How do people with IQs of 140 - 200 think?

I barely make the cut, but I had a real IQ test when I was young and mine was 141.

Emotionally - I am super emotional. I am very cranky and particular about everything. I want my way. Then if I hurt someones feelings I cry.

Ideologically - I believe in spirituality and love.

Socially - I do not let people 'in' easily. I am very stand-offish at first. I have a very sarcastic sense of humor.

Oh and I guess that I like things simple and to the point. lol. I didn't give very long explanations did I ? lol.

I was way above average at school although there were many ahead of me. I came out of school with relatively few qualifications because I'd discovered punk and Gary Numan and had more interest in Philip K Dick and robots than stupid geography and equations.

I plodded along until about 1995 when BAM!! The best way I can describe it is my mind's ability to process and store information quadrupled, almost overnight. My brain felt like a sponge and I was relentless in my studying and learning, easily understanding theoretical physics and quantum mechanics. Considering I got booted out of every science class I did at school I found this natural inclination towards science interesting to say the least.

In 1998 I took a MENSA test and scored 148 but didn't feel like joining as I thought it was a bit pretentious. I do sometimes quote the score on my CV, depending on the job I'm applying for as it has helped.

I think in two ways - rationally following a logical sequence of events to a number of prospective outcomes. Or, as someone else has mentioned, seeing the end result first and working my way back. I call it my Spock time.

My other way of thinking is complete chaos. I'm a very visual person and sometimes liken my visual thinking to a HUD on a video game or a virtual graphical interface sometimes seen in science fiction films. I'll 'see' a collection of flowcharts, callouts and graphics which contain 'information' which I'll mentally rearrange to give me my answers.

Interestingly I've always worked in roles where I'm solving problems because I can 'see' all the variables and rearrange them. People say they see my eyes moving in every direction as mentally I'm rearranging and solving their problems.

I'm quite outgoing, make friends easily and genuinely like helping people. The other side of me is prone to depression, easily angered and I don't suffer fools gladly. I get frustrated with deliberate stupidity, stubborn-ness and ignorance yet I'll happily spend hours with someone explaining solutions or helping them with a task. I don't like time wasters, pontificators or obsessives yet I'll spend hours with people with learning difficulties.

I learn languages very quickly, usually by just having a go, I think quickly and can deal with a number of tasks all at the same time. Complex, technical 'stuff' I digest easily yet I still can't get my head around how ISAs (tax free savings) work!

Someone else mentioned previously problems they'd had with friends and employers and I've had the same issues. I live in a blue-collar, working class industrial area where being above your station is not tolerated. I got laughed out of my own local pub some years ago because I let slip I read New Scientist. Employers take advantage by giving me tasks way above my pay level because they're the only things that challenge me. Unfortunately because I have few academic qualifications it's difficult for me to apply for roles as Degree level qualifications are essential and they won't consider applications without Degrees. So I'm in a Catch 22 situation.

I also yap a lot but I hope the above is useful to someone, somewhere.

I have an IQ of over 140. For the most part I find the whole world fascinating, although sometimes everything becomes a little overwhelming and I struggle to cope (as I 'over think' the simplest of things and end up having an existential crisis in the middle of breakfast etc). My sense of wonderment and adventure can make it hard to forge a set career, however I am currently working in the music industry (after a stint in academic research at Cambridge University!) which to an extent satisfies my need for pottering about all over the place with unrestricted working hours.

Socially speaking, I am outgoing and have many friends although I am terrible at small talk and normally end up making an inappropriate sarcastic comment when faced with dull conversation. I do find it quite hard to meet people on my wavelength but this makes friendships all the more special when I do click with someone.

I am frighteningly messy, very clumsy and an awful driver (easily distracted from cleaning and watching where I am going).

I am not Christian, but find all religions interesting and try and learn as much as possible about them.

reply to post by WyrdeOne


Thank you so much for this essay, and thank to the "Anonymous ATS" poster who pointed it out (I sometimes only read the last page of longer threads, and would likely have missed it otherwise).

There is so much wisdom in what you wrote -- I'm so humbled. I wish I could write such wise words, with such truth, honesty, common sense, and lack of pretense. I think I'm sadly inconsistent.

Whenever I 'try to be intelligent', even with the best of motives, I oh so often am saddened by the discord I see in what I have done. I think unwise intelligence is like a fire -- it can cast light, but it can also burn.

