William Stern (1871–1938) and the IQ Concept

IQ is an abbreviation for “intelligence quotient.” The abbreviation “IQ” comes from the German term Intelligenz-Quotient, associated with psychologist William Stern. The quotient was intended as a numerical way to summarize performance in relation to age.

We should tell more about him because he was an important figure in the development of the idea. He was a German psychologist and philosopher noted as a pioneer in the psychology of personality and intelligence. William Stern decided that “personalistic psychology” or individuality was destined to be an important psychological problem of the twentieth century. He attempted to classify people according to types, norms, and aberrations. To Stern, it was in the process of investigating individuality that the real essence of personality and intelligence could be discovered.

Stern was influenced by the work of Binet and studies of intelligence in children. As a result, Stern reviewed the principal findings in the field and developed the idea of expressing intelligence-test results in the form of a single number, the intelligence quotient. His contribution became an important part of the history of the term “IQ.”

Modern context: Modern professionally standardized IQ tests generally do not calculate adult IQ by dividing mental age by chronological age. They compare performance with age-based normative samples and transform the results into standardized scores.

Continue to David Wechsler and the Wechsler scales.