Lippmann pointed out the superficiality of the questions, their possible cultural biases, and the risks of trying to determine a person's intellectual potential with a brief oral or paper-and-pencil measure. It has been shown on numerous tests that children from disadvantaged neighborhoods score lower on IQ tests than middle class families. William Labov studied this and concluded, "Inner-city children do not necessarily have inferior mothers, language, or experience, but the language, family style, and ways of living of inner-city children are significantly different from the standard culture of the classroom, and this difference is not always properly understood by teachers and psychologists."(Labov 1972). Also, this test is not very accurate for many immigrants. For example, H. Goddard tested 178 immigrants at Ellis Island and found "83% of Jews, 80% of Hungarians, 79% of Italians, and 87% of Russians to be "feeble minding""(Kleinmuntz, 1982, p. 333). Most of these immigrants did not fully understand English, and were at a disadvantage. Because of these injustices, Raymond B. Cattell and Florence Goodenough created a culture-free intelligence test. These tests contained very simple instructions and do not require extensive knowledge of math or science. Although culture-free tests help to decrease biases, they do not eliminate it. Socioeconomic factors also play a role in influencing performance on intelligence tests. Also, these tests are not always very accurate in predicting academic success, like other intelligence tests do. .
A very controversial topic among psychologists dealing with intelligence today is the nature versus nurture theory. In the Confucian societies of East Asia individual differences in endowment are assumed to be modest, and differences in achievement are thought to be due largely to effort. In the West, however, many students of the subject believe that intelligence is inborn and one can do little to alter their intelligence.