Soldier intelligence in World Wars I and II.

CATTELL (2), Lentz (J), Mailer (6) and others, arguing from the observation that family size is inversely related to test performance, education and socio-economic level, have contended that the mean I.Q. of the population is declining at the rate of three or four points per generation. In contrast, data collected by the Personnel Research Section, AGO, during the closing months of World War II indicate at least for that fraction of the population selected for military service, that performance on a group test of the kind usually described as measuring "general learning ability" or "verbal intelligence" has markedly increased from World War I to World War II. The study here reported was a byproduct of another research and is not so unequivocal as one should like. Nevertheless it offers direct evidence on a problem hitherto attacked only indirectly, and suggests that the future may not be as black as the eugenicists would have us believe. In the course of establishing the score equivalence between certain Army tests and several commercial ones, the Wells Revision (Form 5) of Army Alpha Examination was administered to a representative sample of the World War II draft. The population consisted of 768 white enlisted men selected on the basis of Army General Classification Test (AGCT) scores, as recorded on their qualification cards, to yield a distribution by Army Grade like that for all inductees entering during 1943. The distribution desired and that obtained are compared below: