Mensa Research Journal allows readers to explore the many facets of intelligence

  • Jun 1, 2012
  • MRJ
  • Phyllis Miller

“Whether the ultimate function of play is conceived as preparation, flexibility, socialization or existential fortitude, one of the greatest examples of play can be found in a liberal education,” says the New York Times. “No one expects more than a handful of students to become philosophers, scientists or literary critics. But the joyful exercise of reading, discussing and writing about ideas is a form of play that develops a huge array of competencies for the challenges that students will encounter in adult life.”

That “joyful exercise of reading, discussing and writing about ideas” is just what you will find in the Mensa Research Journal. For more than 40 years, the MRJ has been published by the Mensa Foundation with the purpose of bringing information about all aspects of human intelligence to its readers. Today the MRJ has subscribers not only in the United States, but in many countries where English is not the official language. These subscribers find the articles compelling enough to read in a language not their own because the exceptional quality of the research, the integrity of the scholar-authors, and the breadth and depth of the topics make the journal an important source of information.

Do you know how your brain works? Do you know how other people’s brains work? Do you know how much (or how little) education matters? How much your genes have to do with it? How much your nutrition matters? Do you know what will happen as you get older, or if you suffer a stroke, or if you eat or drink a particular thing? And do you know how your life could have been completely different from what it now is if you had had a different teacher in third grade? The Mensa Research Journal has published information on all of these subjects and many more as well.

Go to www.mensafoundation.org/mrj and select “Issues Index” from the left menu. You’ll come to a list of recent MRJ issues. Select “Table of Contents,” and you’ll see a “summary” link that will bring you summaries of the articles in those issues. No doubt you will see several that will make you want to know more, and no doubt you will be impressed by the kind of research into human intelligence that is currently being done throughout the world. The summer issue, hot off the press, is devoted to research on science and math for gifted students; the fall issue is on the topic of existential intelligence. (Don’t you want to know what that means?)

You can also easily order a back issue on a subject that interests you, or you can subscribe for three issues per year. And you don’t have to be a member of Mensa to subscribe, just someone interested in the latest information about giftedness and human intelligence in general.

So take a look — learn a little about yourself and other smart and not-so-smart people — and see what you’ve been missing.