A few years ago, while in therapy, a psychologist wrote on an assessment report that I had a high IQ. They didn’t test me. They just noted, as a matter of fact. As my heart raced as I read the damn document clenched in my pulsing fists, I politely said, “No!” and thought, “Keep your effing report for yourself.” Here is why.

For over a century, the intelligence quotient (IQ) test has been used to measure intelligence. But from the start, it was neither neutral nor fair. Instead, Western scientists used it to rank people, justify discrimination, and push harmful policies. The IQ test has been a weapon against African descendants, Indigenous peoples, immigrants, people with disabilities, the LGBTQ+ community, and women. So why do we still use it today, and what can we do instead?

The Origins of the IQ Test: A Dangerous Misuse of Science

French psychologist Alfred Binet created the first IQ test in the early 1900s to help identify children who needed extra support in school. He warned that intelligence was complex and shaped by environment and culture. But his warning was ignored by Western psychologists who saw the test as a way to rank people’s intelligence from highest to lowest.

In the United States, Lewis Terman revised Binet’s test into the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales and promoted it as a tool for measuring innate intelligence. His work aligned with eugenics—the false belief that humanity could be “improved” by controlling who had children. According to eugenicists, the ideal human was a White European descendant, wealthy, non-disabled, disease-free, cis-heterosexual, male, and Puritan Christian morality. They aimed to standardize humankind by normalizing those arbitrary traits they claimed naturally superior.

In their narcissistic definition and ironclad, high-walled echo chamber, those self-assigned experts in humanity declared European rationality as humankind’s sole valuable standard. Furthermore, they glorified their own related binary logic discriminative expertise as a desirable trait. Then, IQ tests became a way to justify racist, classist, ableist, healthist, queerphobic, sexist, and religiously discriminatory policies. They aimed to standardize humankind by marginalizing what European binary logic perceived as the contrary of arbitarory desirable traits that eugenecists assigned inferior.

Like scientists today, eugenicists believed they discovered universal truths that could help humanity. Policymakers embraced the science as they do today. Eugenics became a harmful medicine with the longest toxic effect that Western culture has ever seen.

IQ Tests and the Fight for Who Belongs

During the early 20th century, IQ tests were used to decide who could enter the United States. Southern and Eastern Europeans, Jewish immigrants, and others who scored low were labeled as “feebleminded” and denied entry. The test was designed to favor English speakers and those familiar with Western culture, making it an unfair measure of intelligence for anyone from a different background.

People with disabilities were also targeted. If someone scored too low on an IQ test, they could be institutionalized, sterilized, or stripped of their rights. In the infamous Buck v. Bell case of 1927, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a young woman with a low IQ could be forcibly sterilized. The judge declared, “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.” This decision led to the forced sterilization of thousands of disabled people, African descendants, Indigenous people, and poor white Americans.

Although Buck v. Bell was never explicitly overturned, its legal impact weakened over time. By the late 20th century, forced sterilization laws fell out of favor, and many U.S. states repealed them. However, their consequences remain. Many survivors never received justice or reparations, and the eugenic mindset behind these policies continues to influence medical and educational decisions today.

For example, today, in medical settings, intelligence testing is still used to justify withholding life-saving treatments from people with intellectual disabilities. Some doctors use IQ scores to determine whether a patient is “worth” resuscitating or receiving organ transplants. In education, students with disabilities may be denied accommodations if their IQ is deemed “too high” or placed in restrictive settings based solely on test scores rather than their actual abilities and needs.

The United States was not alone in using IQ tests and eugenic policies to control populations. Australia, Canada, Sweden, and other Western nations also had eugenics programs that targeted Indigenous people, disabled people, and other marginalized groups. In Australia, forced sterilization was used against Aboriginal women, while Sweden’s eugenics laws led to the sterilization of thousands of Sami and other groups considered “undesirable.” Even today, Australia continues to allow the forced sterilization of people with disabilities under legal approval, disproportionately affecting women and girls with disabilities.

