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Comparisons of racial or cultural groups in IQ routinely reveal differences. Eysenck in the 1970's stated that Irish children were not as intelligent as British children according to IQ score but the difference that has attracted the most attention is between blacks and whites. Blacks on average, score about 15 points lower than whites on standard IQ tests

The issue of the relative importance of heredity and environment becomes very sensitive politically when one considers the reasons for group differences in IQ. This is particularly true of differences in intelligence between blacks and whites in America. Most psychologists have favoured an environmentalist explanation of the differences in the ethnic groups. However Arthur Jensen (1969) argued that genetic factors (their race) could be responsible and this has led to much controversy.

The Environmentalist Explanation:
Intelligence tests do not give valid measures of mental ability beyond the culture for which they were designed, hence, many of these mean IQ's are invalid and may even be meaningless. The great majority of intelligence tests have been devised by white, middle-class psychologists. As a consequence, it seems plausible to assume that blacks brought up in a very different culture would be disadvantaged by this cultural divide when taking an intelligence test.

There is much more support for the notion that environmental deprivation often holds back American blacks. Some studies have compared blacks and whites who were matched in terms of factors such as family income, occupational level and family socio-economic status. When this was done, there was substantial reduction in the difference between the mean IQ's of blacks and whites.

There is a striking association between the per capita of incomes of population and their mean IQ's. The affluent nations of Europe and USA have mean IQ's of around 100, whereas the underdeveloped nations have mean IQ's often found around 75-90. Educational differences is a main factor responsible for ethnic differences. In advanced countries there is better education accounting for higher IQ's

Scarr and Weinberg studied black children in the 70's, who were adopted by white, middle class parents. The mean IQ of these black children who had the advantage of a reasonably privileged environment was 110, which is approximately 25 points higher than the mean of all American blacks.

It has also been discussed that the most variation in IQ scores

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