I was encouraged by how you describe the wonderful balance between stillness and passion. I fear losing rationality, the ability of empathy, and, well, myself, as I try to keep growing 'beyond my little box' of ego and immaturity. You seem to have done so -- and kept yourself -- and that's so encouraging.

Thank you.

Highest iq ever tested.190 - Ludwig Wittgenstein

weird 160 - Albert Einstein

* 190 - Ludwig Wittgenstein
* 190 - Sir Isaac Newton
* 190 - François-Marie Arouet (Voltaire)
* 180 - Leonardo da Vinci
* 180 - David Hume
* 180 - Buonarroti Michelangelo
* 179 - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
* 176 - Emanuel Swedenborg
* 176 - Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz
* 175 - Johannes Kepler
* 175 - Edmund Spenser
* 175 - Baruch Spinoza
* 174 - John Stuart Mill
* 171 - Blaise Pascal
* 170 - Michael Faraday
* 170 - George Friedrich Händel
* 170 - Antoine Lavoisier



* 170 - Martin Luther
* 165 - Galileo Galilei
* 165 - Charlotte Brontë
* 165 - Johann Sebastian Bach
* 165 - Thomas Hobbes
* 165 - Carl von Linné
* 165 - John Locke
* 165 - Joseph Priestley
* 165 - Ludwig van Beethoven
* 165 - Samuel Johnson
* 162 - René Descartes
* 162 - Madame De Stael
* 160 - Albert Einstein
* 160 - Robert Boyle
* 160 - Benjamin Franklin
* 159 - Immanuel Kant
* 156 - Linus Carl Pauling



* 156 - Sofia Kovalevskaya
* 156 - Thomas Chatterton
* 156 - Olof Palme
* 155 - Rembrandt van Rijn
* 155 - Miguel de Cervantes
* 155 - Jonathan Swift
* 153 - Charles Darwin
* 153 - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
* 150 - George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans)
* 150 - Nicolaus Copernicus
* 150 - Abraham Lincoln
* 145 - Napoleon Bonaparte
* 145 - Anna Lindh
* 143 - George Sand (Aurore Dupin)
* 140 - George Washington
* 130 - Ulysses S. Grant
* 130 - Sir Francis Drake

* Physicist / Engineer Kim Ung-yong has a verified IQ of 210
* Bouncer Christopher Michael Langan has a verified IQ of 195
* Engineer Philip Emeagwali is alleged to have an IQ of 190
* World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov is alleged to have an IQ of 190
* Author Marilyn Vos Savant has a verified IQ of 186
* Actor James Woods is alleged to have an IQ of 180
* Politician John H. Sununu is alleged to have an IQ of 180
* Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is alleged to have an IQ of 180
* Mathematician Andrew Wiles is alleged to have an IQ of 170
* World Chess Champion Judith Polgar is alleged to have an IQ of 170
* Chess Grandmaster Robert Byrne is alleged to have an IQ of 170
* World Chess Champion Bobby Fischer is alleged to have an IQ of 167
* Mathematician / Physicist Stephen W. Hawking is alleged to have an IQ of over 160
* Microsoft Founder Paul Allen is alleged to have an IQ of over 160
* Actress Sharon Stone is alleged to have an IQ of 154

wow,

one thing is for certain..

people sure loooooove writing a page-long entry about themselves, how smart or stupid they think they are, why this is, and a detailed list of their character traits.

you get a few going, and then the whole place jumps in with their own 'IQ thread' reply. is that what it is? an entire world of people quietly keeping to themselves .. hidden in thought .. truly only wanting to be acknowledged for their innate traits, abilities, and uniqueness?

You know, it's rather interesting. We used to think that I.Q. was something etched in stone, now new research is showing that it may in fact be rather fluid.

These (standardized tests...not the ones you take on the internet) tests however, are vulnerable to cultural biases, and really are much better for use in finding out if someone needs welfare or not (measuring levels of below average I.Q., and average is 100).

Nice thread, very interesting anecdotal reports and such. Here's mine: I think the most aggravating thing in life is seeing the bad mistakes made by someone with a rather low I.Q. who has managed to become a gatekeeper in business & society, usually, though not always, by way of the good old boy network, and then having to deal with passive aggressive B.S. within an organization. One thing that these tests do not measure very well is something called "emotional intelligence", but that's perhaps, for another thread, or extra homework for the interested student.

