomena, but actually prevent a factual study of
them.
And now we must consider what light the work on psychological tests
throws upon the problem of intelligence. A study of the actual
procedure and results of mental tests proves conclusively that such
tests are and can only be designed to measure some performance
whose achievement is the result of a previous interaction of a person
and objects (machines----materials). It is for this reason that "no test
has any significance for employment purposes until it has been tried
out on employees doing exactly the same kind of work as that for
which new applicants are to be tested later on. 10 Illuminating in the
extreme in this connection is the study of the limitations of mental
tests. What must one conclude from the fact that mental tests are of
no service in selecting executives? Should we say that mental tests do
not attempt to measure intelligence? For surely, if they did, they could
not be applied to any more directly functioning intelligence than is
found in the work of an executive. But to accept this conclusion would
mean giving up the whole problem of measuring intelligence, and this
is impossible, for the genuine usefulness of the tests indicates that
there may be degrees of intelligence, the lower ones of which may be
very readily determined. Or should we say that intelligence is an
unknowable thing, at least so far as tests are concerned, since tests
are only useful for acts which have a definitely standardized form? To
the writer it seems that the difficulty is entirely factitious and based
upon the misconception that intelligence is native.
What the inapplicability of tests to the selection of executives really
teaches us is, that all tests are performance tests based upon definite
reaction patterns and not measures of connate capacity. Now since
executive intelligence means the possession of innumerable and
complex reaction systems it is entirely to be expected that the present
development of tests should be still inadequate to meet the situation.
And, further, the student of tests must be always unable to meet this
situation if he persists in the belief that intelligence is innate, since
such a view precludes the investigation of the actual contributing
conditions which make possible complex human adjustments. To

mention just one difficulty, the applied psychologist makes too wide a
difference between moral and mental qualities, as though it were
possible completely to separate these when an employment problem is
under investigation. In this connection it is remarkable to observe upon
what slender threads are sometimes hung the belief in an absolute
intelligence factor. Thus the positive correlation between tapping, letter
crossing, and other tests is presumed to be evidence of the presence
of such a general intelligence factor.
To differentiate between mental tests and trade tests because the
former measures native ability while the latter measures acquisition is
to make an assumption not warranted by the facts of mental tests. 11
The fact is that the only difference between the two types of tests lies
in the simplicity and definiteness of the latter. It is because the
behavior investigated by the mental as over against the trade tests
shows a greater complexity and variety, and is in general more difficult
to study, that we may draw a definite line between the tests. One
might say, then, that the difference between the intelligence of an
executive and that of a machinist for a student of behavior lies in the
comparative ease with which one can get an objective measure of the
productivity of the latter. The writer is firmly convinced that with a
larger conception of mental tests their value for the selection of
executives may be vastly enhanced.
It may still be urged that the prominent individual differences to be
found in persons must be sought in some unacquired quality in the
person. We have already indicated that the probable source of such a
view is to be found in some metapsychological prejudice rather than in
observable facts. But the study of individual differences, it must be
admitted, is fraught with grave perplexities, since in actual practise it
is extremely difficult to ascertain clearly the precise points at which
certain reaction systems constituting personal traits are actually
acquired. Just how an individual has acquired a mathematical or a
general scientific or a religious cast of mind is not an easy matter to
determine. For the sake of science, however, we must plead for
perseverance contempered with caution.

Nothing is less doubtful than that there are wide differences in

intelligence, and nothing is more certain than that not every one is
capable of mastering a given problem; but is this saying more than
that intelligence once developed gives one an advantage in that it now
can be employed? Certain it is also that the advantage one has over
others in the possession of intelligence is due only to a series of
concrete empirical events, once it is admitted that the persons under
discussion are all of normal stock.

