I've worked professionally as an SAT/ACT tutor for 8 years and roughly ~1000 or so students. I believe I've had 6-7 cases of actual anxiety mediated poor test performance (i.e anxiety dominantly explains a big part of their score problems). When it presents you try and detect by giving a really low stakes but genuine test (I'm not going to time you -though you do actually still time-, not tell your parents, it's just for fun, ect.). A huge score movement (3+ ACT points 150+ SAT points) under those conditions tells me genuine anxiety issues.
This reminds me of a certain archetype that existed when I was in school: Self-styled "nerds." Involved in lots of after-school clubs. Thought they were intellectuals because they read popular fiction like Harry Potter. Obviously got parental help whenever we were required to put together a PowerPoint presentation or some stupid posterboard project. Always did well on homework -- likely because they got help there, too. When they did poorly on regular tests, they'd complain and ask for a retake. And when it came time for standardized tests, they'd talk about being "poor test takers." Some of them conveniently got diagnoses in high school that allowed them to take extra time on the SAT.
I figure this kind of insecurity didn't exist when college was a niche path for particularly rich and/or smart kids instead of a giant racket every kid is funneled into. With manufacturing jobs being shipped overseas, email jobs becoming ubiquitous, and bachelor's degrees effectively becoming the new high school diplomas, everyone has to pretend to be an intellectual to preserve their own egos.
Like many brilliant people, I’ve always believed this but had to keep my mouth shut, as even the most obsequious suggestion to consider this possibility results in insults and enemies.
But as with so many things, I knew it then, and I was right.
P.S. This applies to my brother who has always resented not being quite as smart as me, but who has outstripped me in professional and personal success in recent years because other traits matter too, and he is one of the most conscientious people ever to live.
Or maybe open a history book and see to it that historically the intellectually robust & leadership driven black humans in the Americas, and likely across the planet, have been systematically assassinated and intimidated….. “talk poppy” syndrome on steroids. Academia is now full of drivel written by humans of every color and shape.
I partly blamed my poor performance on anxiety until I started taking harder courses in college. Switched to a "soft" science major as a result. Then I really felt dumb working alongside Malaysian immigrants. Sucks being average, but gotta play the the cards you're dealt.
Why can’t both of the theories hold truth? To me I have seen someone with extreme levels of anxiety struggle to take tests. If we weren’t in a testing setting she would impeccably answer with detailed and correct responses… but when it came down to tests she just shut down to the point that she was shaking. Is there any studies that show an improvement on test performance for people with test anxiety that have anti anxiety medication?
They can both be true to varying degrees, but if you have high power to detect bias and detect nothing with respect to anxiety, it's unlikely it has a quantitatively large effect.
I'm not sure if I buy the "anxiety is just like stereotype threat" analogy fully. But I think the argument works without this.
One thing that's unclear to me is that after a whole essay devoted to refuting anxiety as something that would interfere with performance, you then, in footnote 5, acknowledge that people with "real" anxiety high enough to qualify as disorder, or with learning disabilities (that might themselves cause both lower performance AND make test taking more stressful) likely would get affected.
So effectively you seem to be saying something along the lines of: otherwise stable-ish people who claim "test anxiety" as a situation-specific condition that lowers their performance are in fact rightly anxious about their actual lower ability. Which seems obviously correct but also a weaker claim than "anxiety (as a mental disorder) doesn't affect test performance"...
Admittedly I only looked briefly at a couple of the studies you reference, but those I looked at seemed to measure "test anxiety trait". So not an actual anxiety disorder. But something that might be reasonably thought of as a DIRECT result of lower competence/ability.
This is well written, but it is quite apparent to me that the POV that it was written from is that of someone who does not have any of the conditions that effect one's ability to take tests. There are obviously some people who just aren't smart and operate under the guise that they are just bad test takers, but your article tends to focus a lot on anxiety, when in my experience, which I acknowledge is anecdotal, the majority of people who say they are bad test takers have real conditions stop them from operating at their best when they are taking tests.
As long as we’re trotting out anecdotes, mine is that I decided in middle school that ‘test anxiety’ was an excuse teachers made to explain the way that I always trounced their favorites (who made the best grades from them) when we had to take objective tests or independent exams. Mysteriously, no matter how many tests they took, their anxiety never got any better; likewise, no matter how many times I was told that I was disappointing them by not ‘working as hard’ as they were, I continued to wipe the floor with them… unless the teachers got a chance to include a measure of ‘participation’ or ‘attitude’ or include a lot of tedious and fuzzily graded busy work.
this reeks of a guy who peaked in middle school dude. Congrats on beating your fellow students. Test anxiety would not just go away from taking more tests. You are misidentifying what the actual fear is. The fear comes from the implications that a failure to perform well on that test introduces, and I do not believe that goes away no matter how many times you take tests.