The IQ Test and LGBTQ+ People

IQ testing was also used to pathologize LGBTQ+ individuals. In the early 20th century, psychologists and psychiatrists attempted to link homosexuality and gender nonconformity to intellectual “deficiencies.” LGBTQ+ people were often subjected to psychological testing, including IQ assessments, to “prove” their supposed inferiority or mental instability. These flawed studies reinforced the idea that being LGBTQ+ was a disorder, contributing to harmful treatments such as conversion therapy.

In Nazi Germany, intelligence tests were part of the justification for persecuting LGBTQ+ individuals, particularly gay men, under the belief that they were biologically and intellectually unfit. In the United States and other Western nations, eugenics policies also targeted LGBTQ+ people for sterilization, often under the guise of preventing “degeneracy.” Even today, IQ testing and psychological evaluations are sometimes used to determine whether transgender individuals are “mentally competent” to access gender-affirming care, reinforcing the same pathologizing logic.

Eugenics still echoes in our everyday language besides the derogatory term “retarded,” once a clinical term for intellectual disability. Dumb originally meant mute or unable to speak, but over time, it became synonymous with lacking intelligence, or “stupid.”

Like today, Western science’s discriminative sharp logic progressed, “discovering” and labelling new realities, as Columbus “discovered” America and labeled the Native American Taínos, Indians. Idiot is a term popuralized by French psychiatrist Jean-Étienne Dominique Esquirol in a clinical context in the 19th century, like many other term describing a scientifically perceived lack of intelligence. Then, the early 20th century, in a groundbreaking international research collaboration, American psychologist Henry H. Goddard’s made it a clinical term for someone with a very low IQ (below 25-30). He used same innovative approach for “Imbecile,” a clinical term used to describe someone with a moderate intellectual disability (IQ 26-50). Meanwhile, “Moron” was coined to describe someone with a mild intellectual disability (IQ 51-70).

Healthcare professionals used all those clinically insulting labels to justify the exclusion and sterilization of individuals deemed “unfit,” while the public uses those to causally insult people’s intelligence today. As a writer in science decolonization, my stomach churns whenever I glimpse the book title, “Psychology for Dummies,” written, not the least, by a clinical psychologist. At least “Indian” isn’t an insult anymore: I guess it is called progress.

The Scientific Problems with IQ Tests

The biggest flaw of IQ tests is the idea that intelligence is a single, fixed number. Intelligence is not just about solving puzzles or answering European logic questions—it includes creativity, emotional understanding, and problem-solving in real-world situations.

Scientific research has repeatedly shown that intelligence is shaped by environment, education, and access to resources. The idea of a “pure” intelligence that can be measured apart from these factors is a dangerous myth.

Intelligence Measurement: A Western Obsession

The very idea of measuring intelligence as a single, hierarchical ranking is a Western, Eurocentric invention.

The Western obsession with measuring intelligence is tied to the history of colonialism and industrialization, where ranking and categorizing people served economic and political interests. IQ tests reinforced existing power structures by validating the dominance of those already in control. This is why Western nations were eager to use these tests to justify exclusion, forced sterilization, and social hierarchy.

Meanwhile, many other cultures do not see intelligence as something that can be reduced to a number. Instead, intelligence is often understood through lived experience, adaptability, and wisdom in navigating the complexities of life and relationships. They value intelligence as something shared within a community, not just as an individual trait. IQ tests fail to capture these broader forms of intelligence.

In many cultures, intelligence is measured by how well someone builds and maintains relationships, resolves conflicts, and contributes to their community. This contrasts sharply with the Western focus on competitive individual achievement and test scores.

For example, Indigenous knowledge systems emphasize wisdom passed through oral traditions, environmental awareness, and social responsibility. In many African cultures, intelligence is connected to collective well-being, problem-solving within a community, and adaptability. In contrast, Confucian traditions in East Asia prioritize learning, discipline, and moral reasoning as key aspects of intelligence. The rigid, Eurocentric Western definition of intelligence measured by IQ tests fails to recognize these diverse intellectual traditions.

Yet, considering other cultures isn’t enough for Western science to progress because of its fundamental logic. Indeed, Western science perceives itself as constantly improving but within the same epistemological framework. It’s the academic way to say it stays locked in its own reductive logic, like in an intellectual hamster wheel.

