History of Psychology © 2014 American Psychological Association
2014, Vol. 17, No. 3, 177–186 1093-4510/14/$12.00 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0037487
INTRODUCTION
THE NEED FOR CONTEXTUAL APPROACHES TO THE
HISTORY OF MENTAL TESTING
Annette Mülberger
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
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Much has been published on Binet and the
history of intelligence testing. The effort to lo-
cate the origin and follow the historical devel-
opment of mental tests comes as no surprise,
given the success the technique enjoyed
throughout the 20th century. It is a controver-
sial, yet also essential, professional tool that
characterizes the work of the psychologist in
contemporary society. Why write more on this
subject? I will argue that although we have a
great number of publications at our disposal,
new contributions are needed to reinterpret this
crucial episode in the history of psychology
from different angles. Although unable to cover
the huge number of publications, I will first
comment briefly on some contributions that
marked historical research in the second half of
the 20th century. In doing so, I will focus on
works that aim to explain the origin and histor-
ical development of mental testing. I will
thereby leave aside the debate regarding the
reliability of some empirical data gathered by
certain psychologists and the social conse-
quences of intelligence testing. I will then move
on to evaluate the status quo by considering
Carson’s (2007) ambitious research and the his-
toriographical idea guiding this monographic
issue.
The Historiography of Mental Testing
After some early assessments (e.g., Zuza,
1948), Theta Wolf’s contributions to the field
became prominent in the late 1960s. Her well-
informed research concentrated mainly on Bi-
Correspondence concerning this article should be ad-
dressed to Annette Mülberger, CEHIC/Department Psicolo-
gia Bàsica, Facultat de Psicologia, Universitat Autònoma de
Barcelona, E-08193 Bellaterra (Cerdanyola), Spain. E-mail:
annette.mulberger@uab.cat
177
net’s life and work (Wolf, 1964, 1966, 1969,
1973), and his role in the development of men-
tal tests. Meanwhile, Guy Avanzini also started
to study Binet and his contribution to pedagogy
(Avanzini, 1969, 1999). Shortly after, Kamin’s
book on the Science and Politics appeared, of-
fering a history of mental testing that aimed to
criticize the practice for representing an errone-
ous and socially dangerous type of psychologi-
cal science, subordinated to ideological and po-
litical agendas. His efforts mainly concentrated
on exposing methodological mistakes, or, as he
stated, denouncing, in both scientific and moral
terms, the conceptual and empirical errors of IQ
scientists book on the science and politics of IQ
(Kamin, 1974a, 1974b). His conclusion was
straightforward: The examination of empirical
evidence of past (and present) studies of intel-
ligence based on mental testing shows that there
is no support for maintaining positions support-
ing hereditarianism. Unintentionally, IQ psy-
chology had served as an instrument for op-
pressing the poor and the foreign-born through
its use to justify deportations and forced impris-
onment in asylums.
The social psychologist and historian Franz
Samelson (1975) reacted with a vehement repu-
diation of Kamin’s publications, identifying two
kinds of problems: He claimed that, for the
historian, the book contained no new informa-
tion and offered no fresh insight. By the former,
Samelson probably had in mind some discus-
sions that had taken place at Cheiron meetings,
and maybe also Nicholas Pastore’s (1949) book,
The Nature–Nurture Controversy, in which the
author tried to link psychologists’ political
views to their respective positions with regard
to the innatism versus “tabula rasa” dichotomy.
Furthermore, Samelson questioned the accuracy
and validity of Kamin’s account (Kamin,
1974b; see also Kamin’s [1975] reply), assert-
ing that the historical figures were much more
 178 INTRODUCTION
complex human beings than Kamin recognized,
changing their ideas over time, being influenced
by others and by social movements such as
eugenics. Eugenics was diverse, containing
many strains, and was interpreted differently at
the beginning of the 20th century (often con-
nected to what was viewed as progressive and
liberal attitudes) than in the 1930s.
