The Culture Fair Intelligence Test (CFIT) was created by Raymond Cattell in 1949 as an attempt to measure cognitive abilities devoid of sociocultural and environmental influences. Scholars have subsequently concluded that the attempt to construct measures of cognitive abilities devoid of the influences of experiential and cultural conditioning is a challenging one. Cattell proposed that general intelligence (g) comprises both Fluid Intelligence (Gf) and Crystallized Intelligence (Gc). Whereas Gf is biologically and constitutionally based, Gc is the actual level of a person's cognitive functioning, based on the augmentation of Gf through sociocultural and experiential learning (including formal schooling).

The most widely used individual tests of cognitive abilities, such as the current editions of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale and the Stanford–Binet Intelligence Scale, report cognitive ability scores as "deviation IQs" with 15 and 16 IQ points respectively, corresponding to one standard deviation above or below the mean, Cattell built into the CFIT a standard deviation of 24 IQ points.