Letters; August/September 2008; Scientific American Mind; by Staff Editor; 2 Page(s)

Hardly Black and White

In ¿The Social Psychology of Success,¿by S. Alexander Haslam, Jessica Salvatore, Thomas Kessler and Stephen D. Reicher, it seems the authors¿bar graphs concerning blacks¿ perceptions of inferiority are adding to problems inherent in group comparisons. The flat tops of the graphs on page 27 imply that all whites are smarter than all blacks. Each bar should actually be a compressed bell curve, showing that only a small percent of whites have superior intelligence and that many blacks are smarterthan many whites.