What Samelson (1975) seemed to be asking
implicitly is, what is the use of picking out and
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exposing, as Kamin does, a few quotations from
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the most extreme statements of some historical
figures, and then denouncing that former psy-
chologists (and this would presumably hold for
all scientists today as well) were putting their
science at the service of political interests and
social concerns? While Kamin believed in the
neutrality and power of psychological facts,
Samelson denounced this attitude as naïve, re-
marking that no scientific effort or point of view
is value free, not even Kamin’s search for meth-
odological errors and conceptual weaknesses in
the work of his ideological opponents.
It should be noted that, in the 1960s, the
nature–nurture debate unsettled and divided
both the scientific and public spheres. The de-
bate clearly influenced Kamin and led him to
build his history of mental testing around the
opposition between innatism and the tabula rasa
thesis. Samelson (1975) rightly pointed out the
problems of what was rather a superficial his-
tory lacking contextualization. In his view, Ka-
min failed to take into consideration the “real
questions” raised during the historical period
considered. Nevertheless, Samelson himself fo-
cused on debunking Kamin’s precipitated opin-
ions of the authors and indicating historical
inaccuracies of his narrative. To provide more
thorough contextualization and to reveal the
content of the “real questions” was outside the
scope of his article and would only be under-
taken by others in later works.
Before that occurred, a sociologist offered a
new interpretation of the history of mental test-
ing. Rose started his study (N. Rose, 1979) by
criticizing the historical accounts based on the
idea of scientific progress as accomplished by
certain “founding fathers.” Interestingly, he
only mentions a few previous works, including
Kamin’s (1974a, 1974b), but does not seem to
have been aware of Samelson’s reply and fur-
ther work on the history of mental testing
(Samelson, 1977). Influenced by Foucault, Rose
(1979) sought the constitution of a “regime of
truth.” Citing voices from several rather un-
known figures in the history of psychology, he
tried to untangle the formation of what he called
the “psychological complex” (see also N. Rose,
1985), referring to “a heterogeneous but regu-
lated domain of agents, of practices, of dis-
courses and apparatuses which has definite con-
ditions of existence and specifiable effects” (N.
Rose, 1979, p. 6). His research led him to iden-
tify a clue to Binet’s success: In his view, it lay
in the crucial methodological shift from the
measurement of faculties, as pursued in previ-
ous unsuccessful attempts, to the examination
of behavior, with the help of the new intelli-
gence test. He concluded, “Behavior is the link
between the measurement of individuals and the
administration of bodies, it is the common point
upon which they are articulated” (N. Rose,
1979, p. 52). In this way, the French assessment
technique surpassed previous efforts, while
earning a “first taste of power” for psychology.
For Rose, psychology deserved its place in
social administration by effectively differentiat-
ing between individuals through sequential
comparisons and rankings of intelligence,
which was regarded as following a continuous
distribution throughout the population (the nor-
mal distribution). In this vein, in his later book,
Inventing Our Selves (N. Rose, 1998), he fur-
ther examines the role of psychological tech-
niques to control the human mind by recording,
classifying, and managing individual differ-
ences. Although Rose’s work claims to be a
historical account, the result is a rather sophis-
ticated conceptual interpretation used to bring
increased suspicion to bear on a science at the
service of the already dangerous state power,
which constantly aims to limit the personal free-
dom of its citizens and oppress “otherness” in
every sense.
Shortly after Nikolas Rose’s (1979) Fou-
cauldian interpretation, the American paleontol-
ogist, historian, and popular writer Stephen Jay
Gould (1981) published his book, The Mismea-
sure of Man, which had a major impact among
educated Americans. Gould uses his writings to
support the victims of IQ politics in his country.
The book seduces a wide readership by offering
an attractive combination of straightforward,
hard-hitting statements written in language that
is very easy to understand, together with a
rather sophisticated and well-documented tech-
 INTRODUCTION
nical critique that outlines some crucial fallacies
and methodological mistakes committed by
well-known anthropologists and psychologists
such as Morton, Broca, Lombroso, Binet,
Spearman, and especially Burt and the Ameri-
can testers Terman, Yerkes, Goddard, and Thur-
stone. Historian of science Michael Sokal
(1987) correctly criticized Gould’s approach
from various angles. His main objection con-
sists in pointing out that the book is based on the
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widely accepted claim that science is part of the
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social world, while Gould seems to personally
accuse certain scientists of failing to escape
from the influence of society. The result is a
black-and-white picture in which the reader
meets heroes such as Binet, helping the low-
scoring children with his “mental orthopedics,”
and “bad guys” such as Goddard who, for ex-
ample, is accused of having faked the photo-
graphs of the Kallikak children by inserting
heavy dark lines to give eyes and mouths a
diabolic appearance and enhance their mentally
impaired appearance (Gould, 1981). Although
such a story can be entertaining, historians re-
quire more dispassionate and thorough research
on this topic.
