High-IQ society

A high-IQ society 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][2] The largest and oldest such society is Mensa International, which was founded by Roland Berrill and Lancelot Ware in 1946.^[3][4]

Entry requirements

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]

All notable high-IQ societies agree in accepting only tests from traditional testing environments.^{[5][6][7][disputed – discuss]}

Demographics

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

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

• IQ classification
• Level of measurement § Ordinal scale