So the emotional intelligence aspect has always interested me, but what if a person with a high EI tends to drink too many glasses of wine? What if this person is bored silly with the average run of the mill conversation amongst peers immersed in the American Marketing culture, and thoroughly annoyed with the passive aggressiveness, and so has a few extra glasses of wine to numb the brain? Is he being smart or stupid? Did he make the decision or was it made for him? He may be higher in I.Q. land then everyone else, and even high with the E.I. factor, but the extra glasses of wine at the office party which he may have consumed to ease the pain as it were, is talked about at work for weeks after putting him at a disadvantage within the organization by those jealous of his abilities. He is pushed out, and the organization looses a person who increased productivity rates through the roof. See how interesting it can get?

*edits for spelling and extra thoughts*








[edit on 6-6-2008 by skyshow]

Very cool thread you have going here. I don't put too much stock in standardized tests (the man who discovered DNA had an I.Q. of 110), but I.Q. testing is the generally accepted standard of intelligence universally.

When I was in grad school I was given the Stanford-Binet and scored a 151...not too shabby, but not off the charts either.

To answer your questions, I am not a very emotional person when it comes to my decision-making. I try to make all of my decisions based on logic and reason (which by no means ALWAYS happens). However, in every other aspect of my life, I become very emotionally invested.

Academically, I received a bachelor's degree in biology, a bachelor's degree in communication disorders, a master's degree in business, and a master's degree in speech-language pathology (which is currently the one that I use :duh.

Socially, I am a very, very social person. I rarely meet a stranger and I view everyone as my friend until proven otherwise. I prefer to be with others (preferably drinking wine or eating a great meal), but I value my alone time as well. I would definitely describe myself as an extrovert.

My ideologies are most always based on science, fact, and things that are tangible. Now, that doesn't mean that I'm not prone to let my imagination or wishful thinking get the best of me at times.

On the contrary, my husband has an I.Q. much higher than mine and he did not make the best grades in college (though he did graduate), and he is the classic definition of an introvert. He is very emotional (witnessed tonight when the Lakers lost to the Celtics).

So, I would conclude that like any other group of people, you must never stereotype. Also, IMO...a person's accomplishments in life (of all types) should always be valued much greater than any test score.

Anyway...great thread.

I like pie.

I can eat pie.

Pie is good!

I have always felt this way.

There are many pies. Apple, Blueberry, Peach, Lemon Merangue, Coconut Custard.

I especially like Mincemeat pie. I don't know why. I just do.

I hope this helps your research.

I see Cyberbian's point.

A question for someone that knows: Can years of depression affect your IQ?

reply to post by LiquidationOfDiscrepancy


My young friend averages around 142-146 on his IQ tests; he's very math orientated. He is very robotic in the way he handles his relationships and his life. He is quite successful in most of the things he does.

I have an older friend who averages around 160 on IQ tests. To be honest he never struck me as a super genius. He always seemed very emotionally
distrought.

i've taken a few IQ tests and i've gotten 134-140 on them. Never above 140, i always took them while pulling all nighters into the next day, so fatigue might have been a factor. Anyways, 136 seemed to be my average. I don't consider IQ tests a true measure of someones intelligence though . . .

I guess i can't join your over 140 club, but i consider myself someone with an overactive brain . . .

I tend to over think everything. I found that in school; the harder a test, the better i would perform. The truly challenging tests that people would complain about, i would relish and ALWAYS get the highest grade. The simple quiz that was a "give away A" I would normally do poorly on.

When i was younger, if i was not working on something, my thoughts would envelope me and i would get headaches and sometimes get depressed. When i'm depressed I have OCD tendencies, but when i'm not, i'm absolutely fine. As i've gotten older this seems to have subsided.

I get bored with things quickly because i find them too easy. Because of this i'm very competent at many things. However, because of my thirst to learn new skills and information; i've never become a master at anything.

I do not believe you can truly measure someones intelligence. I believe that inherently, for the most part, we're all the same. Some of us enjoy expanding different parts of our bodies and minds more than others.


[edit on 6/6/2008 by JPhish]

IQ can change. For one thing, developing more patience will allow you to focus longer and determining a solution, rather than guessing.

