Lowering intelligence to IQ is stigmatizing for other folks dwelling with an highbrow incapacity. This doesn’t account for the range of intelligence that is still formed by means of social, instructional, cultural and political contexts.
Within the public debate, in addition to in psychology, the intelligence quotient (IQ) occupies a different position. It’s usally interpreted as a impartial, medical, goal measure – a good approach of cognitively assessing human talents. However at the back of the numbers it distributes, IQ creates an actual social burden: the load of classification, hierarchy, standardization.
For other folks identified with an highbrow incapacity – between 2 and three% of the overall inhabitants – IQ can turn out to be a device of classification, stigmatization and even exclusion that socially produces incapacity. If the DSM-5 (Diagnostic Reference Guide for Psychological Well being) marks development by means of reminding us that intelligence can’t be lowered to a rating and will have to be evaluated in line with the facility to conform in on a regular basis lifestyles, its analysis via size is a ways from disappearing.
The hot Jeanne Portmanova affair has sadly highlighted the permanence and depth of incapacity abuse in France. The loss of life remaining August of livestreamer Rafael Graven (aka Jean Pormanova) adopted months of on-screen humiliation of a number of disabled other folks invited to Kick’s “Questions for the Goalkeeper” display and mocked for his or her alleged feeble-mindedness.
This drama immediately displays our collective creativeness the place intelligence continues to be thought to be a set, even herbal, however above all measurable characteristic. Due to this fact, the ones with “good” IQ are valued; the ones beneath an arbitrary threshold – usally round 70 – are pathologized, medicalised, categorised and stigmatized by means of society.
This common sense isn’t new: it has its roots particularly within the historical past of psychometrics, bearing the imprint of older ideologies, colonial and fashionable, that affirmed new hierarchies of human lifestyles.
The legacy of a not-so-neutral science
The historical past of IQ can’t be informed with out discussing its connection to the eugenic or colonial concepts of Western modernity. The primary Nineteenth-century Ecu cranial paintings sought to ascertain “natural” variations in intelligence between teams (in particular to justify the discovery of race) in line with measurements of the cranium or mind. Those pseudoscientific ideals served to legitimize insurance policies of domination, exclusion and violence towards slaves, ladies, kids and other folks with highbrow disabilities.
Firstly of the twentieth century, French psychologists Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon sought after to spot and assist kids who wanted particular instructional strengthen by means of developing an intelligence quotient. IQ is then lowered to the rating received on assessments that measure positive psychological and cognitive talents, corresponding to reminiscence, reasoning or phrase comprehension.
The common rating is 100, with a good portion of the sector’s inhabitants nowadays scoring most often between 85 and 115.
Later, fashionable psychometrics – with psychologists like Charles Spearman (1904) or later Anna Anastasi (1954) – advanced very subtle psychomotor assessments, a few of which goal to seize and naturalize what Spearman will label the “g factor”, this is, common intelligence this is meant to be common. However this universality mask the overriding affect of extremely contextual and political values within the overview of intelligence: tradition, language, instructional atmosphere, and social and historic positions which might be certainly not mounted.
Dimension lure and its threshold
The prognosis of highbrow incapacity continues to be in large part in line with an IQ threshold (eg ≈70). When an individual falls beneath, they may be able to be thought to be to have a cognitive impairment, even though their day-to-day dwelling, independence, social or emotional talents can’t be summed up in a easy quantity.
Alternatively, this arbitrary threshold does no longer sufficiently keep in mind the range of human reports: some other folks with low IQ are very self sufficient in positive facets of lifestyles, others have very other talents (visible reminiscence, inventive creativity, and so forth.). Lowering other folks dwelling with highbrow disabilities to a end result approach making their singularity, their historical past invisible, however above all it’s liberating them from their humanity by means of lowering them to easy manufacturing and financial purposes.
This categorization can lead society to be expecting much less of those people – or worse, to view them as much less worthy of autonomy and entire participation in social lifestyles. This concept of a scarcity or everlasting lack of autonomy additionally signifies an unfinished level of construction for other folks dwelling with highbrow disabilities.
Then we fall right into a lure: the supposedly goal size turns into a device of marginalization and even stigmatization that usally locks those other folks into one of those persistent youth.
Intelligence, the collective excellent
So as to trade this dynamic, it’s pressing to reconsider intelligence no longer as a person excellent (to be maximized, to be a concern), however as a collective and plural excellent, breaking with its present productivist common sense. A number of researchers, in quite a lot of fields corresponding to vital psychology, incapacity research, philosophy, recommend that intelligence takes position in exchanges, relationships, environments. It isn’t restricted to summary duties outlined by means of assessments.
Intelligence exists in gestures, in creativity, in numerous techniques of studying and as such is plural as a result of it’s influenced and formed by means of the social, instructional, cultural and political context.
To acknowledge that is to confess that IQ can’t inform the entirety, that it does no longer outline one’s wealth. To the contrary, for us this is a topic of working out the political and social serve as of the sort of instrument for the group of society. Why must we measure intelligence? And for what function?
Converting social norms
We want to reconsider the values we go together with intelligence: efficiency, productiveness, profitability. You will need to shield a imaginative and prescient of dignity that doesn’t come with size, however in the course of the popularity of each and every human being in his singularity, and in a vital technique to reversing and even destroying the values imposed by means of capitalist ideology.
Thus, this is a in style manner round political dignity that will have to be constructed with, by means of and for the folks involved, and that may transcend the all-too-often useless methods of visibility, popularity or inclusion.
Some preconceived concepts to deconstruct
“Low IQ = useless or incompetent person”: This isn’t true. A low rating does no longer replicate the entire individual, nor his attainable, nor his talent to are living richly and autonomously in response to his prerequisites, only if dignified prerequisites of subject material life are to be had to him.
“We must help these people, but only as “sufferers”: No. Toughen will have to no longer be paternalistic: other folks will have to be thought to be companions, with rights, needs and the facility to present their opinion.
“We don’t know how to measure intelligence in any other way”: Sure, we will be able to, via qualitative approaches, via participatory analysis, via reviews interested in actual lifestyles, no longer simply via psychometric assessments.
Put an finish to the restricted type of intelligence
As a result of wondering intelligence is greater than an educational factor: it is a social emergency. At a time when cognitive inequalities – and neurodiversity – are changing into more and more visual (however nonetheless too misunderstood), perpetuating a restricted type of intelligence is a duplicate of the exclusion and infantilization of other folks dwelling with highbrow disabilities.
We will have to pressure establishments (faculties, paintings, well being, social services and products, and so forth.) to adapt and smash with those discriminatory practices of score human lifestyles. The distinction of other folks suffering from highbrow incapacity can’t be subordinated to the outcome received on a take a look at: it lies of their talent to be identified, heard and supported by means of their humanity as they struggle towards their invisibility.
This text used to be printed as a part of the Competition of Science (which happened from 3 to 13 October 2025), partnered by means of The Dialog France. This re-creation makes a speciality of the subject of “Intelligence(s)”. To find the entire occasions to your area at the Fetedelascience.fr web site.
