Do western personality, IQ tests apply across cultures?

A person’s cognitive and behavioural skills can be understood and measured using psychological assessment tests in different contexts.

For instance, educational institutions benefit from such tests because they guide the administration in determining students’ literacy levels and place them in the appropriate class groups.

Large organisations also conduct assessment tests to predict a candidate’s work performance by looking at their reasoning and problem-solving skills. But do they consider a person’s culture, which influences behaviour?

I, unfortunately, discovered this the harsh way when I sat down to take an IQ test for a job opening at an international organisation, and my results revealed that I had a lower IQ than the average.

Skeptical about my results, my interest was piqued to understand whether the test considered my cultural background. How I approach a problem as a Kenyan will certainly be different from how a Chinese approaches the same problem.

Psychological assessment

Psychological assessment tools include personality tests, projective tests, aptitude tests, achievements tests, attitude tests, emotional intelligence tests, intelligence quotient (IQ) tests, neuropsychological tests and observation (direct) tests. A majority of these have been developed by western psychologists.

These tests must have four attributes to be approved for public testing. The first is reliability, which ensures that the test produces the same results consistently no matter when or where it is taken. The second is validity, which ensures that the test measures what it claims to measure.

The third is objectivity, which ensures that the test is free from any bias for its scoring, interpretation of scoring or administration.

The last is standardisation, which ensures that the test is uniform in terms of where it is being conducted, the materials used to test and the conditions in which it is being administered. All four attributes help create uniformity.

However, they can be a double-edged sword to their detriment by not considering the influence of culture.

In 1970, Ross and Millsom, conducted a study which revealed that Ghanaian university students recalled themes expressed in stories read out loud in English, much better than American students. This is because Ghanaians come from an oral tradition, whereas Americans come from a written tradition, according to Matsumoto.

In another study done by Geary, Fan and Bow-Thomas in 1992, Chinese students were compared with students from America on mathematical problem-solving skills. The study revealed that the Chinese students were able to solve mathematical problems a lot faster and more accurately than the American students.

This can be attributed to the fact that American students rely on calculators and computers a lot more than Chinese students whose culture teaches them to acquire numerical solving skills.

A majority of these western-based psychological assessment tests are administered in English and require some level of literacy. This is a salient factor that can pose a challenge when being administered in a culture where English is not a first language.

This automatically has an impact on the individual’s performance and the results.

Therefore, if an individual takes a test in a language in which they are not competent, it becomes very difficult for the practitioner to determine whether the poor performance is as a result of the language barrier or difficulty in terms of the construct being measured, as Laher and Cockcroft pointed out in 2013.

Also tied to language is the issue of test translation. Practitioners must be able to translate the tests in a way that will not pose any biases.

This means that the tests which are based in English, need to consider that the African cultures have numerous languages, and some indigenous languages do not have equivalent words or idiomatic expressions to those used in English, according to Horn in 2000.

For instance, in the South African language isiXhosa, the colours green and blue are pronounced the same way, and in Afrikaans, there is no word for sexy or weird.

Therefore, if a psychologist is using the Beck Depression Inventory Test or the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory-III Test, where the administrator has to translate the clinical terms, this can pose a significant challenge where information may get lost in translation, thereby yielding invalid results.

Another cultural variable is quality and level of education. Take, for instance, the IQ test developed by the French pychologist, Alfred Binet, which has been questioned over the years on whether it measures a person’s true intelligence.

The IQ test is controversial because it does not take into account a person’s quality and level of education. The quality of education plays a significant role in determining the performance of an intelligence test as alluded to earlier in the studies.

For instance, not all African students have access to or the opportunity to experience good quality education. This makes quality education a key discriminating variable when it comes to determining the performance on intelligence tests, as Laher and Cockcroft argued in 2013.

Looking at the level of education and its impact on the neuropsychological test such as the Trail Making Test (TMT), one can also see that this is an important variable in determining the performance of an individual.

In South Africa, for instance, black students’ level of education was influenced by Apartheid, meaning that they did not get to complete the full 12 years of proper education.

Richardson and Marottoli, who conducted a study on this in 1996, found that the performance on neuropsychological tests of older individuals who did not reach an adequate level of education, was worse than those who had completed the right level of education, while those with a higher level of education outperformed them.

Individualistic vs collectivist

Another key cultural variable to consider is individualistic versus collectivist cultures. People from western cultures are known to be more individualistic, meaning that they appreciate and value individual needs.

They encourage their children to introspect and strive for personal growth and development. Whereas people from collectivism cultures, particularly Africans, tend to appreciate and value group and community needs, teaching their children to put their personal needs secondary to the community’s needs.

Considering this, psychological tests such as self-report questionnaires or introspective tests will present a challenge for the African participants who will be at a disadvantage compared to their counterparts from individualistic cultures.

These kinds of self-report and self-reflective questionnaire tests will be biased towards western cultures.

Test bias

It is therefore crucial for practitioners to be aware that western-based psychological assessment tests cannot simply be applied to people from other cultural backgrounds without thoroughly scrutinising the possibility of test bias.

As Foxcroft says, practitioners need to adapt and make the tests culturally specific. Psychologists should also look into the construct equivalent, which according to Foxcroft, looks at whether the psychological assessment developed for a particular culture measures the same construct or idea in another culture.

It is also important to have qualified and culturally sensitive practitioners who can cater to the needs of the African population. Practitioners need to first explain the objectives and value of the test to the community.

They should then try and explain testing in concrete and colloquial terms to the participants. This will ensure that people with no experience in psychological assessment test-taking are adequately briefed and informed before consenting.

The more immersed a practitioner is in the culture, the better they will be able to explain the concept of testing to them.

Namdiero is a communications consultant and psychologist