The book that Sokal (1987) himself edited,
Psychological Testing and American Society, is
a major effort in this direction, collecting sev-
eral interesting contributions that focus on the
role testers played within the intelligence test-
ing movement in America. In contrast to Fanch-
er’s (1985) publication, The Intelligence Men:
Makers of the I.Q. Controversy, which adopted
a biographical approach, the contributions to
Sokal’s book attempt to embed the mental test-
ing movement in its broad social context. But
more research into the relations between the
testing and the combination of social interests
and politics was needed, as, for example, Cra-
vens’s (1987) extremely general observation
about the change of climate after the Progres-
sive Era shows. This would finally be achieved
with Zenderland’s (1998) historical research.
Despite the repeated use of Goddard as the
“bad guy” in the history of mental testing, his-
torian of psychology Leila Zenderland dared to
get closer to this controversial figure, in an
attempt to gain a better understanding of the
motives for his judgments and actions, and of
the attitudes toward intelligence and mental
testing of his time (Zenderland, 1998). As early
as 1908, Henry Herbert Goddard (1866 –1957)
179
had become the first American to recognize the
potential of the new intelligence test invented
by Binet and Simon. After translating it, over
the next decade he would become the leading
spokesman of the testing movement, introduc-
ing mental testing into the U.S. education sys-
tem. During his career, he would also gain no-
toriety for his hereditarian approach, based on
empirical studies of the inheritance of feeble-
mindedness within the Kallikak family (God-
dard, 1912). To understand the motives behind
writings such as Goddard’s book, as well as
the—at least temporary—scientific and public
approval it met with, it is necessary to invoke
the mentality of a different time. Before World
War I, readers were not sensitized to potential
institutional abuse and the need to defend indi-
vidual civil rights. Zenderland (1998) took care
not to judge this past actor by present-day stan-
dards of social consciousness.
In her work, Zenderland uses her broad
knowledge of Goddard’s life and thinking, and
the intellectual spirit of the time, to correct
some premature conclusions and mistaken in-
terpretations made by previous writers. For ex-
ample, with regard to Gould’s accusation that
Goddard doctored the photographs of the Kal-
likaks, her historical research (Zenderland,
1998) shows that this is rather implausible, as
he never wanted to prove that the feebleminded
looked evil; quite the contrary! Only by assum-
ing the invisibility of feeblemindedness was he
able to promote psychological devices as indis-
pensable for such a diagnosis. Although Mea-
suring Minds does not paint Goddard as any
hero, the extremely rich and nuanced account in
the book enables the author to transmit some-
thing of the intense idealism that emanated from
the small Training School at Vineland and
which impregnated Goddard’s projects, disen-
tangling some of its values and limitations.
The Measure of Merit in the French and
American Republics
Historian John Carson starts his extensive
research into the history of mental testing with
the U.S. declaration of 1776 that all men are
created equal. The social system of the “old
world,” founded on inherited status, had to be
overthrown. Nevertheless, certain social groups
were still interested in highlighting human dif-
ferences. Now, however, these distinctions had
 180 INTRODUCTION
to be justified and legitimated along new
lines—lines in accordance with “the republican
celebrations of equality and the sovereignty of
people” (Carson, 2007, p. 1). Therefore, Car-
son’s (2007) book mainly “tells the story of how
the American and French republics turned to the
sciences of human nature to help make sense of
the meaning of inequality” (p. 1).