The one thing I don’t understand is that if stereotype threat is supposed to affect black people in general, then how would you be able to measure a group of them that aren’t already effected by stereotype threat? It’s not like they tell people at the doors of the SAT test center about negative black stereotypes.
Every Higher Learning institution has already scientifically research the races and their differences 100-150 years ago.... extensively but sadly most of it's been purged but the results were conclusive.... blacks are substantially less intelligent.
"Michelle (Obama, née Robinson) never tested well." Mrs. Marian Robinson (her mother). Yet somehow, Michelle managed to graduate both Princeton University and Harvard Law. My, my.
I’ve read Michelle’s Princeton thesis. Got a copy hanging around somewhere. Since then, I believe it’s been removed from public access. It is typical minority “make work”. I have no doubt that she passed the standards by which she was judged. I question those standards however.
I said “ I believe it was removed”. Not that I knew it was definitely removed. If you wished to be informative, rather than simply “snarky”, as possibly in your wording—“obviously”, you might have included a link to any available copy you know of so that others might read such as well and come to their own conclusions.
I’ll give you a hint here. Try “ https://dataspace.princeton.edu/ “, then try searching for Michelle Obama? Not as easy as you imply, is it? Seems one needs to know Michelle Obama’s maiden name and year of publication or I suspect graduation year as well as major area. In any event, you might find that information online with some effort. Try ChatGPT.
I won’t spend another second of my time on that women, but if, as you say, it’s “obvious” you’ll have little problem finding it and posting a direct link for we, the benighted, to use.
Quick anecdata...a white male, of my friendship/acquaintance for over 40 years, re-entered my life for 16 months. He attended accredited universities for eight years, and is still a high-school grad. Applied LAPD, and washed out after 22 months. He goes around picking fights, literally and figuratively, and when any relationship ends for him, the bad-mouthing and excuse-making begins. He makes a point of telling people he is "smart" and this is my first(!) encounter with someone like this. He has the gift of gab and charm, but cannot hold a job and lives a parasitical life off his wife and mother. My point is the IQ differential is real and large enough to be noticed. I feel terrible thinking this, let alone saying it, but the truth is often uncomfortable. Thank you for this great breakdown, Cremiux Recueil, and comments, readers.
Exactly, and it should be better acknowledged, because the clear result in our society is that people with less skills of calculation, not to mention impulse control, are taken advantage of by numerous numerous systems. Housing systems, etc Instead of affordable housing (“unfortunately”) we should have Low IQ housing and by no means should be inferior, but by no means does it need to have marble countertops…… etc etc
I tire of apologists for differing Black achievement as compared to others. It’s so boring. What the article posted brought immediately to mind were old studies comparing high test scorers and low test scorers and their prediction/confidence as how they did on the test. High achievers were usually the ones who predicted a lower score (IIRC) and had the most doubts, while low test scorers were often full of confidence and predicted better results. Don’t quite know how it fits here, but your conclusions don’t particularly surprise me.
My personal experience was as a highly anxious test taker—not of general tests—but of the big ones like the GRE or of my Masters exam. One shot, miss and you’re out. I survived and passed. I suspect the anxiety effects are greatly exaggerated and the conclusion that anxiety and low score are correlated to low ability more than anything else.
Let’s parse the concept of “succeed”. If you mean, they’d never get a degree or certification (excluding the “talented tenth”), certainly. However, if you mean success in that they will excel, or at least be of average effectiveness in their chosen profession, then we must proceed with caution. Incompetence is a penalty we all pay for and for all time.
I've worked professionally as an SAT/ACT tutor for 8 years and roughly ~1000 or so students. I believe I've had 6-7 cases of actual anxiety mediated poor test performance (i.e anxiety dominantly explains a big part of their score problems). When it presents you try and detect by giving a really low stakes but genuine test (I'm not going to time you -though you do actually still time-, not tell your parents, it's just for fun, ect.). A huge score movement (3+ ACT points 150+ SAT points) under those conditions tells me genuine anxiety issues.
Most kids just say it as ego defense though.
This reminds me of a certain archetype that existed when I was in school: Self-styled "nerds." Involved in lots of after-school clubs. Thought they were intellectuals because they read popular fiction like Harry Potter. Obviously got parental help whenever we were required to put together a PowerPoint presentation or some stupid posterboard project. Always did well on homework -- likely because they got help there, too. When they did poorly on regular tests, they'd complain and ask for a retake. And when it came time for standardized tests, they'd talk about being "poor test takers." Some of them conveniently got diagnoses in high school that allowed them to take extra time on the SAT.
