Alexander Kessner

Warm welcome to IGDORE, Alexander Kessner!

Alexander holds a Bachelor of Science in Psychology and is about to graduate in Cognitive Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience (MSc) from the Friedrich-Schiller University of Jena this year. After working for several years at various university hospitals, he will soon begin his postgraduate training as a clinical neuropsychologist and begin to earn his doctorate. He also heads a research group in the Science and Research Department of the MinD-Foundation (@Mensa_Germany, registered association) in the field of research on the highly gifted. His interdisciplinary research focuses mainly on cognitive functions of various groups of people.

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Thank You!

Welcome to IGDORE @Alexander_Kessner :wave:

That’s exciting that you’ve started leading a research group before starting your doctorate! Out of interest, is there a site or any material overviewing what research Mensa is doing? I know very little about Mensa and wasn’t even aware they did research at all. I’m interested to find out more.

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Hello Galvin, Thank you for your interest! You can follow our Lab at Researchgate https://www.researchgate.net/lab/Mensa-in-Deutschland-eV-Tanja-Gabriele-Baudson One of Mensas stated purposes is “To encourage research in the nature, characteristics, and uses of intelligence;” We’re more a loose bond of researchers (mostly psychologists) and researchers in training who cooperate in different projects. Some of which I coordinate. That’s why I’m the group leader besides our lab head. But it’s not exactly the same as a research group at an university because, with exeption of our lab head (@tanja.baudson), no one is paid for their research. In America with a bigger membership base there’s more research, as far as i know. But our declared goal is to expand the research conducted in germany as well and enter cooperations with different (research and charitable) institutions/organizations.

In the last months we established a lecture series https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJB4A0VN6h2LG7H8ezplMiPlyF7RuqClv . Also, under my guidance, we set up a survey server on which we can conduct studys in compliance with data protection laws and are about to launch an online panel for our members, so they can be notified about upcoming studys.

The next big projects I am working on are a study about prosopagnostic individuals and a study about relationship attitudes and (deviating) sexual behaviors in high-iq individuals. In the future I’m interested to research connections of different cognitive domains with intelligence, especially complex attention. Also I’m supporting a longitudinal study about our members and some other bigger projects which are mostly managed by our Labhead Tanja.

Best regards

PS: Attached you find our leaflet for english speaking researchers. Constructive criticism is very welcome since I designed the flyer myself and only have limited expertise in the field of design :slight_smile: . The conference where it was to be distributed was cancelled due to corona :frowning:Wifo Flyer 2 (4).pdf (3.5 MB)

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Thanks for the extra info, Alexander! Wow, that’s quite impressive how many research projects the German Mensa is involved in. Are a lot of Mensa members interested in participating in your research? It seems like you could conduct some quite highly-powered studies (in a statistical sense). I look forward to hearing more about how your research there progresses.

Wrt. to the flyer, I like the logo’s on the first page. I feel the text could be separated by using boxes on the second page, otherwise, the three purposes flow into the participant’s section.

No Problem :slight_smile: For now most of them are planned at this moment but not conducted. Thats what we hope for! In the Past Mensans were really motivated to take part in different surveys so we’re really optimistic and with our onliny panel we hope to solve the problem of restriced samples since we can conduct prescreenings target specific groups.

That’s a good Idea! Thanks!

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