In Carson’s view, the new basis for under-
standing such inequality and justifying social
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distinction was “merit,” mainly conceptualized
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as intelligence. In the U.S., the growing author-
ity of scientific justification for racism in the
late 19th century pushed intelligence to the fore-
front of explanations of the hierarchical order-
ing of races and people. For Carson (2007), in
this historical context, “intelligence proved to
be an attractive concept with which to unify the
democratic and meritocratic” (p. 5). It was used
to regulate, in “objective” terms, the increasing
demand for limited educational resources and
occupational opportunities. The result was that
members of privileged socioeconomic groups
generally scored well on the intelligence tests,
while the door was kept open to exceptional
members of disadvantaged groups, who histor-
ically had been excluded. Some exceptional
“climbing up” of a few talented individuals
would not be viewed as a threat to overall social
stability. So it seemed to be a rather clever way
to mask “conservative” policies with demo-
cratic labels and scientific insights.
During the Third Republic in France (1870 –
1940), characterized by a social climate of an-
ticlericalism, republicanism, and positivism, the
first version of the intelligence test appeared,
though it failed to attain immediate success. For
Carson (2007), the test failed to attract more
extensive interest in France because of Binet’s
marginal status (outside academia) and a gen-
eral cultural transformation that was taking psy-
chology back to qualitative and subjective
methods.
The fate of Binet’s scale on U.S. soil would
be completely different. Carson’s (2007) book
shows how, between 1901 and 1914, intelli-
gence became a term of central importance.
This development was related to four factors:
(a) the explanatory power gained by a narrow-
ing of meaning; (b) the growing influence of
Darwinian and Spencerian theories, which
strengthened the acceptance of physicalist ex-
planations of behavior; (c) a general reliance on
scientific and technocratic solutions of social
problems; and (d) general worries about immi-
gration from southern and eastern Europe, “the
Negro problem,” and degeneration as perceived
by eugenics.
These facilitating factors would not prevent
criticism being leveled against mental testing.
Despite the debates, a general commitment to
regard intelligence as some sort of quantifiable,
hierarchical intellectual ability spread rapidly in
the years before World War I. The influence of
such ideas on public opinion would be instru-
mental in the expansion of psychology over the
following years. The book The Measure of
Merit explains how American psychologists
such as Yerkes succeeded in their efforts to
introduce psychological testing in the U.S. Ar-
my. But the results of the first mass testing were
immediately problematic. They revealed the
low performance of the average American sol-
dier (supposed to have a mental age of 13), a
fact that instigated worries about the popula-
tion’s biological fitness for participation in
democratic governance. Therefore, in the
United States, intelligence became an issue that
was debated in relation to democracy. When
comparing this development with the situation
in France, Carson (2007) recognizes that such a
broad program of intelligence assessment was
never undertaken in the French military.
On the whole, Carson’s (2007) study shows
how differently the French and the Americans
constructed their “systems of merit.” In France,
intelligence was associated with an elite class,
sustained through a selective education system.
In the United States, in contrast, intelligence
was seen as an intrinsic (hereditary) trait that
existed independently of educational training.
The outcome was that numerous American ed-
ucational, industrial, and governmental institu-
tions turned to methods of selection and orga-
nization for which they could claim the highest
legitimacy: mental tests viewed as an objective
scientific instrument.
The Measure of Merit is an impressive schol-
arly work on the history of mental testing from
a broad historical perspective. The use of a great
number of textual sources makes Carson’s ac-
count rich in detail and well-informed. His ex-
tensive knowledge of the political concerns and
historical changes in society enabled him to
offer a contextual narrative in which interest in
intelligence and its measurement is interpreted
 INTRODUCTION
as stemming from a general search for ways to
integrate meritocracy into the new democratic
systems. The consideration of two contexts, the
French and American, seems especially ade-
quate to enrich the analysis by introducing a
comparative perspective.
