[fr_freak]

All Kpelle tribesmen are rice farmers.

Mr Smith is not a rice farmer.

Is he a Kpelle man?

This may seem like perfectly logical question to which it would be equally valid to answer "no". But to the tribesman it was completely unreasonable to ask this. He replied "If you do not know a person, and a question comes up, it’s hard for you to answer. Because I don’t know 'Mr Smith' I can't answer the question." This answer is equally valid but incorrect for the purpose of an IQ test.

I'd say that this is incorrect and muddled thinking. The answer the tribesman gave is incorrect regardless of his cultural background. He was given the logical rules in the question, yet failed to apply them to reach a conclusion. This is done quite often in modern society as well, but we don't excuse it with some PC multi-cultural nonsense. Chances are, the researcher was merely talking to a stupid Kpelle tribesman. If that researcher had gone through every tribesman there was and they all gave that answer, there might be cause to look for a cultural bias, but one guy proves nothing. A better method would have been to use non-real world test items. For example: "All widgets are pink. This thing is yellow. Is it a widget?" Let's see the Kpelle fellow BS his way out of that one.

[Wardenclyffe]

You are correct, sir! How about this logic: All U.S. presidents are natural born citizens, Barack Obama is a U.S. president, therefore Barack Obama is a natural born citizen.

The Kpelle fellow's head would explode because he knows that BO was born in Kenya!

[r9etb]

was given the logical rules in the question, yet failed to apply them to reach a conclusion.

It's a poorly-worded question, actually, especially if your supposedly stupid Kpelle tribesman attempts to treat the question as if it applied to the real world.

In the real world, there are a variety of ways in which Mr. Smith could be both Kpelle and a non-rice farmer. Perhaps, for example, he was a rice farmer who for some reason can no longer farm rice -- he got hurt, say, or is too old. In this example, the researcher's expected answer would require the tribesman to ignore the distinction between "is" and "was."

In fact, the Kpelle tribesman's answer is fully as logical as the one you want him to give, and is perhaps even a better one because he realizes that the vagueness can only be resolved by direct evidence.

A better method would have been to use non-real world test items. For example: "All widgets are pink. This thing is yellow. Is it a widget?" Let's see the Kpelle fellow BS his way out of that one.

Did somebody paint the widget?