When once we determine to abjure the quick and easy way of

accounting for the complex facts of psychological phenomena by
referring them to occult causes or analogical symbols 12 and insist upon
the study of concrete reactions, our way lies open to investigations
which promise satisfactory solutions to our genuine psychological
problems. In the consideration that the psychological reaction pattern
is a mode of response of a living organism to complex surrounding
conditions, we find the suggestion that the prepsychological 13 problem
of individual differences lies precisely in the character of the biological
stock of the individual. Thus, for example, the neuroglandular
organization of the person is of enormous influence in the
determination of his psychological conduct. But although there is an
inexhaustible source of such material, it is, as yet, practically
untouched by scientific investigation. The same importance for the
study of individual differences of action is attached to the perfection
and degree of development of the receptor systems, as for example
the rle played by a specific condition of the auditory apparatus in the
total complex of musical ability, or the qualities of the visual apparatus
in mechanical or esthetic drawing. Not only does such information
concerning the biological stock of the individual throw light upon the
differentiation of persons into normal and abnormal, but it also
illuminates the only possible source of inherited individual traits and
differences. Undoubtedly, the complex and complete organization of
the actual human individual when once known to a satisfactory degree
will clear up many important problems of temperament, character,
capacity, traits, and genius. The gain involved in awaiting such factual
development is no less, let us repeat, than the acquisition of definite
scientific information as over against unfounded and useless
speculation.
In sum, the failure of the work of mental tests to yield principles
leading to a wider extension of knowledge concerning psychological
phenomena is due to the acceptance of the assumption that
intelligence, or what is measured by the tests, is a mental factor and
not a specific mode of adjustmental response. Thus scant attention is
paid to the precise facts upon which the tests have their actual
bearing. In consequence the work of mental testing merely leads to
more work, but to no organized accomplishment of definite merit. To
place emphasis upon the actual response as it can be studied will
mean not only the avoidance of necessarily unfruitful attempts to seize
upon a hypothetical faculty, but a positive understanding of actual
psychological phenomena. The new direction which psychology would
thus take would make superfluous such speculations as to whether the
organization of the "mind" is such that its acts are related or unrelated.
Instead, we would learn what the facts seem clearly to indicate,
namely, that intelligent acts, as all psychological acts, must be

specific; for our reaction patterns are definite, concrete responses. But,
since our environment is more or less uniform and homogeneous, the
acquisition of many response patterns must mean that our general
capacity to respond to things is increased. Changes and improvements
in the mode of responding to our surroundings are induced by
variations in the objects and their relations, to which we find it
necessary to adapt ourselves. In the acquisition of numerous patterns
the person ipso facto takes on the qualities of general intelligence,
among which are variety, independence, agility, and rapidity of
response.

Footnotes
1 The thesis here presented constitutes the substance of a paper read
before the Psychological Seminar in the University of Minnesota, 191617.
2 Cf. Ruml, this JOURNAL, XVII, p.57.
3 For a statement concerning the relative position of the theoretical
and practical scientist cf. Rignano, Scientific Synthesis (1918), Ch. 1.
4 No doubt the social psychologist would interpret the doctrine of
permanent intelligence as a philosophical reflection of divine and
natural rights, of accidentally invested special interests, which
developed as a theoretical justification of some pecuniary, political or
social status quo.
5 This is not to say that reflexes and instincts are unconscious.
6 Principles of Psychology, I, 310.
7 We assume of course that the student of history has profited by his
study.
8 In the sense of conditions offering opportunity for developing
reaction systems.
9 One of the unique products of a soul theory of intelligence is the
conception of innate mental weakness with some specific superior
ability.
10 Link, Employment Psychology, p.19.
11 The writer finds encouraging the inclination of psychologists toward
a concrete behavior view as manifest in the tendency to give up the
term "mental tests" in favor of "psychological tests" to cover all work in
this field of psychological application.

12 Such as Stern's illegitimate comparison of intelligence and

electricity.
13 By "prepsychological" is meant any phase of biological functioning
at the basis of the specific reaction pattern.