Despite the doubtless strengths of the re-
search, Carson’s (2007) book also has some
shortcomings; it is unbalanced in two ways. On
the one hand, it clearly offers a deeper under-
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standing of the development in the United
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States. On the other, Carson mainly concen-
trates his attention on the thinking of, and ini-
tiatives undertaken by, well-known psycholo-
gists, leaving aside the major impact of the
child-study movement and its long lasting con-
sequences for the professional involvement in
testing of pedagogues and teachers. Moreover,
the emphasis the author places on the differ-
ences between the effective French selecting
and gate keeping of its education system based
on traditional examinations, and the United
States’ need for mental testing, still hides rele-
vant questions about the deeper reasons for
these differences in the management of meri-
tocracy within a democratic state. In addition,
his focus largely ignores international intellec-
tual influences enhanced by, for example, reg-
ular international scientific meetings. Further-
more, the role of tests as “big business” in a
capitalist society and part of a highly competi-
tive international market still needs to be ex-
plored.
Weaknesses and Strengths of
This Historiography
If we now take a look at the historiography of
mental testing over recent decades, we can
make the following observations:
Popularity
Strikingly, the two histories that attracted the
most popular attention were Kamin’s (1974a)
Science and Politics of IQ and, to an even
greater extent, Gould’s (1981) The Mismeasure
of Man, which have in common that there were
not written by a professional historian or a his-
torian of psychology. The key to their popular
success probably lies in the fact that they effec-
tively combine a specific, well-informed tech-
nical–methodological critique, dominated by
181
the reiterative exposition of an extremely sim-
ple, general argument. The moral tone of the
two books permits a clear distinction between
good and bad, and they include an emotional
denunciation of the supposedly disastrous ef-
fects of a science at the service of conservative
(racist and eugenic) ideology. Books of this
kind usually contain an oversimplified history,
in which historians consider that new insights
are missing, and which present a lack of rigor-
ous historical research and contextualization.
Therefore, their appearances are often followed
by compelling attacks (as we have seen), which
are seldom heard or understood outside histor-
ical circles.
Monologue
Except for Samelson’s (1975) and Sokal’s
(1984a, 1987) reactions to the “bestsellers,”
the historical contributions to the history of
psychological testing tend to ignore previous
works (see, for example, Devonis, 2013;
Gould, 1981; Kamin, 1974a, 1974b; Richard-
son & Johanningmeier, 1998; N. Rose, 1979).
As for citations of contributions by other au-
thors, agreements or differences are not usu-
ally discussed in detail. This even holds for
Carson (2007).
Repetition
Due to the trend of ignoring previous contri-
butions, we can find a lot of repetitions and
much overlapping in older and more contempo-
rary narratives on the history of mental testing.
This implies a dangerous tendency toward cre-
ating myths and limits the general scope of
interest. In this respect, Samelson’s work stands
out, constantly challenging current historical in-
terpretations. Apart from such efforts toward
the documentary underpinning of generalized
assumptions, I would like to argue that there is
an urgent need to go beyond the traditional
historiography centered on the link between
craniometry and mental testing, on Binet as the
creator of the test and on the well-known Amer-
ican testers. Furthermore, it is impressive how
the intense nature–nurture debates of the 1960s
and 1970s marked American assessments of IQ.
It is time to stand back from this rather artificial
dichotomy and recognize the malleability of
theories of intelligence, which must not be
forced into this pro– contra schema.
 182 INTRODUCTION
Contextualization
If we are to recognize any general trend or
development in the historiography of mental
testing, it would be a basic agreement on the
need for contextualization, already called for 30
years ago (Sokal, 1984a). Psychology (as well
as science in general) is viewed by historians as
a professional and scientific activity, imbedded
in its social context and therefore linked to
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overall historical changes. This has various con-
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sequences. First of all, it connects the history of
psychology to general (contemporary) histori-
ography, and also to the historiography of sci-
ence. Second, it is necessary to spell out, in all
research, what kind of context the author has in
mind or thinks is relevant for that study. Third,
such contextualization tends to enhance local
case studies and encourage the adoption of a
national point of view. Fourth, an effort must be
made to make such study specific and innova-
tive, in order to avoid falling back into a general
and superficial conclusion based on the “discov-
ery” of how nicely a certain technology or sci-
entific initiative fits into the broader social “con-
text.”
