6 ms·
This is a survey of people who joined MENSA. I would posit that most normal, healthy, high-IQ folks never bother, and there's a selection bias at play.
by ndiscussion 6y ago
This is a survey of people who joined MENSA. I would posit that most normal, healthy, high-IQ folks never bother, and there's a selection bias at play.
- jw1224 6y agoI am normal, healthy, and a Mensa member. What exactly do you mean by that?
- whimsicalism 6y agoMeans that the typical mensa member is not necessarily the typical high IQ person.
- viklove 6y agoWould you say your membership was worth the fees required to join? What do you get out of being a member?
- jw1224 6y agoHaha, absolutely not. I get almost nothing out of it. I sat the exam out of curiosity, but if you qualify and want to join, you have to do so immediately — you can't decide to later on. I've been a member for 3 years, and doubt I'll renew next year. There's a private Facebook group for members, which has some lively discussion from time to time, but that's about it. To be honest I just posted my earlier comment to stir the pot a little :)
- gpvos 6y agon = 1
- Sebb767 6y agoCompared to n=0 of the grandparent
- voxl 6y agoHe's saying that, on average, a high IQ person does not find Mensa valuable or interesting and so does not bother to join. Whereas, someone who is lonely, searching community, depressed, etc and _also_ has a high IQ would be more likely to apply and join. The fact that you happen to be normal, healthy, and a Mensa member isn't particular important when speculating about the possible selection bias. Although, we are just speculating.
- jw1224 6y agoYeah, I was well aware what the implication was :) I was just stirring the pot really... It's always interesting to read the general sentiment towards Mensa members — implying they join out of "loneliness" or "depression" is a hilariously unfounded assumption. I agree that Mensa is fairly pointless overall, but in my experience, its members are generally pretty representative of the general population.
- davidbanham 6y agoMy contention would be that many (not all) people are drawn to Mensa because they have difficulty forming relationships in mainstream society. I’d suggest it’s this trait that correlates with mental and physical disorders.
- float4 6y agoThe Dutch Mensa site[0] has the following bullet points in a "high IQ checklist": - [...] - Do you often fit poorly into a group? - Do you sometimes feel desperate due to all those slow people around you? - [...] I think that says a lot. [0] https://www.mensa.nl/hoogbegaafdheid https://www.mensa.nl/hoogbegaafdheid
- Nokinside 6y ago>> would posit that most normal, healthy, high-IQ folks never bother, and there's a selection bias at >I am normal, healthy, and a Mensa member What exactly do you mean by that? This is not very high-IQ :)
- rltalker 6y agoYou have to frame it in familiar terms for Mensa members: What conclusions can you draw from the following sentence? "I would posit that most normal, healthy, high-IQ folks never bother, and there's a selection bias at play." a) All Mensa members are unhealthy. b) There may exist some normal, healthy, high-IQ folks in Mensa. c) All Mensa members have high IQ. d) No Mensa member has high IQ.
- tomcam 6y agoLiterally that you’re a spaz? (sorry, I’d say this if you were my best friend, so nothing personal. It was just too easy. This snark was totally be worth the inevitable downvotes) Mensa is the most boring organization I ever joined and its members the most self-aggrandizing. I quickly dropped my membership after a year. The Chamber of Commerce was infinitely more interesting.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- josefresco 6y agoThe only person I know in Mensa used it in his resume which always grossed me out.
- Mountain_Skies 6y agoI did that! Doubt I'm the person you're thinking of but it was something to put on my otherwise empty resume that would have consisted of jobs at Burger King and a oil change store. Once I had my first professional job under my belt, I left it off. No idea if it helped or hurt getting that first job but I suspect if nothing else it gave me a bit of confidence going into those first interviews after university.
- josefresco 6y agoThis was not that situation and I have no issue with someone young and bright using it (Mensa) to get their foot in the door. My guy was middle-aged, from privilege and used Mensa and other BS accomplishments to swindle people into thinking he was some sort of tech luminary.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- giardini 6y agoHe's right to use it b/c Mensa membership is sometimes used as a hiring filter. It's neither discriminatory nor illegal to do so.
- jw1224 6y agoThis is a common discussion point amongst members, and almost everybody agrees it's a terrible idea. (Unless you look up the hiring manager in the membership directory first, and see they're a member too...)
- hntrader 6y agoSelf-selection bias. The insecure, the underachievers, the lonely, the narcissistic, etc, might be more likely to join. The confident, the successful, the popular, etc, probably are less likely to join.
