CHAPTER 11. 



INTELLIGENCE OF THE DBAFT IN BELATION TO FITNESS FOE MTLTTABY SEBVICE. 



Section 1. — Intelligence of the draft. 



The psychological examiner is frequently asked this question: "How intelligent is the 

 Army?" There is an inherent difficulty in making an answer, for there are no standards in 

 terms of which the statement can be made. The most familiar measures of intelligence, years 

 of mental age as determined by the Stanford-Bine t examination, are the results of investigations 

 of a much smaller group (approximately 1,000 cases) than the group studied in the Army. 

 For norms of adult intelligence the results of the Army examinations are undoubtedly the most 

 representative. It is customary to say that the mental age of the average adult is about 16 

 years. This figure is based, however, upon examinations of only 62 persons; 32 of them high- 

 school pupils from 16 to 20 years of age, and 30 of them "business men of moderate success and 

 of very limited educational advantages." ' This group is too small to give very reliable results 

 and is furthermore probably not typical. High-school pupils and business men of moderate 

 success presumably do not represent the average American adult with respect to intelligence. 

 (See Chapter 10, table 330, in which 85 per cent of the men who had been to high school show 

 mental ages above average.) 



It appears that the intelligence of the principal sample of the white draft, when transmuted 

 from alpha and beta examinations into terms of mental age, is about 13 years (13.08). Here 

 we have a measure of the average intelligence of nearly 100,000 white recruits. We can hardly 

 say, however, with assurance that these recruits are three years mental age below the average. 

 Indeed, it might be argued on extrinsic grounds that the draft itself is more representative of 

 the average intelligence of the country than is a group of high school students and business men. 

 The draft, it is true, is highly selected at the upper end by reason of the fact that men of higher 

 intelligence became officers without being drafted or constituted the greater part of the group 

 of professional and business experts that were exempted from draft because essential to industrial 

 activity in the war. It is impossible to guess the extent of this selection with respect to intelli- 

 gence. It seems quite impossible that it could have reduced the intelligence level of the draft 

 so much as three years. Considerably less than 15 per cent of the draft (cf. table 333) he above 

 16 years mental age. This discrepancy would mean that a very large number of men in propor- 

 tion to the draft (considerably more than one man to every three of the draft, perhaps even so 

 great a proportion as two to every three) would have been exempted because of service as an 

 officer or because in some essential industrial occupation. No positive figures of the number 

 of men exempted for these reasons are at present available, but there seems to be no doubt that 

 it was considerably smaller than these indicated proportions. Undoubtedly the intelligence of 

 the draft is somewhat lower than that of the country at large, although it is quite unlikely that 

 the difference should be so great. It must be recalled further that there was also selection at 

 the lower end of the scale on intelligence. The low-grade feeble-minded were not in general 

 included in the draft. This selection tends to offset the selection at the upper end, although 

 presumably it does not completely counterbalance it, and thus to render the average intelli- 

 gence of the draft more nearly representative of the population at large than would otherwise 

 be the case. 



In general, then, we are forced to reply to the question "How intelligent is the Army?" by 

 stating arbitrary figures that refer to the draft itself, and by arguing further that the draft is 

 approximately a representative group which is presumably, however, a little lower in intelli- 

 gence than is the country at large. 



1 See Terman, L. M., et al, The Stanford Revision and Extension of the B'net-Simon Scale for Measuring Intelligence, 1917, p. 49. 



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