A Question Relating to Mensa, with Three Answers

This question came up in my consideration of whether to join a High IQ society such as Mensa.

The question is fairly simply stated:

The average financial status of Mensa members is lower than the overall average for the population. If they're so smart, why don't they have better jobs?

There are three answers, all very important for understanding how "mental ability" relates to society as a whole.

First Answer

The first answer comes from a larger debate about how people get into groups like Mensa — through written tests. There are many types of "mental ability", and only some of them can be evaluated accurately through written tests. Mensa accepts many different types of test scores but all are pretty similar to the verbal and/or math SAT's. In particular, "social intelligence", ability to handle emotion, and charisma cannot be tested nearly as easily as the verbal and math abilities. So Mensa lets in the folks who get good grades in school, but does not have a bias one way or another regarding other mental abilities.

However, these other types of ability are usually important for getting ahead in a career. This highlights a more significant point about IQ in general, that is illustrated by the more general question:

If IQ is hereditary (which it is — it runs in families) then why hasn't the process of natural selection caused human IQ to rise in general?

The answer to this is that those with higher IQ (as measured by written tests) tend to actually have a somewhat lower ability in other mental areas, like emotion, social ability, and charisma. The reasons for this are not too well understood, but the phenomenon is familiar to most people who think back to their high school class and consider the really smart people. Although some of the really smart people (including the valedictorian) were well-rounded and did well in social circles, many did not and were somewhat socially isolated.

Second Answer

The second answer comes from looking at the people who do not join Mensa. High-IQ groups like Mensa are meant to provide a way for their members to find people they can interact with who will stimulate their mind (and they more or less succeed at this, typically by playing mentally challenging games or publishing a journal).

Most people who have achieved success in a professional career get this type of stimulation from co-workers, trade organizations and the like, or join another type of club (such as a bridge club) that allows them to meet other smart people. These people do not need Mensa because they have already fulfilled Mensa's purpose through other groups of people.

Third Answer

The third answer comes from Mensa members themselves, and is perhaps the most relevant answer because it adresses the original question:

Just as IQ is only one measure of mental ability, financial status is only one measure of success.

By and large, Mensa members consider themselves successful because they are happy. They consider overall happiness to be a better measure of success than career or wealth.

Correlation table

For those who still care after reading the above, here is part of a table provided by Colloquy that shows an approximate correlation between several different types of I.Q. scores and the old and current versions of the SAT:

I.Q.	140	141	142	143	144	145	146	147	148	149	150	151	152	153	154	155	156	157	158	159
Gen'l Population percentiles:	99.5	99.59	99.66	99.72	99.77	99.81	99.85	99.88	99.9	99.92	99.94	99.95	99.96	99.968	99.975	99.98	99.984	99.988	99.991	99.993
Standard Deviation	+2.576		+2.707		+2.834		+2.968		+3.090		+3.239		+3.353		+3.481		+3.599		+3.746
Otis-Beta	135	136	137	138	139		140	141	142	143	144	145	146		147	148	149	150
Wechsler/ WAIS	139	140	141	142		143	144	145	146	147	148	149	150	151	152	153	154	155	156	157
Otis-Gamma	140	141	142	143	144	145	146	147	148	149	150	151	152	153	154	155	156	157	158
Stanford-Binet	141	142	143	144	145	146	147	148	149	150	151	152	153	154	155	156	157	158	159	160
CTMM *(3)	141	142	143	144	145	146	147	148	149	150	152	153	154	155	156	157	158
Otis-Lennon	141	142	143	144	145	146	147	148	149	150	152	153	154	155	156	157	158	159	160
S.A.T. (M+V, before 4/95)	1360	1380	1390	1400	1420	1430	1440	1460	1470	1480	1490	1510	1520	1540	1550	1560	1580	1590		*(4)
SAT-I (recentered) 4/95 & later *(4)	1420	1440	1460	1470	1490	1510	1520	1550	1560	1580
Colloquy percentiles:	8	15	28	40	50	58	65	70	75	79	82	85	88	90	92	93	95	96	98	99

This page was written in the "embarrassingly readable" markup language RHTF, and was last updated on 2009 Jul 01.

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