(The average IQ of the general population is 100.) The survey of Mensa’s highly intelligent members found that they were more likely to suffer from a range of serious disorders. For most intelligence tests, this corresponds to an IQ of about 132 or higher. A “high IQ society,” Mensa requires that its members have an IQ in the top 2 percent. In a study just published in the journal Intelligence, Pitzer College researcher Ruth Karpinski and her colleagues emailed a survey with questions about psychological and physiological disorders to members of Mensa.
Now there’s some bad news for people in the right tail of the IQ bell curve. Although the reasons are not fully understood, they also tend to live longer, healthier lives, and are less likely to experience negative life events such as bankruptcy. People who do well on standardized tests of intelligence-IQ tests-tend to be more successful in the classroom and the workplace.
