The Mensa Research Journal offers readers the chance to exercise their brains

  • Nov 11, 2013
  • Mensa Research Journal, MRJ
  • Domestic
  • Phyllis Miller, Foundation Trustee

The Mensa Research Journal is not for everyone. It's only for smart people who want to learn more about themselves and other smart people. It's only for people who want to learn more about how their brains work, how their minds work, and how scholars and researchers are working to figure out and even improve what we call human intelligence.

Human intelligence is a pretty wide area, encompassing everything from neuroscience to artistic creativity to education, psychology, mental illness, developmental disabilities — just about everything that makes the brain tick, and sometimes, like a clock, not tick. The MRJ finds the best articles from the best journals that deal with relevant topics; the articles are reprinted or summarized or discussed and presented to you all in one handy place. Authors come from all over the world (although the articles are in English) and from all over the academic disciplines. Readers, too, are a disparate group. Some love the statistics, charts, and graphs; others skip over them and just absorb the meat of the article. Some readers find practical tips they can apply to their own lives, others may have an aha day that sheds light on their own situations, and others may simply love to read the MRJ to do what smart people love to do — learn stuff.

One MRJ reader, Jane Cosper, said, "I especially look forward to articles on how the human brain works. These offer the opportunity to increase one's self-awareness, and it's fun to see how research links to useful applications in everyday life. I like the way you address issues that interest me — information I can apply to things I'm doing right now. One of my favorite issues was Volume 44, No. 2 on creativity, especially the article titled 'The Bias Against Creativity: Why People Desire but Reject Creative Ideas.' I used it to stimulate lively discussions among executives in both for-profit and non-profit organizations, which resulted in new policies and procedures that enhanced productivity within the organization."

Not only that — if you have smart friends or colleagues, do what Cosper does: "I'm told that the interesting articles I forward to friends and colleagues help to broaden their perspective regarding Mensa and its members, and offer fresh ways of understanding human behavior in the workplace."

Of course, for a relatively inexpensive way to impress your friends and colleagues you can just leave a few copies of the MRJ lying around where they can be seen. Oh, but of course you wouldn't do that. Or maybe, well, you would at least read the table of contents, right?

Anyway, as I was saying — another reader subscribes to the MRJ not so much for its practical applications as for its mental stimulation.

"So I joined this organization called Mensa," Bruce Benson said. "I wasn't quite sure what I was looking for, but it made sense at the time. I went to some meetings, wore my Mensa t-shirts to show the world my achievement in the hopes I would attract intellectual stimulation and, perhaps if I was lucky, a social life as well. To be sure, I found those things and more. On the other hand, there was an unspoken and unfulfilled need that took multiple attempts to discern. As usual, it wasn't the long phrased faux-titled cleverness that enticed me to intellectuality in the end. It was the Mensa Research Journal. I held the answer in my own little hands. With every issue I found myself reading this magazine that presented me with the perfection of publishing materials. A publication that made me stretch to grasp it all, to think to put the pieces together — a reader's delight that forced me to grapple, translate, regale, challenge and, reach a semblance of comprehension. At last, I had found my purpose within Mensa — to rise up to an intellectual challenge that forced the use of this wonderful gift we, as Mensans, have been given. I no longer sat and squandered my time with magazines and writers who assumed I was too dumb to breathe.

"Many thanks to the editors and ultimately the writers who have enriched my life by not talking down to me and making me reach upwards through your writings. Force me to reach some more — I'm ready."

So the Mensa Research Journal is not for everyone. It's only for smart people, people like Jane Cosper and Bruce Benson; people like you. Plus, as Jane Cosper put it, "It's one simple way to support Mensa's efforts." The MRJ is published by the Mensa Education and Research Foundation. If you would like to subscribe, receive a sample copy, read a sample article, or support the Foundation in some other way, go to mensafoundation.org. What a smart thing to do! And it's so much more interesting than paying bills.