I figure this kind of insecurity didn't exist when college was a niche path for particularly rich and/or smart kids instead of a giant racket every kid is funneled into. With manufacturing jobs being shipped overseas, email jobs becoming ubiquitous, and bachelor's degrees effectively becoming the new high school diplomas, everyone has to pretend to be an intellectual to preserve their own egos.
Very well written!
I agree with this so much I could cry.
Like many brilliant people, I’ve always believed this but had to keep my mouth shut, as even the most obsequious suggestion to consider this possibility results in insults and enemies.
But as with so many things, I knew it then, and I was right.
P.S. This applies to my brother who has always resented not being quite as smart as me, but who has outstripped me in professional and personal success in recent years because other traits matter too, and he is one of the most conscientious people ever to live.
Blacks have substantially less innate intelligence(on average) than whites or Asians this is just a scientific fact of life.
This is just another ruse to explain the gap away ..... it can never be their fault
Or maybe open a history book and see to it that historically the intellectually robust & leadership driven black humans in the Americas, and likely across the planet, have been systematically assassinated and intimidated….. “talk poppy” syndrome on steroids. Academia is now full of drivel written by humans of every color and shape.
Lol.
You're delusional Thomas.
There was no intellectual leadership in sub-Saharan Africans.
... didn't even have a written language,lol.
No African tribe, Nation or country did...lol.
Hahahahahaha.
I can only imagine how dumbed you are
Eww
Humanity across the board has been dumbed down....you're correct there Tommy... you're a classic case of it
Well written as usual
I partly blamed my poor performance on anxiety until I started taking harder courses in college. Switched to a "soft" science major as a result. Then I really felt dumb working alongside Malaysian immigrants. Sucks being average, but gotta play the the cards you're dealt.
Nooooo! I must be smart! 0 out of 5 stars
Why can’t both of the theories hold truth? To me I have seen someone with extreme levels of anxiety struggle to take tests. If we weren’t in a testing setting she would impeccably answer with detailed and correct responses… but when it came down to tests she just shut down to the point that she was shaking. Is there any studies that show an improvement on test performance for people with test anxiety that have anti anxiety medication?
They can both be true to varying degrees, but if you have high power to detect bias and detect nothing with respect to anxiety, it's unlikely it has a quantitatively large effect.
I'm not sure if I buy the "anxiety is just like stereotype threat" analogy fully. But I think the argument works without this.
One thing that's unclear to me is that after a whole essay devoted to refuting anxiety as something that would interfere with performance, you then, in footnote 5, acknowledge that people with "real" anxiety high enough to qualify as disorder, or with learning disabilities (that might themselves cause both lower performance AND make test taking more stressful) likely would get affected.
So effectively you seem to be saying something along the lines of: otherwise stable-ish people who claim "test anxiety" as a situation-specific condition that lowers their performance are in fact rightly anxious about their actual lower ability. Which seems obviously correct but also a weaker claim than "anxiety (as a mental disorder) doesn't affect test performance"...
Admittedly I only looked briefly at a couple of the studies you reference, but those I looked at seemed to measure "test anxiety trait". So not an actual anxiety disorder. But something that might be reasonably thought of as a DIRECT result of lower competence/ability.
This is well written, but it is quite apparent to me that the POV that it was written from is that of someone who does not have any of the conditions that effect one's ability to take tests. There are obviously some people who just aren't smart and operate under the guise that they are just bad test takers, but your article tends to focus a lot on anxiety, when in my experience, which I acknowledge is anecdotal, the majority of people who say they are bad test takers have real conditions stop them from operating at their best when they are taking tests.
As long as we’re trotting out anecdotes, mine is that I decided in middle school that ‘test anxiety’ was an excuse teachers made to explain the way that I always trounced their favorites (who made the best grades from them) when we had to take objective tests or independent exams. Mysteriously, no matter how many tests they took, their anxiety never got any better; likewise, no matter how many times I was told that I was disappointing them by not ‘working as hard’ as they were, I continued to wipe the floor with them… unless the teachers got a chance to include a measure of ‘participation’ or ‘attitude’ or include a lot of tedious and fuzzily graded busy work.
this reeks of a guy who peaked in middle school dude. Congrats on beating your fellow students. Test anxiety would not just go away from taking more tests. You are misidentifying what the actual fear is. The fear comes from the implications that a failure to perform well on that test introduces, and I do not believe that goes away no matter how many times you take tests.
