High-IQ society
A high-IQ society or genius society[1][2] is an organization that limits its membership to people who have attained a specified score on an IQ test, usually in the top two percent of the population (98th percentile) or above.[1][3] The largest and oldest such society is Mensa International, which was founded by Roland Berrill and Lancelot Ware in 1946.[4][2]
Entry requirements
[edit]High-IQ societies typically accept a variety of IQ tests for membership eligibility; these include WAIS, Stanford-Binet, and Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices, amongst many others deemed to sufficiently measure or correlate with intelligence. Tests deemed to insufficiently correlate with intelligence (e.g. post-1994 SAT, in the case of Mensa and Intertel) are not accepted for admission.[5][6][7] As IQ significantly above 146 SD15 (approximately three-sigma) cannot be reliably measured with accuracy due to sub-test limitations and insufficient norming, IQ societies with cutoffs significantly higher than four-sigma should be considered dubious.[8][9][10]
There are disagreements about appropriate tests. Some tests, such as the Mega Test, are usually self-administered, which has resulted in concerns about people cheating.[11] Other tests have been criticized for relying on outdated or sexist cultural stereotypes, such as a logic puzzle that assumes women always change their family name when they marry.[11]
Demographics
[edit]People who choose to join high-IQ societies, especially those focused on highest levels, tend not to be as successful as expected according to conventional social standards.[11] For example, in contrast to the general expectation that being intelligent correlates with financial success, they often have relatively low-paid jobs or have difficulty obtaining and maintaining steady employment.[11] They may struggle to maintain intimate relationships.[11] They are frequently lonely and feel like they are outsiders, and join for a sense of belonging.[11][12] The skew towards many members having relatively low life success may be due to selection; that is, the over-representation of "lonely, frustrated, and socially awkward" people in high-IQ societies may be because happy, well-adjusted, middle-class people with high IQs do not seek out high-IQ societies, but the people who are not doing well do seek them out.[11]
Societies
[edit]Some societies accept the results of standardized tests taken elsewhere. Those are listed below by selectivity percentile (assuming the now-standard definition of IQ as a standard score with a median of 100 and a standard deviation of 15 IQ points). Mensa is by far the largest high-IQ society, but since the 1960s, various new groups have been founded with even stricter admissions requirements.[13]
Ultrahigh IQ groups are frequently short-lived organizations. Their internal disagreements (e.g., over which entrance tests to accept) often result in organizations splintering.[11] For example, the International Society for Philosophical Enquiry (previously called The Thousand, and before that, MENS), which was founded to out-do The MM Society.[14] It then split to produce the Triple Nine Society, and then the Triple Nine Society split to produce the Cincinnatus Society.[11] Ronald K. Hoeflin has founded or co-founded seven different high-IQ societies.[15]
Notable high-IQ societies include:
| Name | Established | No. of members | Approx. no. of countries | Eligibility / Rarity | Approx. IQ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mensa International | 1946 | ≈ 145,000 (as of 2022[update])[16] | 100 | Top 2 percent of population (98th percentile; 1 person out of 50) | 130 |
| Intertel | 1966 | ≥ 1,700 (as of July 2024[update])[17] | 40 | Top 1 percent (99th percentile; 1 out of 100) | 135 |
| Triple Nine Society | 1978 | ≈ 1,900 (as of September 2022[update])[18] | 46 | Top 0.1 percent (99.9th percentile; 1 out of 1,000) | 146 |
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ a b Groeger, Lena (January 1, 2015). "When High IQs Hang Out". Scientific American. Retrieved January 29, 2021.
- ^ a b "American Mensa Celebrates Its Diamond Jubilee". American Mensa. Retrieved January 29, 2021.
- ^ "The rise of children joining high-IQ society Mensa". BBC News. November 26, 2019. Retrieved January 29, 2021.
- ^ Percival, Matt (September 8, 2008). "The Quest for Genius". Retrieved June 26, 2015.
- ^ "Qualifying test scores". American Mensa. Retrieved January 24, 2019.
- ^ "Intertel - Join us". www.intertel-iq.org. Retrieved January 24, 2019.
- ^ "Test Scores". www.triplenine.org. Retrieved January 24, 2019.
- ^ "IQ values explained". www.triplenine.org. Retrieved January 24, 2019.
- ^ Perleth, Christoph; Schatz, Tanja; Mönks, Franz J. (2000). "Early Identification of High Ability". In Heller, Kurt A.; Mönks, Franz J.; Sternberg, Robert J.; et al. (eds.). International Handbook of Giftedness and Talent (2nd ed.). Amsterdam: Pergamon. p. 301. ISBN 978-0-08-043796-5.
norm tables that provide you with such extreme values are constructed on the basis of random extrapolation and smoothing but not on the basis of empirical data of representative samples.
- ^ Urbina, Susana (2011). "Chapter 2: Tests of Intelligence". In Sternberg, Robert J.; Kaufman, Scott Barry (eds.). The Cambridge Handbook of Intelligence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 20–38. ISBN 9780521739115.
[Curve-fitting] is just one of the reasons to be suspicious of reported IQ scores much higher than 160
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Lewis, Helen (June 4, 2025). "A High IQ Makes You an Outsider, Not a Genius". The Atlantic. Retrieved June 10, 2025.
- ^ Groeger, Lena (2012). "When High Iqs Hang Out". Scientific American Mind. 23 (5): 38–39. ISSN 1555-2284.
- ^ Schregel, Susanne (December 1, 2020). "'The intelligent and the rest': British Mensa and the contested status of high intelligence". History of the Human Sciences. 33 (5): 12–36. doi:10.1177/0952695120970029. ISSN 0952-6951. S2CID 227187677.
- ^ Miyaguchi, Darryl. "A Short (and Bloody) History of the High I.Q. Societies". miyaguchi.4sigma.org. Retrieved June 10, 2025.
- ^ Sternberg, Robert J. (January 2, 2023). "Toxic Giftedness". Roeper Review. 45 (1): 61–73. doi:10.1080/02783193.2022.2148311. ISSN 0278-3193.
- ^ "About Us". Mensa International. 2022. Retrieved September 9, 2022.
- ^ "Intertel - Home". www.intertel-iq.org. Retrieved July 6, 2023.
- ^ "What is TNS?". Triple Nine Society. 2022. Retrieved September 8, 2022.
Further reading
[edit]- Kaufman, Alan S. (2009). IQ Testing 101. New York: Springer Publishing. ISBN 978-0-8261-0629-2.
- Shurkin, Joel (1992). Terman's Kids: The Groundbreaking Study of How the Gifted Grow Up. Boston (MA): Little, Brown. ISBN 978-0-316-78890-8.
- Frederic Golden (May 31, 1992). "Tracking the IQ Elite : TERMAN'S KIDS: The Groundbreaking Study of How the Gifted Grow Up, By Joel N. Shurkin". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on November 8, 2012.
- Terman, Lewis Madison; Merrill, Maude A. (1937). Measuring intelligence: A guide to the administration of the new revised Stanford-Binet tests of intelligence. Riverside textbooks in education. Boston (MA): Houghton Mifflin.