Carl Brigham
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Carl Campbell Brigham (May 4, 1890 – January 24, 1943) was an American
eugenicist Eugenics ( ; ) is a fringe set of beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population. Historically, eugenicists have attempted to alter human gene pools by excluding people and groups judged to be inferior or ...
and professor of psychology at
Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...
's Department of Psychology and a pioneer in the field of
psychometrics Psychometrics is a field of study within psychology concerned with the theory and technique of measurement. Psychometrics generally refers to specialized fields within psychology and education devoted to testing, measurement, assessment, and ...
. He sat on the advisory council of the American Eugenics Society (today known as the
Society for Biodemography and Social Biology The Society for Biodemography and Social Biology, formerly known as the Society for the Study of Social Biology and before then as the American Eugenics Society,Eugenics, Encyclopedia of Critical Psychology, (2014, pp 619-626) is dedicated to "fu ...
) and his early writings heavily influenced the
eugenics Eugenics ( ; ) is a fringe set of beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population. Historically, eugenicists have attempted to alter human gene pools by excluding people and groups judged to be inferior o ...
movement and anti-immigration legislation in the United States. He created the
SAT The SAT ( ) is a standardized test widely used for college admissions in the United States. Since its debut in 1926, its name and scoring have changed several times; originally called the Scholastic Aptitude Test, it was later called the Schol ...
for
The College Board The College Board is an American nonprofit organization that was formed in December 1899 as the College Entrance Examination Board (CEEB) to expand access to higher education. While the College Board is not an association of colleges, it runs a ...
.


Early life, family and education

Carl Campbell Brigham was born May 4, 1890, in Marlborough, Massachusetts, to Charles Francis Brigham and Ida B. (Campbell) Brigham, the third of four children. His family has roots in early Massachusetts Bay Colony with ancestors that included Thomas Brigham (1603–1653) and Edmund Rice (1594–1663). Brigham's family became wealthy as a result of his grandfather's success in the California Gold Rush. Although many in his family attended Harvard, Brigham earned all of his degrees (B.A., M.A., and Ph.D.) at
Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...
. He married Elizabeth G F Duffield on February 10, 1923, and they had a daughter, Elizabeth H. Brigham (b. 1926).


Career

At the outbreak of
World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
, Brigham joined the military and was commissioned as first lieutenant in the Sanitary Corps, psychological service from October to December 1917 at
Camp Dix Fort Dix, the common name for the Army Support Activity (ASA) located at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, is a United States Army post. It is located south-southeast of Trenton, New Jersey. Fort Dix is under the jurisdiction of the Air Force A ...
. He was then assigned to the Surgeon General's office in Washington, D.C., where he worked with Robert Yerkes to administer the army mental tests to US Army recruits. From January to March 1918 he was at Camps Meade, Lee, and Gordon to conduct psychological experiments. In April 1918, he was assigned to the Tank Corps, but he never served overseas. After the war was over, Brigham joined Princeton as a faculty member in 1920 and began working on adapting the army mental tests for use in college admissions. This test became highly controversial as a methodology for testing mental ability due to its biases favoring Caucasian
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native-born Americans. In 1923, Brigham published his influential book, ''A Study of American Intelligence.'' Analyzing the data from the World War I army mental tests, Brigham concluded that native-born (Caucasian) Americans had the highest intelligence out of the groups tested. He proclaimed the intellectual superiority of the "Nordic Race" and the inferiority of the "Alpine" (Eastern European), "Mediterranean", and "Negro" races and argued that
immigration Immigration is the international movement of people to a destination country of which they are not natives or where they do not possess citizenship in order to settle as permanent residents or naturalized citizens. Commuters, tourists, a ...
should be carefully controlled to safeguard the "American Intelligence". Brigham believed that in the early years of the twentieth century, American intelligence was declining because of recent immigration waves from Eastern Europe ("Carl Campbell Brigham: The Man who devised the SAT"). Harvard Professor E.G. Boring suggested that Brigham was not collecting data with scientific purpose which biased his results in favor of his ideas (1923). The test administered to recruits during World War I were controversial and the inter-group differences were not easily explained. While Brigham conceded that some of the differences in measured intelligence could be attributed to differences in the level and quality of schooling received, he suggested that most of the differences were genetic in nature (Wedell, 1943). By 1925, Brigham had devised his own college admissions test, known as the Princeton Test. In 1926, Brigham created the
SAT The SAT ( ) is a standardized test widely used for college admissions in the United States. Since its debut in 1926, its name and scoring have changed several times; originally called the Scholastic Aptitude Test, it was later called the Schol ...
for College Board. College Board reviewed his book, ''A Study of American Intelligence'', and wanted a test that could be administered to a wider group of schools that was developed by Brigham. The SAT test that Brigham developed contains writing, reading, and mathematics in a broader sense than the Army Test previously administered. In his 1930 paper "Intelligence Tests of Immigrant Groups", Brigham recanted his 1923 analysis of the results of the Army Mental Tests. Native language was a variable greatly argued as to why the results favored native born Americans. Many people suggested that English speaking individuals had the advantage due to the way the test was written. There was no evidence in Brigham's study suggesting that intelligence, as reflected in the test scores, was related to social success or achievements. Due to having used prejudicial test administration and analytical techniques in his original research (he had not taken into consideration that the first language of some of the people he studied was not English), he acknowledged that his conclusions were "without foundation" and stated "that study with its entire hypothetical superstructure of racial differences collapses completely." He realized that the SAT test scores do not measure innate ability passed through genes, but are instead a "composite including schooling, family background, familiarity with English, and everything else relevant and irrelevant" (Fussell, 2019). Nevertheless, it had already been instrumental in fueling anti-immigrant sentiment in America and in the
eugenics Eugenics ( ; ) is a fringe set of beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population. Historically, eugenicists have attempted to alter human gene pools by excluding people and groups judged to be inferior o ...
debate. Brigham died January 24, 1943, in Princeton, New Jersey.


References

Brigham, C. C. (1975). ''A study of American intelligence''. Millwood, N.Y: Kraus Reprint.


Sources


''Encyclopedia of New Jersey''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Brigham, Carl Intelligence researchers American eugenicists 20th-century American psychologists American white supremacists Princeton University alumni Princeton University faculty People from Marlborough, Massachusetts 1890 births 1943 deaths