And thank you for understanding. I was afraid that people might not understand at all and think I was being sarcastic or stupid.


We are people too, There are concrete and abstract reasoners who think differently. I happen to be on of the abstract reasoners. I believe they occur at about 1 in 10,000. But it has nothing to do with IQ. And IQ has little to do with anything accept exposure to a common information set and your understanding and ability to manipulate that dataset.

We like pie too!

Originally posted by Cyberbian
IQ can change. For one thing, developing more patience will allow you to focus longer and determining a solution, rather than guessing.

And thank you for understanding. I was afraid that people might not understand at all and think I was being sarcastic or stupid.


We are people too, There are concrete and abstract reasoners who think differently. I happen to be on of the abstract reasoners. I believe they occur at about 1 in 10,000. But it has nothing to do with IQ. And IQ has little to do with anything accept exposure to a common information set and your understanding and ability to manipulate that dataset.

We like pie too!

well said cyber. It's about the parameters in which the world measures intelligence, which eventually comes down to perception in the end. I maintain that someone who fails miserably on an IQ test, could still be absolutely brilliant.

When I was at school, I was tested at 145. For some reason back in the 70's, they performed IQ tests on us, then children.

I found myself easily bored in Middle and Junior High, and then when I got to High School, I found I was bored there, too, although I didn't get straight A's, like my brother, whose IQ was around 130 something.

A friend of mine, her mother had college books, and everyday after school, I would go to her house, and go through her mother's books. I use to love going through the encyclopedias.

I had the thirst for learning, but what I wanted to learn, not what I felt was imposed on me. I accepted the basic maths and english courses, as something that I would have to use in day to day living.

When they first spotted my high IQ was when I was in the first grade (I schooled in America, but am British born and now live back in my homeland)What caught the teachers attention was that my reading ability was far above my peers. I found the 'Jack goes after the ball' a really sad affair. My parents told my teacher how I would pull out the encyclopedias, when I would get home from school.

Before the age of 6, I was spelling words like 'coincidence, and conciousness' and quizzing my dad on politics. Unfortunately, being a 70's child, there were no such classes for gifted students.

Although, I have a high IQ, I feel that I was held back in many ways, as children of my time weren't given special education.

For example, I use to find basic math a bore, and would flunk at it terribly. When I took an algebra test, my math teacher was not amused that I could do algebra and not her maths, so much so, she humilated me in front of my classmates and refused to allow me to attend algebra.

I even knew my social security number, before I received it. In America it is required at the age of 13 that you were issued with a number. The math teacher was stunned.

I love learning and exploring ideas. I even have feel that there will come a day when there will be Interactive Holographic Television In other words, the programmes are beamed into the middle of the room, and you can record, rewind, etc. You will be able to move around the characters,but it won't be like in Star Trek, but it will be fun, nonetheless. It will probably be a reality in say no later than 25 years time.

The problem with a high IQ is more often than not, you are accused of lacking common sense.

I don't call a computer tech to help me solve my computer problems. I do it myself, and if I am unsure, I look it up on the internet.

I am computer literate, and self-taught. Once I got behind a computer, I was able to explore. My husband had a Amstrad, it was a DOS system. I found backdoors into his computer that he didn't even know was there.

Also, I don't mind trial and error, when I am experimenting with an idea. Just because you have a high IQ doesn't mean you don't make mistakes.

The IQ scale has changed now though (has been diffeent for several years now). It no longers goes to 200, just 135. The deviations are closer between IQ points.

To be a Mensa member, an IQ of 125 or greater is required using the new scale. Less than 5% of the population has an IQ of 125 or greater. 125 is considered border-line Genius, while 130 is Genius (1% of the population).

Look up the new scale and you'll see how it works. The average IQ for Caucasions is 100.

[edit on 6-6-2008 by jetxnet]

Originally posted by jetxnet
The IQ scale has changed now though (has been diffeent for several years now). It no longers goes to 200, just 135. The deviations are closer between IQ points.

To be a Mensa member, an IQ of 125 or greater is required using the new scale. Less than 5% of the population has an IQ of 125 or greater. 125 is considered border-line Genius, while 130 is Genius (1% of the population).

Look up the new scale and you'll see how it works. The average IQ for Caucasions is 100.

[edit on 6-6-2008 by jetxnet]

I did not know that

Hi, I just thought I'd add something to this discussion.

