It's even been upheld that an employer (e.g., police in Connecticut) can decline to hire someone because they scored too high on an IQ test. ABC News

@DanielR.Collins Good catch.

"occupational qualification" -- It's unclear to me what this means. You can be of average intelligence and work as, say, a patent lawyer, I imagine. But I bet it helps to have a high IQ. Is IQ a bona fide occupational qualification for practicing patent law?

@nvoigt I think for the IQ tests actually in use today there is some correlation between average scores and race/ ethnicity of participants. It might not be supposed to be that way but it appears to be that way in practice.

Most IQ tests test are also aptitude tests on specialized areas, such as detecting patterns, 3D Thinking, logical thinking or problem solving. Those are often enough Bona Fida Qualifications, such as seeing errors in patterns for someone doing Quality Control.

@MWB "You can be of average intelligence and work as, say, a patent lawyer, I imagine." No, you can't. There are rigorous entrance exams that exclude people with lower IQs. "Is IQ a bona fide occupational qualification for practicing patent law?" Yes.

@quarague The law expressly allows them in this situation unless you are using them with an intent to discriminate, e.g., in a dish washing job.

I want to point out that it has been conclusively shown that Black Americans do worse on standardized tests, with all other factors accounted for, including expected results according to other methods of measuring intelligence. It is a real problem that tests are generally created by white people for white people.

Let's assume (at least for argument's sake) that someone of average intelligence, who spent 20 years studying for the bar exam (perhaps starting at age 5, like chess champions) could ace it. Would it be legal to further test a lawyer for IQ / Fluid Intelligence before hiring him?

@MWB Yes. And, moreover, this is basically impossible. No matter how hard you study for it, unless someone has given them the questions in advance, you can't pass the bar exam (let alone gain patent bar membership) with a 100 IQ. The bar exam is extremely highly correlated with IQ test results. I've looked at the data and it takes an IQ of about 117 to pass the bar exam eventually after multiple tries, and the average IQ of a lawyer who passes the bar exam is about 133. Maximal test prep can increase an LSAT score by about 3 point in the 120-180 range of the test.

@TigerGuy "Black Americans do worse on standardized tests" True, but to say that "It is a real problem that tests are generally created by white people for white people" is misleading. Standardized tests and IQ tests are less biased by race than basically any other commonly used college admission or prospective employee evaluation tool. Adult African Americans would be significantly better off if people were hired based upon blind standardized tests than they are today.

But you've probably heard that GPT-4 does quite well on bar exams (And I think we can agree that it's lacking in the IQ department, while being very good at memorization).

@MWB What generative AI does is much more than memorization.

Sure. I'm just saying its memorization is incredible, which is what lets it make up for other flaws on certain tests.

An IQ of 100 is roughly an LSAT score of 133, and almost no one who gets below 145 on the LSAT has any realistic chance of passing the bar exam. The patent bar is harder because to be a lawyer admitted to the bar and be a patent lawyer at the same time, you need an engineering BA (there are exceptions but similarly rigorous ones). Basically 0% of people who earn such a degree have an IQ of under 111. Unlike some undergrad majors, engineering has a strong threshold effect.

Let us continue this discussion in chat.

do you maybe mean under a certain threshold? I cannot see how you can not hire someone because they have too high an IQ? Am I missing something?

@NeilMeyer You read it right. Basically, the police department in that case decided that people with IQs that were too high were overqualified, were likely to get bored as a police officer, and would be likely to leave the force after a short time, wasting the money that the police force put into hiring and training that person. A peak IQ requirement is very rare, but it is routine for employers to not hire someone because they are overqualified for similar reasons.

I did not know IQ is a qualification. IQ tests have many cultural biases and is very much geared towards a western ideas of intelligence, basing employment on such a contentious metric is probably a massive lawsuit just waiting to happen. It is not very credible social science. But then again the military uses lie detector tests which is a complete fraud so I guess this could fly.

@NeilMeyer "IQ tests have many cultural biases and is very much geared towards a western ideas of intelligence, basing employment on such a contentious metric is probably a massive lawsuit just waiting to happen. It is not very credible social science." While every test has some bias, almost every word quoted is false or misleading. It is less biased by race than almost any other measure used for hiring or higher education admissions. It is very credible social science, one of the best established points in the field. It is not a lawsuit waiting to happen for the reasons stated in this answer.