Why does society believes chess = intelligence

I'm just curious

These people are misinformed and inexperienced. I am a better chess player than my brother at the moment but he has a much higher education degree and makes a lot more money than me. Chess does not correlate to a lot of stuff. Good Chess players are often not even doing better in school than non-chess players at a high level. It is more irrelevant especially at a high level.

Interesting, so why chess tho?

Why our society thinks that about chess only and not other stuff

Mostly because chess is a game of perfect information- no luck involved whatsoever. So it is reasonable to assume that if someone beat you in chess, they "outsmarted" you. The reality is that strategic planning, reasoning, calculation, etc. are correlated to intelligence but someone can obviously be very smart as society defines it and not know how to play chess well, generally due to inexperience. So the assumption is not always true, but it is somewhat reasonable. 

Because chess players "think" all of the time. The cold truth is that all they are thinking about is chess! 

Actually that notion itself is a stereotype(somewhat). Most people don't regard people who play chess as more intelligent. However, I find that most people who are decent at chess(1600+ USCF or FIDE) are smarter than others in some way.

In my opinion it's relactive! In my city the great part of chess players are unemployed or are not very well in the professional life! I a'm a chess player initiant, but observ this things in my chess relationship group. For example, a litle bit chess players of my city knows to speak english!

Perhaps since people who use their muscles a lot are considered to be physically fit, people who use their minds are considered mentally fit. Anything that seems hard to the average person to achieve gets credit whether it is musical competence, computer competence, art competence, math competence and yes even chess competence.

If even 50% of society played chess, it would lose a lot of its luster, since only a few play very well and they trounce the vast majority who don't play , then chess players get a reputation of having greater mental abilities.Besides when did you ever hear of someone playing a simultaneous exhibition of 50 games of something while blindfolded and winning (like George Koltinowski) in some other game than chess. It definitely takes mental ability to be good. Not that I would bet on an NFL team with stupid players or a 

... continued stupid coach. Although some of the owners may be allowed some latitude on  the brains dept.