Educability-and-Group-Differences-1973-by-Arthur-Robert-Jensen

268 Educability and Group Differences
COMPETITION AND FAILURE THREAT
Still another motivational theory of low Negro IQ and scholastic
attainment, originally suggested by the experimental research of
Irwin Katz (1964, 1968), holds that Negro test performance is
depressed by a constellation of factors comprised of (a) failure
threat - the Negro’s expectancy of a low probability of success in
competition with whites or white norms on an intelligence test, and
(b) social threat -emotional responses of fear, anger, and humiliation
that are presumably detrimental to performance and may be
elicited by a white examiner, especially if the examiner is perceived
as unsympathetic, supercilious, and authoritarian. Katz has tested
these hypotheses experimentally by administering test-like tasks
to Negro college students with and without instructions that it was
or was not an intelligence test, that the testees were or were not
competing with whites or white norms, with white or Negro
examiners, threatening or friendly examiners, and with or without
external threats such as strong electric shock. This research,
although interesting and important in its own right, has unfortunately
been misrepresented as indicating that these situational
factors manipulated in Katz’s experiments affect Negro performance
on standard intelligence tests and in situations that are
typical of those in which intelligence tests are ordinarily administered
(e.g., Watson, 1970). It has not been demonstrated that the
effects hypothesized by Katz account for any of the Negro-white
difference in IQ as measured by any of the standard individual or
group administered tests of intelligence. Whether or not it is
possible significantly to influence subjects’ performance on
certain experimental tasks, specially selected for their sensitivity
to distraction and emotional arousal, under conditions that
are very atypical of ordinary intelligence testing (such as
threatening instructors, examiners acting hostile and authoritarian,
and threat of electric shock while performing the task) is not at
issue.
The several experiments of Katz and his co-workers (recently
reviewed by Sattler, 1970)1did not use intelligence tests, but timed
experimental tasks depending mainly on speed of performance,
rather than mental power. Such speed tasks are known to be more
sensitive to distractions, emotional states, and the like. One of the
tests, for example, was simple arithmetic - but the subjects were