The explanation is all in favor of the girls. In practically every high school in the land there is a much more rapid elimination of boys than girls. Boys whose schoolwork is unsatisfactory drop out of school and go to work, whereas girls tend to stay on. Furthermore, girls make a better adjustment to the school curriculum than do boys; the slower girls make much more of an effort to master their school problems, and generally manage to pass sufficiently well to stay in school, while boys under the same conditions tend to become frustrated and give up. But such facts should put us on guard against jumping to the conclusion that high school girls are thus proven to be more intelligent than boys, or rather that a sexual difference of a biologically determined nature is involved. It may be that such a factor is involved, but quite obviously, or perhaps not quite so obviously, certain social factors in the ways in which girls and boys are conditioned are also to be considered.
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Where especially bright children have been selected for testing, another concealed factor may enter which works to the disadvantage of girls, namely, the effect of sex stereotypes on the teachers' judgments. Since girls are generally brighter than boys at school, a girl of high intelligence may simply be regarded as a good pupil, whereas a boy of similar intelligence may be judged as brilliant.
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Allowing for this and similar concealed and selective errors in the interpretation of the results of intelligence tests, let us, before proceeding further, state what is to be understood by intelligence. Such a statement is not as easy to arrive at as one might think. There is probably not a single definition of intelligence in the psychological literature that would find agreement among authorities.
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In defining intelligence, the concepts that occur most often in the writings of psychologists are the ability to deal with abstract symbols and relationships and the ability to adapt oneself to new situations. But these are obviously general definitions, for there are all sorts of abstract symbols, in mathematics, music, philosophy, logic, and so on. An individual may be excellent in one area of abstract symbols and poor in others. Adaptation to new situations will often depend upon a person's previous familiarity with the context of the new situation. A white man taken at random, however intelligent he might be in adapting
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