0.9 Trait theories of personality  (Page 26/41)

Incidentally one would expect most effect on both productivity and potency of national defense to derive from the magnitude of the supply in the topmost ranges of intelligence, from which, given appropriately more advanced education, resourceful management and beneficial invention result. The numbers in that range depend both on their birth rates and the assortiveness of mating, and a rise in the latter could admittedly temporarily offset a decline in the former. Surely everyone will agree that the schools should turn to giving appropriate education to these much brighter individuals, but it will take a more far-sighted public to encourage measures for their greater production. (pp. 14-15; Cattell, 1983)

Taken together, these suggestions lead to very clear impression of Cattell’s opinions and goals: there are “low” groups and “high” groups of people, Blacks in America are a “low” group, special education spending should not be wasted on people of low intelligence, the families who produced those children should not have any more children, and “resourceful management” should be used to ensure that “high” groups have more children and “low” groups do not! What makes these views most disturbing is not that one person has them, but rather, that Cattell has colleagues who agree with him. Most notorious, in recent times, was the publication of The Bell Curve by Herrnstein&Murray (1994; for a discussion of some of the problems associated with The Bell Curve see Belgrave&Allison, 2006).

The suggestion of people like Cattell, Herrnstein,&Murray, that society should discard whole groups of people is unconscionable to many people, and should have no place in a psychology that emphasizes the improvement of the human condition. Another somewhat controversial figure, Arthur Jensen, also argues that general intelligence, or g as it was first described by Spearman, is largely inherited, but at the same time he acknowledges that there is an environmental component to even this most basic aspect of intelligence (Jensen, 1998). Considering any role for environmental factors in intelligence, we must then take into serious consideration the discriminatory practices that denied adequate education to minorities throughout history, both in America and elsewhere. When provided with good education, Blacks have demonstrated an equal ability to learn as compared to Whites (see Belgrave&Allison, 2006; Miller&Garran, 2008). Thus, rather than seeking to exclude people from opportunities to advance within our society, we should be encouraging, as much as possible, equal access to educational support systems.

In a somewhat related article, Robert McCrae (whose research on the Big Five personality traits will be examined below) and Antonio Terracciano examined whether or not there is a valid basis for determining national character based on personality traits. People in all cultures have shared perceptions of what people are like in both their own culture and in other cultures, perceptions which form the basis of stereotypes. After examining data from nearly fifty different countries, McCrae&Terracciano concluded that national character stereotypes are unfounded, even when examining people’s impressions of their own country (McCrae&Terracciano, 2006)! Clearly, if stereotypes based on personality are not accurate reflections of personality, how can stereotypes based on measures of intelligence have a meaningful bearing on our decisions regarding social programs?