The Neuroscience of Intelligence and Ethical Issues

This paper will explore the issues that arise from intelligence testing because of concerns of racism. The introduction will begin to introduce some of the ethical issues that have arisen from intelligence testing and will also talk about how intelligence is more highly affected by genes than by environment. This is important because it leads to the whole point of the paper that if conducted correctly, intelligence testing should still be credible and not seen as unethical since it is much more highly impacted by genes than environment, so socio-economic status should not matter. The second section will then go into the ethical issues and why the studies have been so highly criticized. In the ethics section, five steps to ensure intelligence testing are ethical are provided. These five steps are important to resolve the ethical issues. They include all participants being aware of all aspects of the study, actively supporting the research, and the study should avoid stereotype threats. The study should also have an appropriate sample and use non-inflammatory language. The main section titled “the neuroscience of intelligence” will go into detail to prove how genetics are the main cause between differences in intelligence and how different aspects like the g factor and the alpha brain ways impact intelligence levels. The paper will then go into how ethical issues can be resolved by this fact that genes have a greater impact because the issue of the difference being between races due to socio-economic status is not relevant or true. Then, it will discuss that once ethical issues are resolved, the neuroscience of intelligence can be used to predict business success in leaders and speaks about emotional intelligence, which is impacted by general intelligence. The paper notes that although the main issue with intelligence studies is since people believe it is impacted by the environment, and therefore socio-economic status, genes are proving to have a higher impact and can resolve ethical issues