Opinions on intelligence: An Arab perspective

Abstract

The issue of cultural differences in how the concept of intelligence is understood has long been debated. But do such differences really exist and, if so, to what extent do they exist and between which cultures are they the most pronounced? To better understand this, we translated a survey from Warne and Burton (2020) on beliefs about intelligence into Arabic, distributed it among psychology and non-psychology students and lecturers at universities within the Arab world, and compared our results with those from the US given by Warne and Burton, and with the current state of research. The survey consisted of 83 items about theories regarding the meaning and testing of intelligence. From our sample of up to 327 Arabic-speaking participants, we found that replies are overall similar to those from the US (r = .59; N_items = 63), while both samples showed hardly any congruence with the current state of research. Agreements between the Arab and US-sample are mostly to be found on questions in which abilities are seen as important components of intelligence, while Arabs question the predictive validity of IQ test scores for life success much more than do their Western counterparts. Based on our results, we conclude that there is little evidence for the existence of cultural bias in points of view about intelligence research and that the concept of cultural non-transferability – or “cultural bias” – must be examined more critically.