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Chapter 6. Racial Characteristics 151
to measure the influences of various environmental changes on the I.Q.,
this field has, however, as yet scarcely been tapped. With reference to the
Negro, the writer knows of no studies which have been made to determine
the eflFect on test performance of such influences as: the shock of the Negro
child when he first learns that he is a Negro and realizes the social import
of this factj foster-placement in white homes j
isolated development in
white neighborhoods while still in the parental Negro homej shock of
news about lynching as compared to other types of shock unconnected with
race relations; group testing of Negroes isolated among white children
as over against group testing of these same Negroes among other Negro
children; various locations for the administration of tests to the same
group of Southern Negroes, such as Negro schools, white schools, and
courthouses; new schools and educational equipment in the same or differ-
ent locales; special training in language usage, vocabulary, and logic;
special rewards of different types (having some significance in the Negro
world and in race relations) for high performance; and other significant
influences.^® To determine the effect on test performance of such influences
the experiment must be set up very carefully. The effect of the influences
should be noted, not only on intelligence test performance, but also on
performance on the various types of personality trait measurement devices.
The type of research suggested here would involve a radical change in
point of view in psychological research. It would be freed from the tradi-
tional discussion of racial traits and no longer look upon the environmental
factors and their psychic effects as simple modifiers which hinder the
attempt to determine psychic traits conceived of as static biological entities,
a measurement of which would be eternally valid. It would rather look on
environmental factors and their effects as the main objects for study. The
psychic traits would be comprehended as continually changing ways of
acting, and as the product of an individuaPs original endowment and all
his life experiences as actively integrated by him into a unity.
Environmental stimuli would be studied as experiences from the point
of view of the individual, and effects on intelligence and personality would
be correlated with these experiences and not simply with external economic
status, education, housing and so on. The effect of a new experience is not
simply one of addition or subtraction, since an individud defines this
experience in terms of all his previous experiences. No environmental
stimulus has the same eflFect upon diflFerent individuals since it aflFects
diflFerent individuals after they have had different experiences in diflFerent
succession.
The question as to what extent and in what ways biological constitution
determines individual diflFerences in performance on intelligence and per-
sonality tests can no longer be answered by conceiving of certain inherited
traits as constituting independent variables which can be thought of as
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