Moron is a controversial term once used in
psychologyPsychology is an academic and applied discipline involving the systematic, and sometimes scientific, study of human or animal mental functions and behavior...
to denote a category of
mental retardationMental retardation is a generalized disorder, characterized by significantly impaired cognitive functioning and deficits in two or more adaptive behaviors with onset before the age of 18...
. The term was closely tied with the American
eugenicsEugenics is the study and practice of selective breeding applied to humans, with the aim of improving the species. Widely popular in the early decades of the 20th century, after having become associated with the Holocaust, it has largely fallen into disrepute.- Overview :As a social movement...
movement. Once the term became popularized, it fell out of use by the psychological community.
"Moron" was coined in 1910 by
psychologistA psychologist is someone who studies the human mind and behavior. Research psychologists study human perception, cognition, attention, emotion, motivation, personality, behavior and interpersonal relationships...
Henry H. GoddardHenry Herbert Goddard was a prominent American psychologist and eugenicist in the early 20th century. He is known especially for his 1912 work The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeble-Mindedness, which he himself came to regard as deeply flawed, and for being the first to translate...
from the
GreekGreek , an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, is the language of the Greeks. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. In its ancient form, it is the language of classical...
word
moros, which meant "dull" (as opposed to "sharp"), and used to describe a person with a mental age located between 8 and 12 on the
Binet scaleThe development of the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales initiated the modern field of intelligence testing. The Stanford-Binet test started with the French psychologist Alfred Binet, whom the French government commissioned with developing a method of identifying intellectually deficient children...
.
Moron is a controversial term once used in
psychologyPsychology is an academic and applied discipline involving the systematic, and sometimes scientific, study of human or animal mental functions and behavior...
to denote a category of
mental retardationMental retardation is a generalized disorder, characterized by significantly impaired cognitive functioning and deficits in two or more adaptive behaviors with onset before the age of 18...
. The term was closely tied with the American
eugenicsEugenics is the study and practice of selective breeding applied to humans, with the aim of improving the species. Widely popular in the early decades of the 20th century, after having become associated with the Holocaust, it has largely fallen into disrepute.- Overview :As a social movement...
movement. Once the term became popularized, it fell out of use by the psychological community.
Origin and uses
"Moron" was coined in 1910 by
psychologistA psychologist is someone who studies the human mind and behavior. Research psychologists study human perception, cognition, attention, emotion, motivation, personality, behavior and interpersonal relationships...
Henry H. GoddardHenry Herbert Goddard was a prominent American psychologist and eugenicist in the early 20th century. He is known especially for his 1912 work The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeble-Mindedness, which he himself came to regard as deeply flawed, and for being the first to translate...
from the
GreekGreek , an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, is the language of the Greeks. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. In its ancient form, it is the language of classical...
word
moros, which meant "dull" (as opposed to "sharp"), and used to describe a person with a mental age located between 8 and 12 on the
Binet scaleThe development of the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales initiated the modern field of intelligence testing. The Stanford-Binet test started with the French psychologist Alfred Binet, whom the French government commissioned with developing a method of identifying intellectually deficient children...
. It was once applied to people with an IQ of 51-70, being superior in one degree to "imbecile" (IQ of 26-50) and superior in two degrees to "idiot" (IQ of 0-25). The
wordA word is the smallest free form in a language, in contrast to a morpheme, which is the smallest unit of meaning. A word may consist of only one morpheme , but a single morpheme may not be able to exist as a free form A word is the smallest free form (an item that may be uttered in isolation with...
moron, along with others including "
retardedMental retardation is a generalized disorder, characterized by significantly impaired cognitive functioning and deficits in two or more adaptive behaviors with onset before the age of 18...
", "idiotic", "imbecilic", "stupid", and "
feeble-mindedThe term feeble-minded is documented in use as early the 19th century through to the early 20th century as a loose description of a variety of mental deficiencies, including what would now be considered mental retardation in its various types and grades, and learning disabilities such as dyslexia.A...
", was formerly considered a valid descriptor in the psychological community, but it is now deprecated by psychologists.
Following opposition to Goddard's attempts to popularize his ideas, Goddard recanted his earlier claims about the moron: "It may still be objected that moron parents are likely to have imbecile or idiot children. There is not much evidence that this is the case. The danger is probably negligible."