Are IQ Tests Racist?

Are IQ tests racist? No—decades of research show professionally developed IQ tests are NOT racially biased. They predict success equally across groups and undergo strict fairness checks. Discover why average differences exist without test racism.

Dr. Russell T. WarneChief Scientist

Claims that IQ tests are racist often stem from group differences in average scores, but differences alone do not prove bias. In psychometrics (the science of testing), a test is biased only if it systematically misrepresents the true ability of certain groups because of its design or content. A fair test measures reasoning in the same way for everyone, regardless of cultural or ethnic background. Determining this requires empirical evaluation, not assumptions based on outcomes.

What Research Demonstrates

For more than half a century, psychologists have studied the fairness of intelligence tests across racial and cultural groups. Research often shows that professionally developed tests predict academic and occupational performance with equal accuracy for all major populations. If the tests were biased against any group, this would not be true. When individuals achieve the same IQ score, they tend to perform similarly in education and work, regardless of which racial or demographic group they belong to.

Why Average Differences Exist

The cause of these average group differences is one of the most contentious topics in all of psychology. Everyone agrees that environmental influences matter, but the debated questions are (1) how much the environment matters and (2) whether genetics also play a role. It seems likely that environment matters more when groups’ environments are different. Consequently, environment probably matters much more for comparing the average IQs of people in different countries than groups who live in the same town.

This research is often challenging, but one potential environmental cause of IQ differences across groups is well investigated: test bias. Since at least the 1980s, psychologists have found that biased IQ tests are not the cause of the test score differences found between groups.

Safeguards Against Cultural Bias

Modern intelligence tests are developed under strict ethical and technical standards established by the American Educational Research Association (AERA), the American Psychological Association (APA), and the National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME). Because of these organizations, it has been standard practice for decades to screen test items and content for bias and to eliminate it before a test is released to the public.

Test questions, tasks, and scores undergo statistical screening to ensure that they function equivalently across demographic groups, and biased components are removed before publication. Each test is standardized on a large, representative norm sample so that scores have the same meaning across populations. These procedures make systemic bias in professional IQ tests highly unlikely.

The Role of Cultural Content

Including language or general knowledge questions does not make a test biased when the content is relevant to reasoning ability. While it is true that unfamiliarity with cultural content on an IQ test can be a disadvantage to some groups of examinees, test creators take this fact into account. Test creators are careful to define the population that their test is appropriate for and caution test users against administering it to other groups. Test creators also ensure that any cultural content on a test is accessible and familiar to everyone within the intended test-taking population.

A Spirited Debate Continues

In the 21st century, there is an ongoing spirited debate about the cause of group differences in IQ scores. But all informed parties agree that these differences are not caused by biased tests. This means that IQ tests are not racist, and they are not engineered to create new differences. In fact, IQ tests are some of the best-designed and most carefully crafted psychological tests in existence.

Watch “What Actually Makes an IQ Test Biased? (Not What You Think)” with Craig Frisby on the Riot IQ YouTube channel for an informed perspective on whether IQ tests are truly racist or simply misunderstood.