Motives, Meanings, and Functions, and the
Need for “Other” Contexts
In general, I think that the trend toward con-
textualization, although not unproblematic, is
the right and only way to go, once it is accepted
that science is socially embedded. Serious his-
torical research is laborious and piecemeal, and
topics often can only be studied in depth with
the help of case studies (see also Sokal’s
[1984a], call for more detailed, empirical, and
technical historiography). It is not to be ex-
pected that the results will be attractive to a
general readership. Additionally, the often crit-
ical (social constructivist) approach means that
the research is not even interesting to the pro-
fessional psychologist or the scientist, who is
eager to sell “true knowledge” and “proved
therapies.” Within this framework of the mar-
ginalization of the history of psychology, links
with the history of science and history in gen-
eral may prove rewarding. Secord’s (2004) idea
of “knowledge in transit,” Livingstone’s (2003)
“putting science in its place,” and Pickstone’s
(2000) “way of knowing” science, technology,
and medicine by looking at certain work pat-
terns in local settings, together with postcolo-
nial studies and the history of science in the
European periphery (Patiniotis, 2013), and the
like, may offer inspiring ways of dealing with
historiographic contextualization (more on this
in Carson, 2014).
The present monographic issue is more a
historiographic experiment than the product of
consolidated scholarship. The original idea was
to think of mental testing as psychological ac-
tivity that circulated through different cultural
spaces in the first decades of the 20th century,
thereby provoking resistance and assimilation
or appropriation. The 1920s seem to be best
known as the first period of large-scale, nonmil-
itary psychological testing (Sokal, 1984b). In
order to move away from Basalla’s top-down
model of science spreading from a center to the
periphery,1 the idea of “appropriation” can sug-
gest a more active role in the process of assim-
ilation.2 To this end, the authors were initially
asked to take Carson’s (2007) study as their
starting point, and to broaden the historical per-
spective on the history of mental measurement
by documenting specific applications of mental
testing within the setting of specific “contexts.”
As the practice and popularization of intelli-
gence testing is linked to the educational sys-
tem, which generally is state regulated, a na-
tional approach appears as a natural possibility.3
Nevertheless, as my previous critical comments
on Carson’s book show, I am not generally
convinced by the idea of historiography on a
national or national-comparison basis. In my
view, every historical research project should
find its own context, namely, look for the po-
litical, social, and intellectual circumstances
necessary for a thorough understanding of the
motives, meanings, and functions of certain
psychological activity, such as testing. There-
1
This dichotomy is used by some historians of science to
refer to a difference in level between some prestigious
laboratories where authoritative knowledge was produced
and working places mainly populated by nonexperts or
marginalized scholars (for more information, see Gavroglu
et al., 2008).
2
Other historians prefer the use of a different terminol-
ogy, such as “hybridization” or “indigenization,” to express
this process (see, for example, Cimino, 2013; Pickren,
2009).
3
See also the recent publications on the reception of the
Binet-Simon scale in different countries such as Brazil,
Italy, and Germany in Ceccarelli (2013).
 INTRODUCTION
fore, the adequate “local context” to concentrate
on may be a country, but it could also be a city,
a social group, or a cultural community. Beside
such local contextualization, international con-
textualization is also necessary. Intellectual and
technical exchanges based on meetings and the
circulation of instruments, writing, and people
lead away from the local.
Moreover, there is a certain danger for such
historiography—if it is performed on a compar-
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ative basis— of it falling back into a kind of
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“nationalistic competition.” For good or for
bad, the United States was immediately ready to
adopt the modern (although controversial) psy-
chological device in an attempt to combine mer-
itocratic order with democracy. It was the first
and (probably) the only country scientifically
and administratively able to organize impres-
sive mass testing during World War I. In such a
“race for modernity” in which the “winner”
marks the criteria, no other “context” can com-
pete. Therefore, the criteria imposed by the
“standard” story should not be uncritically ad-
opted. From a broader interest in “other cul-
tures,” there could stem motivation to get in
touch with unknown historical figures and dif-
ferent achievements or proposals. The final aim
should not necessarily consist in an attempt to
get a small, new item into our historical “col-
lection” of data, events, actions, and actors, but
to help us reflect on the history of our field from
a different angle, while broadening our under-
standing of historical developments.
Certain situations and local traditions allow
for some ways of working and reflecting on
things while excluding or inhibiting others. The
use of context-sensitive questions could help
provide an understanding of what particular so-
cial conditions prevailed and how they made
sense of some scientific debates and practices
and not others (see, e.g., Mülberger, 2012).
Once this is clarified, we can turn to questions
regarding the varied roles of mental measure-
ment in research practices, such as the three that
follow, which were presented to the contribu-
tors to this issue as guide: Why did certain
psychologists or other professionals start to be
interested in testing? How exactly did they pro-
ceed and interpret their results? What were their
intentions and what use was made of their re-
sults?4
Finally, the call for “other contexts” should
not only be understood in a geographic sense
183
but also as a way to connect our history with the
histories of related areas, such as, for example,
the vast field of the history of education.
Zenderland’s (1988, 1998) work, together with
that of others (Chapman, 1988; Rembis, 2004;
A. C. Rose, 2011; Varga, 2011), shows how our
history may become richer if we include, more
generally, the thinking, experiences, and opin-
ions of as-yet-unknown “second-rank,” amateur
psychologists (whether they are classroom
teachers, social workers, eugenics field workers,
institutional administrators, parents, or what-
ever). In the history of science, the study of the
dynamic relation and mutual influence between
“experts” (or “scientists”) and the so-called
“public” proved to be a fruitful way to under-
mine the demarcation, and helped to bring rec-
ognition for the active, creative, and influential
role of the “public” in the construction of
knowledge. Very precisely, the effective circu-
lation of certain psychological conceptions
within society does not result from some scien-
tific theories enclosed in academic writing, but
from the popularization and promotion of a new
self-understanding of the human mind, through
the application of mental tests to an increasing
part of the population.
The Present Issue
The articles included in the present mono-
graphic issue represent, each to a different ex-
tent, attempts to move in the historiographic
directions outlined here. The first article of Cic-
ciola, Foschi, & Lombardo (2014) reminds us
that toward the end of the 19th century and at
the beginning of the 20th century, several diag-
nostic techniques circulated and competed, even
before the mental testing “craze” had started.
Professionals confronted with the task of ex-
ploring the physical and mental health of chil-
dren or classifying individuals by their capaci-
ties or talents, such as school physicians, had
several methods available to them: Specific
tests such as the Ebbinghaus’s combination
method, or more complete diagnostic methods
of which Ferrari’s interrogation, Damaye’s
mixed method, and De Sanctis’s test are good
examples (Peterson, 1925). In this article, the
4
For a general reflection on the role mental tests can play
as psychological instruments, see Sturm and Ash (2005).
 184 INTRODUCTION
authors concentrate on the appearance of the
intelligence test of Sante De Sanctis, who pre-
sented his method at the First International Con-
gress of Psychology held in Rome in 1905, at
the same time that Binet and Simon published
the first version of their famous test. Therefore,
a look at this period from the Italian point of
view promises to be rewarding, pointing out the
similarities and differences between the two
testing systems. Except for later cases, in Eu-
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
rope, psychological evaluation usually took
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
place in an individualized (clinical) setting, in
which a combination of methods was applied.
Nevertheless, Cicciola, Foschi and Lombardo
(2014) show how the tests were specialized and
progressively occupied different “ecological
niches.”
The second historical research authored by
Mülberger, Balltondre, and Graus (2014) deals
with the efforts of a teacher to test the intelli-
gence of the students at his public elementary
school in Barcelona. The case brings to light the
contradictory encouragement received by this
professional group to apply tests. Furthermore,
it shows a surprising use of the results and a
connection between testing and a local version
of anarchist pedagogy. The third article elabo-
rated by Leopoldoff (2014) deals with the test-
ing as promoted by Nečaev in the Union of
Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Therein,
she studies the role psychological testing played
in relation to the strong pedological movement,
and how the Binet-Simon and Rossolimo tests
were appropriated within that context. The fol-
lowing text of Jacó-Vilela (2014) deals with the
relation between the mental hygiene movement
and mental testing in Brazil, a country that
shared with the United States a public concern
regarding racism and eugenics. The study pres-
ents, for example, the interesting case of a
teacher (Isaías Alves) who used mental tests in
his high school and obtained results that were
interpreted as being linked to skin color. Satis-
fied with the results, Alves was eager to im-
prove his training under the guidance of
Thorndike at Columbia University. Finally, the
last contribution of Carson (2014) closes the
issue adding a historiographic commentary on
the effort of internationalizing research in the
history of mental testing.
