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][3] These may also be referred to as genius societies.[4][5] The largest and oldest such society is Mensa International, which was founded by Roland Berrill and Lancelot Ware in 1946.[6][7]

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.[8][9][10] 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.[11][12][13]

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). Since the 1960s, Mensa has experienced increasing competition in attracting high-IQ individuals, as various new groups have emerged with even stricter and more exclusive admissions requirements.[14] Notable high-IQ societies include:

Name Established No. of members Approx. no. of countries Fees Eligibility / Rarity Approx. IQ
Mensa International1946~134,000[15] (as of May 2017)100Annual dues as of November 2017 for American Mensa are $79 (dues differ by country); life membership cost varies by ageTop 2 percent of population (98th percentile; 1 person out of 50)130
Intertel19661,300–1,400 (as of January 2014)31Annual dues are $39Top 1 percent (99th percentile; 1 out of 100)135
Triple Nine Society19781,800+ (as of November 2017)46Annual dues are $10; life membership is $183Top 0.1 percent (99.9th percentile; 1 out of 1,000)146
Prometheus Society1982~120 (as of January 2014)13Annual dues are $10Top 0.003 percent (99.997th percentile; 1 out of 30,000; not reliably measurable with current tests)160
Mega Society198226 (as of January 2014)UnknownAnnual dues are $39Top 0.0001 percent (99.9999th percentile; 1 out of 1,000,000; not reliably measurable with current tests)171.3

See also

References
  1. Groeger, Lena. "When High IQs Hang Out". Scientific American. Retrieved 2021-01-29.
  2. "The rise of children joining high-IQ society Mensa". BBC News. 2019-11-26. Retrieved 2021-01-29.
  3. "What Is Considered a High IQ, What's Average, What Results Mean". Healthline. 2020-01-28. Retrieved 2021-01-29.
  4. Groeger, Lena (January 1, 2015). ""When High IQs Hang Out." Scientific American". Retrieved 28 Jan 2021.
  5. "American Mensa Celebrates Its Diamond Jubilee". American Mensa. Retrieved 2021-01-29.
  6. Percival, Matt (8 September 2008). "The Quest for Genius". Retrieved 26 June 2015.
  7. "American Mensa Celebrates Its Diamond Jubilee". American Mensa. Retrieved 2021-01-29.
  8. "Qualifying test scores". American Mensa. Retrieved 2019-01-24.
  9. "Intertel - Join us". www.intertel-iq.org. Retrieved 2019-01-24.
  10. "Test Scores". www.triplenine.org. Retrieved 2019-01-24.
  11. "IQ values explained". www.triplenine.org. Retrieved 2019-01-24.
  12. 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.
  13. 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. Lay summary (9 February 2012). [Curve-fitting] is just one of the reasons to be suspicious of reported IQ scores much higher than 160
  14. Schregel, Susanne (2020-12-01). "'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.
  15. "About Mensa International - How many members does Mensa have?". www.mensa.org. Archived from the original on 2013-09-16. Retrieved 2019-01-24.

Further reading
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