Spearman's hypothesis

Spearman's hypothesis suggests that the differences in intelligence test scores among various racial or ethnic groups are primarily due to variations in general intelligence, or "g." It proposes that if the tests are fair and unbiased, then group differences should be consistent across different types of cognitive tasks because they all measure the same underlying ability. In other words, different intelligence measures should show similar disparities between groups if the concept of general intelligence accurately explains those differences. This hypothesis helps researchers understand whether observed score gaps reflect genuine cognitive differences or are influenced by other factors.