On the whole, the cited case studies offer a
rather fragmented insight into a new kind of
historiography of mental testing open to “other
contexts,” beyond the French and American re-
publics. It is too early to extract general conclu-
sions, but the studies in this issue seem to sug-
gest some interesting similarities and
differences. With regard to general (transna-
tional) observations, we can detect a certain
influence of Binet and Simon’s intelligence test,
reaching (together with other methods) Spain,
Italy, the USSR, Brazil, and other countries. In
Europe, the role of T. Simon and E. Claparède
was crucial in popularizing the test, while men-
tal measurement arrived in Brazil promoted by
the Russian pedagogue Hèlena Antipoff
(trained under Binet and Simon, and a former
coworker of Claparède) and the mental hygien-
ists (such as Alves, mentioned before; see also
Campos, 2013).
In the years before and after World War I, in
most countries we do not yet find a consolidated
professional community of psychologists.
Therefore, the task of diagnosing the “abnor-
mal” child was professional expertise aspired to
by several professional groups: school physi-
cians, teachers and pedagogues, as well as
members of the child-study or pedology move-
ments. Teachers had the advantage of direct
access to children and showed an interest in
upgrading their profession by introducing test-
ing as a scientific methodology into their cur-
riculum. In general, pedagogues, teachers, and
pedologues tended to be optimistic with regard
to the potential power of education in increasing
intelligence through schoolwork. In contrast,
physicians (psychiatrists), biologists (eu-
genists), and mental hygienists seemed more
inclined to think of intelligence as an innate
global capacity, and to use empirical evidence
related to individual and group differences in
intelligence to pathologize ethnic differences
and foster racist policies.
Nevertheless, every “local context” consid-
ered in these studies also seems to contain strik-
ing idiosyncrasies, which affect the motives be-
hind, and the meanings and functions of, mental
testing. In the USSR, the revelation of individ-
ual or group differences in intelligence after
years of public schooling, and efforts to erase
social classes, represented a dangerous threat to
the system and therefore had to be closely con-
trolled. In Italy, a handy technique for separat-
ing the normal children from the “abnormal”
was of interest, and the De Sanctis test seemed
to fulfill the requirements of shorter, quicker,
 INTRODUCTION
and simpler administration, and provided an
even more specific classification of mental in-
sufficiency in a child. At the beginning of the
20th century, the industrialized city of Barce-
lona was a battleground of harsh social conflicts
characterized by a strong workers movement
and the popularity of anarcho-syndicalism. This
is the context in which Ferrer i Guardia’s anar-
chist (rationalist) pedagogy arose, contributing
to a curious appropriation of mental testing in
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
public schools. In the hands of a teacher, the
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
scores obtained were used to promote the intel-
lectual potential of working-class minds and
education in public schools, while interpreting
the exercise as a preparation of socially disad-
vantaged children for their Darwinian fight in
modern society. In Brazil, Alves’s studies show
how neatly the racist color graduation fit with
intellectual level measured with the help of psy-
chological tests. While this result was what was
expected and broadly accepted, when general
mental “unfitness” was diagnosed, the project
was stopped to avoid the consequences of such
negative results.
Finally, with regard to Carson’s (2007) his-
torical interpretation, based on a supposed link
between generalized mental testing and scien-
tific legitimation of efforts leading toward mer-
itocracy in the context of a democratic republic,
in the cases studied here, this is far less than
clear. Proving such a hypothesis, which was
already advanced by Young (1958), Herrnstein
(1973), and Richardson and Johanningmeier
(1998), would need a more accurate definition
of the terms and systematic comparative analy-
sis of these relations in different contexts, which
has not yet been performed.
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Received May 21, 2014
Accepted June 16, 2014 䡲