Meanwhile, from a multidimensional perspective, Western science is not evolving but revolving, maintaining its core logic while appearing to progress. This cycle, which I call the binary logic identity dillema, means that even when Western science criticizes itself, it keeps its validation/invalidation model intact. Reform efforts, such as recognizing neurodiversity or mental health spectrums, still rely on the same binary thinking: neurodiverse vs. standard, unhealthy vs. healthy. The system reshapes itself instead of breaking free from its own logic and crippling limitations.

This is another solid argument for psychologists, academics, and other experts to reflect upon how much improving IQ testing is helpful to humans compared to entirely discarding the concept, seen from humanity’s perspective.

Why IQ Tests Are Irrelevant Today

Many institutions embracing critical thinking abandoned IQ testing, while others hold onto it like quest heroes holding tight to a coveted magic wand.

Modern workplaces and schools no longer rely on IQ scores to determine success. Employers value adaptability, creativity, and teamwork—qualities that an IQ test cannot measure and are valued as intelligence in many cultures of the global majority. Yet, the Eurocentric myth of supreme IQ remains, often used as a lazy way to judge people’s abilities.

For people with disabilities, IQ scores still determine access to services. Some are denied help if their IQ is slightly above an arbitrary cutoff, while others with low scores are labeled incapable. The test continues reinforcing outdated and harmful ideas about intelligence and holds quest heroes experts’ illusion.

No one should be forced to live in someone else’s narrative, yet Western science has consistently done this to humankind.

What else could help understand human intelligence?

Instead of ranking intelligence with a single number, we need broader and more inclusive ways of understanding people’s abilities. Multiple intelligences theory recognizes different strengths, such as linguistic, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, and interpersonal intelligence. Indigenous and African knowledge systems see intelligence as relational and connected to the community’s well-being.

For example:

• Ubuntu philosophy (Southern Africa): Intelligence is demonstrated through one’s contributions to the community and ability to live harmoniously with others.
• Andean knowledge systems (South America): Wisdom is tied to the ability to maintain balance between humans and nature.
• Hawaiian epistemology: Intelligence is expressed through navigation, storytelling, and an intimate understanding of the ocean and land.

Education and employment should focus on developing people’s strengths rather than sorting them into categories based on flawed tests. Intelligence should be recognized in all its diverse and cultural forms.

Conclusion

The IQ test has a long history of being used to exclude, oppress, and harm. Originally meant to help students, it became a tool of eugenics, racism, ableism, and other discriminations. Today, we must move beyond this outdated measure and embrace ways of understanding intelligence that reflect the full complexity of human potential. Recognizing and valuing the diverse ways intelligence manifests across cultures allows us to move toward a more just and inclusive future.

That’s why being assessed with a high IQ didn’t give me, an African descendant woman raised in Dharmic Asian philosophy and educated in Europe, the sense of pride that my monocultural European descent therapist expected. My multidimensional intelligence is more than an outdated, simplistic Eurocentric test can comprehend.

Despite its recent efforts to address these deep-rooted biases under the relentless pressure of marginalized citizens, Western science still lacks compulsory standards to evaluate whether scientists are fit to serve the very humans their field has long deemed unworthy—meaning most of humankind.

So when my normalized therapist suggested that my dissatisfaction with the IQ test results was maybe because of a lack of self-worth, I refrained from crumpling the damn paper into a ball and throwing it at their clueless face to wake them up. Instead, I took a deep breath and refuted her argument, using the time I paid them to help me.

I knew that at this level of professionalized ignorance, the miseducated psychologist likely assessed me as in denial at best, delusional at worst, or whatever pathologization in between that came to their zombified reductive binary mind. As a doctor in pharmaceutical science with a master’s in European law and regulation and a writer on science decolonization, it’s a risk I could bear. Most patients can’t.

While dismantling the harmful parts of an old dysfunctional system takes time, each of us bears the responsibility to change the little we can. Sometimes, when we have the power to do so, it’s just as simple as to say no.

What can you commit to do today?

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