PSYCHOLOGICAL-TESTING, IQ, AND EVOLUTIONARY FITNESS

Individual, group, and ethnic differences in behavior have been an obj ect of long, continuing, and contentious interest, both in the science s and in popular culture. For well over 2,000 years, psychological tra its, particularly those described as 'intelligence', have generally be en considered the major factors in fitness in humans. After reviewing contemporary scientific thinking on intelligence, the psychometric met hods used for the construction of psychological tests are presented an d examined in the context of natural selection and metric characters. There are essential differences between the disciplines of genetics an d of psychology such that the concepts of the two are more divergent t han might superficially appear to be the case. The analysis leads to t he conclusion that standard psychometric methodology cannot yield test s appropriate for measurement of evolutionary fitness characters.