Summarize the conclusions Goddard reached when he traced the ancestry of Deborah Kallikak.
Henry Herbert Goddard was the first person to translate the Binet-Simon’s scale of intelligence from French to English. He found the Binet-Simon scale and its methods were quite effective in distinguishing children who were mentally retarded, that is, in finding out their degree of retardation.
He supported the Galton-Cattell-Spearman’s views that intelligence is rather an inherited virtue. His belief was based on his own observation that some ‘feeble-minded’ or ‘slightly retarded’ children of a school, where he was a teacher, often had siblings who were of lower intelligence or intellect.
Goddard wanted to investigate the relationship between individual intelligence and family background. He traced the ancestry of a young woman named Deborah Kallikak, who was living at the training school in New Jersey, where Goddard was researching.
Deborah was biologically 22 years old but her intellectual or mental age came out to be of 9 years, her IQ (intelligence quotient) coming about 41. Goddard coined the term ‘moron’ to denote Deborah Kallikak’s inferior intellectual level.
Deborah’s ancestry was traced back to the American Revolution, where Martin Kallikak Sr. had a relationship with an intellectually inferior or ‘feeble minded’ bar-maid due to which Martin Kallikak Jr. was born.
Later, Martin senior married a ‘worthy girl’ and they had 7 children. On the other hand, Martin Junior had 10 children with his wife. Goddard made the analysis that the children of Martin Sr. and the worthy girl represented the good aspect of Deborah’s ancestry and the children of Martin Jr. represented the bad side.
Goddard found out that elder Martin’s children were all doctors, lawmakers, judges, notable men and none were feeble minded. On the other hand, five children of Martin Jr. were feeble minded. Of the descendants of Martin Jr., there were horse thieves, convicts, prostitutes, and alcoholics. In Goddard’s time, feeble mindedness was believed to be the cause of being criminals, convicts, anti-socials and others.
Goddard reported the above findings about Deborah’s ancestry in “The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeble-Mindedness” in the year 1912. His Galtonian beliefs were clearly expressed and interpreted by his findings.
Goddard concluded that intelligence was genetically determined and he along with many leading scientists of the day, suggested that people with mental deficiencies be sterilized or segregated from the rest of the society, so that they could not reproduce and continue their lineage.