Why were IQ tests created? I always assumed they were meant to rank people or prove intelligence, but wasn’t the original purpose actually different? What were they designed to do when they were first invented?
Didn’t Alfred Binet create the first IQ test in early 1900s France to identify students who needed extra help in school? Wasn’t it meant to be a tool for providing educational support, not for labeling people as “smart” or “dumb”? How did it go from helping struggling kids to being used for eugenics and ranking people?
Exactly right. Binet developed it in 1905 specifically to identify children who needed additional academic assistance. The test was meant to be a practical educational tool, and Binet himself warned against using it to label children as inherently limited. Unfortunately, when it came to America, people like Lewis Terman adapted it into the Stanford-Binet and started using it to rank people, justify social hierarchies, and even support eugenics movements. The original compassionate purpose got completely twisted.
Paris had just mandated universal education in the early 1900s, and suddenly classrooms were flooded with students who’d never been in school before. Teachers were overwhelmed, and so they asked, “which of these children need extra help, and how do we decide that fairly instead of just guessing?”
Binet’s test was essentially a triage tool. It was supposed to be temporary, diagnostic, and revisable, like a doctor checking your blood pressure, not tattooing your results on your forehead.
Binet’s original purpose contained an explicit warning label: “Do not use this to label children as permanently deficient.” He saw the test as measuring current educational development, not fixed capacity. Within twenty years, the test was being used for exactly what he warned against, which were determining immigration quotas, justifying forced sterilization, and even sorting people into permanent categories. It’s just sad.