I've been tested with a fairly high IQ. I won't mention the exact number as I don't think it's that relevant.

I truly believe IQ has very, very little to do with genius, whatever that word means to anyone. IQ is a superfluous, albeit constant number that measures a brain's ability to process information.

Now, this is GREAT when it comes to studying or working in fields that require a large amount of data to process, like engineering, accounting etc. It means you can grasp, juggle and process that data and distil it into meaningful information. It is especially useful in scientific fields as those require a large amount of abstract concepts and links between those concepts to be managed at a fast pace.

True genius, as several people on this forum have been wise enough to realise, is the ability to generate seminal ideas and concepts and create links between otherwise disjoint ideas to produce new ways of thinking that are relevant and/or widely accepted.

Now, granted, being a genius in the scientific fields would probably be very difficult with a low IQ, as no amount of creativity and ideas can work if one doesn't have enough processing power to make sense and manage that creativity, but you probably don't need to have an exorbitant IQ to be successful in that field.

Artistic fields probably don't require a high IQ at all. Different artistic fields require different mental disciplines, some visual, some verbal, some musical, some emotional. In fact, I would say having an overly high IQ would actually be a crutch in certain fields that require a 'purer' form of thinking.

Before anyone gets too excited about having a tested IQ greater than some redundant number, do realise that true genius takes motivation, discipline and on some occasions, a life time of hard work. There's no point in having a quad-core CPU with 4 gigs of RAM if you're not going to have any software or operating system installed on it.

Don't get me wrong, if you DO have a high IQ (and the internet tests are certainly no measure), that's great. You've got a head start and you probably will find studying math and physics a lot easier than other people.

One more thing, all these estimated IQs of famous people, like Einstein, Mozart or Da Vinci are absolute BS!!! If anyone here is stupid enough to think that Einstein's IQ really is 160, that's all the more proof that IQ tests are redundant. The man NEVER took an IQ test and the way these men's iqs were estimated is questionable at best. I have a feeling if Einstein took an IQ test he probably wouldn't score much higher than 120 (based on what I know about him).

Some people will also wonder, if I'm making a case on how irrelevant IQ tests are, why did I mention I had an high IQ at the start of this post.

Firstly, I do think IQ is relevant, but only in the low-mid ranges, which is what they were originally designed to measure.

Secondly, if I hadn't mentioned I had a high IQ, there would probably be some percentage of elitist, naive people that wouldn't have bothered reading the rest of the post or taken it seriously.

Originally posted by MajjicMouse
I'm quite outgoing, make friends easily and genuinely like helping people. The other side of me is prone to depression, easily angered and I don't suffer fools gladly. I get frustrated with deliberate stupidity, stubborn-ness and ignorance yet I'll happily spend hours with someone explaining solutions or helping them with a task. I don't like time wasters, pontificators or obsessives yet I'll spend hours with people with learning difficulties.

This is very true for me as well. Its a big paradox to me. I get really annoyed at some people for being slow or ignorant, but at the same time I am happy to help them and spend a lot of time doing it.



[edit on 7-6-2008 by Copernicus]

Read several pages of comments, some very interesting and now I have some insight on a few people's thought process.

I tested with MENSA over 20 years ago at above 140. I always thought the tested was weighed in language skills because the diagrams were so easy to figure out.

I have always found it easy to figure out how something "works". I can just see stuff in my head and know what it does. Mechanical stuff is a snap. Even electronics off blueprints is relative easy. Can't explain it, just know it.

School was a joke and my parents put me in a year early. If I was interested in a subject. Straight E's, didn't care M's. Graduated HS after just turning 17. Kids couldn't jump years and enroll in college like they can now. It was a real educational system that kids could and actually did fail in.

What I find most frustrating, now, is that I'm older and seem to be much more forgetful about little things. After years of having and depending on fairly acute mental abilities, it's starting to slip. Nothing big, the big stuff I can still handle, but where are the car keys or call my cell phone so I can find it type crap.

In the long run, I'll be okay. The voices keep telling me that.

Now for genetics, I have 1 kid out of 4 that is clearly a high IQ kid. None of them have told me their IQ's or if they have been formally tested, but I have 1 that without a doubt is. What I base this on, from casual observations, is her ability to pick up foreign languages to a conversational or fluent level with ease. She has 5 languages under her belt at age 18.