The one thing I don’t understand is that if stereotype threat is supposed to affect black people in general, then how would you be able to measure a group of them that aren’t already effected by stereotype threat? It’s not like they tell people at the doors of the SAT test center about negative black stereotypes.
Every Higher Learning institution has already scientifically research the races and their differences 100-150 years ago.... extensively but sadly most of it's been purged but the results were conclusive.... blacks are substantially less intelligent.
It's just a scientific fact of life
"Michelle (Obama, née Robinson) never tested well." Mrs. Marian Robinson (her mother). Yet somehow, Michelle managed to graduate both Princeton University and Harvard Law. My, my.
I’ve read Michelle’s Princeton thesis. Got a copy hanging around somewhere. Since then, I believe it’s been removed from public access. It is typical minority “make work”. I have no doubt that she passed the standards by which she was judged. I question those standards however.
I've read that drivel as well. Me, me, my, my, mine, mine. How tiresome and depressing, really.
It is obviously not removed from public access. Anybody can read it from a variety of sources, including Princeton directly.
I said “ I believe it was removed”. Not that I knew it was definitely removed. If you wished to be informative, rather than simply “snarky”, as possibly in your wording—“obviously”, you might have included a link to any available copy you know of so that others might read such as well and come to their own conclusions.
I’ll give you a hint here. Try “ https://dataspace.princeton.edu/ “, then try searching for Michelle Obama? Not as easy as you imply, is it? Seems one needs to know Michelle Obama’s maiden name and year of publication or I suspect graduation year as well as major area. In any event, you might find that information online with some effort. Try ChatGPT.
I won’t spend another second of my time on that women, but if, as you say, it’s “obvious” you’ll have little problem finding it and posting a direct link for we, the benighted, to use.
Yeah the curtain has been raised and now we know that all these black women plagiarize and cheat.
Test anxiety is just another contrived excuse to shed any personal accountability.
"Wasnt my fault"
Quick anecdata...a white male, of my friendship/acquaintance for over 40 years, re-entered my life for 16 months. He attended accredited universities for eight years, and is still a high-school grad. Applied LAPD, and washed out after 22 months. He goes around picking fights, literally and figuratively, and when any relationship ends for him, the bad-mouthing and excuse-making begins. He makes a point of telling people he is "smart" and this is my first(!) encounter with someone like this. He has the gift of gab and charm, but cannot hold a job and lives a parasitical life off his wife and mother. My point is the IQ differential is real and large enough to be noticed. I feel terrible thinking this, let alone saying it, but the truth is often uncomfortable. Thank you for this great breakdown, Cremiux Recueil, and comments, readers.
Exactly, and it should be better acknowledged, because the clear result in our society is that people with less skills of calculation, not to mention impulse control, are taken advantage of by numerous numerous systems. Housing systems, etc Instead of affordable housing (“unfortunately”) we should have Low IQ housing and by no means should be inferior, but by no means does it need to have marble countertops…… etc etc
"Housing systems, etc. Instead of affordable housing (“unfortunately”) we should have Low IQ housing..." We do. It's called "Prison."
I tire of apologists for differing Black achievement as compared to others. It’s so boring. What the article posted brought immediately to mind were old studies comparing high test scorers and low test scorers and their prediction/confidence as how they did on the test. High achievers were usually the ones who predicted a lower score (IIRC) and had the most doubts, while low test scorers were often full of confidence and predicted better results. Don’t quite know how it fits here, but your conclusions don’t particularly surprise me.
My personal experience was as a highly anxious test taker—not of general tests—but of the big ones like the GRE or of my Masters exam. One shot, miss and you’re out. I survived and passed. I suspect the anxiety effects are greatly exaggerated and the conclusion that anxiety and low score are correlated to low ability more than anything else.
If the bar isn't lowered for blacks they'll never succeed... it's just what we have to do
"If the bar isn't lowered for blacks they'll never succeed... it's just what we have to do"
You are promoting incompetence...anti-merit. That will cause the descent of humanity.
You must be autistic and take that literally and not notice the satire
As always, you're full of shit.
I noticed you didn't make your shit-for-brains remark to Compsci.
Because compsi didn't seem as intellectually helpless as you
"The real reason is I verbally kicked your dumbass a while back.
It's shocking you can't recognize satire that's the sign of low IQ
"It's shocking you can't recognize satire that's the sign of low IQ"
Yeah, that's why I have a degree in chemistry and physics...and you don't.
Let’s parse the concept of “succeed”. If you mean, they’d never get a degree or certification (excluding the “talented tenth”), certainly. However, if you mean success in that they will excel, or at least be of average effectiveness in their chosen profession, then we must proceed with caution. Incompetence is a penalty we all pay for and for all time.