4 ms·
It's unclear to me that they've controlled for "people who join Mensa." To be clear, I'm not throwing shade, and I was a member for awhile before I got sick of
by geoelectric 7y ago
It's unclear to me that they've controlled for "people who join Mensa."
To be clear, I'm not throwing shade, and I was a member for awhile before I got sick of paying dues, getting spammed, and not going to meetings. They're a fine organization, spam aside.
But in general, people who join clubs based on personal qualities do so because they put some level of value and identity in that quality. Some people who tend that way do so because they have an emotional hole to fill, and some people who tend that way do so because it's their dominant positive quality (in their own perception).
So, neither of those speak to Mensa's core message of joining so you have people as smart as you to converse with. But both of those suggest a higher potential for Mensa members in general to have life issues they're compensating for by joining intelligence clubs.
I do believe the basic trend that very smart people have more mental disorders, at least. I think our knowledge of twice-exceptional people has grown a lot over time, and I think there's plenty of anecdotal evidence that quirks come with the intelligence territory. Get quirky enough and a quirk is a diagnosis. But I'm not convinced that particular skew starts at the 95% percentile.