American Passage_ The History of Ellis I - Vincent J. Cannato [138]
Nevertheless, Goddard carried on with his experiments, raising more funds to send another group of testers to Ellis Island in the spring of 1913 for two and a half months. What came from this round of testing was one of the most infamous and misunderstood psychological studies of the twentieth century.
Goddard’s staff chose a total of 191 immigrants—Jews, Italians, Russians, and Hungarians—for a battery of five intelligence tests. To arrive at this group, Goddard first weeded out those of obvious low intelligence, as well as those who clearly appeared intellectually suitable for admission. What was left was a group that Goddard defined as borderline feebleminded, who may or may not be qualified for admission.
Although Goddard’s staff conducted the test in 1913, the results were not presented publicly until a 1916 conference and not published until 1917. Why did Goddard, whose professional goal was to get intelligence tests accepted by the general public, take so long to report his results?
One reason is that the results shocked even Goddard. They showed that 83 percent of Jews, 80 percent of Hungarians, and 79 percent of Italians tested were clearly feebleminded. Worse still, Goddard’s team could only pinpoint six individuals whose measured level of intelligence was without a doubt acceptable for admission. The remaining subjects possessed a level of intelligence that would make their legal admission to the United States unlikely.
The results, wrote Goddard, “are so surprising and difficult of acceptance that they can hardly stand by themselves as valid.” Unlike Edward Ross, Goddard did not set out to prove the inferiority of immigrants. He wondered whether the tests were too hard and began omitting certain questions from the test. After rejiggering the results, Goddard lowered his estimate of those clearly feebleminded to almost 40 percent.
When Goddard finally published these results in 1917, his paper displayed less of the confidence of a modern scientist than the confused and self-contradictory response of a man working his way around complex sociological and psychological problems. Within the same article, Goddard repeatedly contradicts himself as he tries to explain the data.
How did Goddard determine the intelligence of immigrants? When asked, through a translator, to give the definition of common terms such as “table” or “horse,” the feebleminded immigrant would respond only with that object’s most common use. A table is “something to eat on” and a horse “is to ride.” These answers showed Goddard a lack of imagination or creativity. In a similar vein, many immigrants had trouble taking three words and creating a sentence from them; nor could most dissect sentences, produce rhymes, or draw a design of an object from memory. Just as disconcerting, Goddard found that most of these immigrants did not know the current date.
Goddard asked whether these supposed failures were due to hereditary defects, as many eugenicists believed, or whether they were affected by environmental factors. To test this question, he set out to track those same immigrants to see whether their lives in the United States confirmed the original diagnosis of feeblemindedness. (Goddard’s tests were not legally binding on the admissibility of the immigrants.)
Two years after these tests were conducted, Goddard’s staff attempted to track the addresses of as many of their subjects as possible, traveling as far as St. Louis. Much to Goddard’s chagrin, few of the immigrants could be found. His staff encountered numerous problems, from incorrect addresses, immigrants who had moved, and uncertainty about the spelling of names. Tenement dwellers were often unwilling to help Goddard’s dutiful and earnest young female staffers.
The wild goose chase probably helped cause