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The unsupported criticism to the intelligence tests

Now, when psychologists can celebrate a century since the creation of psychological tests and the sophistication of psychological measurements, this paper presents some polemical viewpoints that comes along with the uses and applications of psychological tests, mainly those concerned with assessment intellectual ability. It says the discre about tests, in our country, at first because of lack of acquaintance with its basic construction principles that often allows unreal expectations as for example perfect predictions and, at second, because political and ideological beliefs intended as scientific itselves. The psychological tests that years ago pointed to the existence of large intellectual differences among human groups concerning ethnical, age and gender variables are the same that, currently tell us these differences are showing diminution. Psychological tests continue to be the same, notwithstanding social conditions changed. So, psychological tests do not create intellectual differences, they just show it.

Psychological tests; behavior measurement; measurement criticism


Programa de Pós-Graduação em Psicologia, Pontifícia Universidade Católica de Campinas Núcleo de Editoração SBI - Campus II, Av. John Boyd Dunlop, s/n. Prédio de Odontologia, 13060-900 Campinas - São Paulo Brasil, Tel./Fax: +55 19 3343-7223 - Campinas - SP - Brazil
E-mail: psychologicalstudies@puc-campinas.edu.br