- Foobar8568 6y agoMoreover, you don't even need to pass an IQ test to join MENSA US. https://www.us.mensa.org/join/testscores/ https://www.us.mensa.org/join/testscores/
- mamon 6y agoWhat I find interesting on that page is that the more recent (past 2-3 decades) college preparatory tests (e.g. SAT) are not accepted as substitutes to IQ tests. Shows the trend of dumbing down the tests, I guess.
- rory 6y agoThat is odd. If the tests were simply dumbed down, wouldn't Mensa just raise the required score? The implication is that these tests have become less IQ-correlated. I'd be interested to see a comparison in the type of questions from the 70s vs today.
- hanniabu 6y agoProbably less reliable and more overhead. You have to constantly evaluate what the new equivalent score and who knows, maybe even the max score isn't good enough anymore.
- tux3 6y agoResponding in a vacuum, but the other explanation could be that these tests fail to discriminate at the high-end. If everyone with a high score is squished together, raising the floor just amplifies relative noise
- alistairSH 6y agoThat's exactly what they did - they have 3 bands of years for the SAT. Two year bands (<1974, 74-94) are accepted with different scores, and the more recent tests (94+) are not accepted. The major change in 1994 was the allowance of calculators during the math portion. I don't know why MENSA couldn't make a similar score adjustment here.
- 6y ago
- lima 6y agoYes. It's a weird bunch (not in a bad way!). I went to their meetings a couple times by invitation, and it never really "clicked" - for many of their members, their MENSA membership and related activities are a big part of their identity and their life, and I wasn't able to connect. I heard the same thing from a couple of friends who also met their entrance criteria, and there's certainly a lot of selection bias. Which is fine, but it's not representative by any means.
- tomcam 6y agoI joined at a young age and after a couple of meetings realized it made no sense at all to me. Joining a club because you have a high IQ is like joining a club because you have a leg or a head. I think immutable attributes in general just aren’t enough to hold a group together, or at least make it interesting. Could be wrong on this one, though.
- pizza234 6y ago> Joining a club because you have a high IQ is like joining a club because you have a leg or a head That's a bit too loose analogy. A more precise is like joining because one is tall. While the principle still somewhat holds, the difference is in the consequences. One may join Mensa because they're likely to find people with similar tendencies/interests, as much as tall people may like certain sports.
- whatshisface 6y agoWhere are all of the satisfied Mensa members? Every time Mensa gets brought up a whole swarm of dissatisfied former members shows up to explain how it's not worth attending, and yet the organization persists. What's the other side of the story?
- giantg2 6y agoI know of two Mensa members. They don't seem to be dissatisfied, but they don't seem to be active in it either. Maybe it depends on the expectations one has before joining.
- neaden 6y agoYeah, this title is extremely misleading. These are Mensa members who answered an email survey, generalizing it like this isn't valid.
- 1023bytes 6y agoYes. Associating with people based solely on their IQ is pretty misguided.
- toolz 6y agoThere seems to be some implication here that you believe joining mensa means you associate with people only for their high IQ. Just because that's the entrance criteria doesn't mean you hang out with some subset of those members soley based on their IQ. Just as joining a sports team doesn't mean you only hang out with members of that team because they enjoy the same sport - the same holds true for people who join mensa or any other group I'd imagine.
- zpeti 6y agoSame publication that two days ago posts about how climate anxiety is a white issue... At least they could stop calling themselves "scientific" american.
- centimeter 6y agoThat doesn't clash with my observations at all. Environmental activists of all strains, including climate enthusiasts, are overwhelmingly white.
- astrange 6y agoThis may be a consequence of the place you live in or the language you're reading their material in. I expect there are plenty of people doing environmental things (possibly under other names) in Africa/India/China. White people also invented "rolling coal", so we have both extremes.
- zpeti 6y agoIt might not clash with your observations but it’s a pretty racist thing to say
- centimeter 6y agoIf something is true, I don't really care if you're going to try to attach a negative emotional connotation to it (at least if we're discussing things at arm's length).
- coldtea 6y agoYep. It attracts the insecure/not much to show for so I'll just show the number share of high IQ people.
- TheKnack 6y agoOne can just listed to the podcast "My Year in Mensa" to confirm this as a major issue with this research. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/my-year-in-mensa/id1492147103 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/my-year-in-mensa/id149...