When you state an opinion, especially adversarial, you are soliciting the responses you receive. If it bothers you, keep your mouth shut. Like mom always said: "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say it at all." Even if it is a rebuttal, because no one wins when a conversation spirals downward.
Giftedness never translating into social attractiveness
- Thread starter Agnostic Monk
- Start date
I didn't state an opinion. I asked a question. I have every right to question and debate the responses, just like anyone here.
I think I used wording in my OP that has been misconstrued. Most seem to think "gifted" is being meant as a label of inherent superiority, when in fact I meant the use of "gift" to be a humble and thankful way of meaning any positive attribute. I think everyone has their blessings and their curses.
Really? Wow, those classes for me were the only time I DIDN'T feel like a wierdo. They were also a lot more fun.
This doesn't match up with reality. Mozart was not a musical genius because his father said so. His father said so because Mozart WAS a musical genius.
Plus, I know all sorts of kids, the product of "self esteem" training, who think they are all that and a bag of chips, when in fact they are incredibly mediocre. Their high self image did not somehow magically make them smarter or anything else, except perhaps jerks.
I don't think that gifted people ARE socially ostracized.
There was a guy in my school who was a natural at pretty much anything musical-- he could pick up any instrument and learn it rapidly. He was extremely popular, and almost everyone was in awe of him. I guess it didn't hurt that he was also an extremely nice guy.
If you walk around thinking that people don't like you because you're better than they are, it's probably just going to make them hate you even more.
There was a guy in my school who was a natural at pretty much anything musical-- he could pick up any instrument and learn it rapidly. He was extremely popular, and almost everyone was in awe of him. I guess it didn't hurt that he was also an extremely nice guy.
If you walk around thinking that people don't like you because you're better than they are, it's probably just going to make them hate you even more.
Gifts are meant to be shared, if you dont people may become envious or angry of them.
Technically that's more of an update. But, if you "intuitively felt" it was the right thing to write, I guess I can't argue with you.
Technically, that's _____ fallacy.
[MENTION=4717]subwayrider[/MENTION] help me out here bro.
That's a Feelings is always right fallacy. I'm right so often that people think that I'm ALWAYS right. Crazy.
I do believe that's
Fallacy of accident or sweeping generalization: a generalization that disregards exceptions.
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There's been studies about intellectual giftedness, and to specify, in this case I'm only talking about the type measured by I.Q. tests. I was actually going to post a thread about this because It was on my mind after reading an article about the social problems of intellectually gifted children in the paper.
Apparently there are a few studies about the correlation between high IQs and success in later life and they found that out of the children with a moderately high IQ 60% did well in life whereas children with very high IQs had a proportionately higher risk of social problems and failure in school and work. People with IQs starting from 120 experience similiar problems which are exasperated the higher the IQ.
I find that some of the problems you mentioned, like a strong dislike to repetitive learning, are typical to intellectual giftedness.
I found a very informative booklet for teachers describing these problems online in this address:
https://www.asep-suisse.org/joomla/
click the word anglais in blue in the main text for the PDF.
A DIFFERENT MODE OF INTELLECTUAL FUNCTIONING
Gifted children process information in a very different way than the average population.
They have more important capacities for analogical processing, a faster processing speed, they basically understand faster. Their short term memory is twice the norm and their long term memory is also larger than the norm.
In her book “The Gifted Child”, Jeanne Siaud-Facchin explains how studies on the brain have shown that gifted children use their right hemisphere (which treats information globally, simultaneously and manages emotions) more than their left hemisphere (which analyses and breaks down information sequentially). It would also appear that their brain can receive a larger quantity of information at the same time and that exchanges between both hemispheres are faster.
In parallel to psychometric testing (IQ tests), a second category of tests has been developed by Anglo-Saxon research to appreciate divergent thinking, that means the ability of an individual to find original and innovative alternative solutions to situations she may be faced with.
This research has shed a new light on intuition, which was long considered to be a sixth sense.
This processing seems particularly effective with gifted children who are better at applying solutions than at explaining them. They use formal logical thinking, divergent thinking and intuition with a rare ability and ease, in a very speedy way.
Jeanne Siaud-Facchin also explains that gifted children use arborescent thinking, while so- called “normal” children think in a sequential way. “Arborescent” thinking can also be described as “Visual-Spatial” thinking.
The school system is based on the sequential way of thinking. This is why gifted children feel out of place and why teachers do not understand why a child who was officially declared “intelligent” is incapable of applying learning methods or problem resolution strategies which have proved adequate with so many other children.
For instance, if the teacher gives a mathematical problem with additions and subtractions, the gifted child will immediately give the correct answer but will be incapable of explaining how she got to it. If we ask her to explain how she found the solution, she won’t be capable of explaining and will answer that she “just knew”. This probably will lead to a bad grade and the teacher will conclude that the child has not understood anything while she simply has not understood the sequential problem resolution method proposed by the school system.
Similarly, when asked to write an essay describing her holidays, the average child will tell a story with a beginning, a middle and an end while the gifted child will get lost in her thoughts and souvenirs, each thought bringing a new idea or remembrance and one hour later, when she
notices that her page is still blank, she will launch into a furious bout of writing, most probably not on the given subject.
The gifted child does not naturally possess the ability to organize her thoughts sequentially.
I'm socially popular too but did experience difficulties. There's also a better chance of being ok with the challenges when you have support from parents and can build a good self-esteem that helps to weather some of the problems that gifted (and again I'm talking only about high IQ, not skills) people face in school and possibly later in the workplace.
For social and economic success interest, diligence, alertness, knowing answers, understanding ideas, social skills and general contentment are more integral.
Well I have a good personal anecdote of the contrary.
English is not my first language and I don't come from an english speaking country. I taught the language to myself on second grade because I became interested and in high school I was roughly at university level for a foreign language.
The school system in my country requires you to attend some 9 or so high school level courses, 35 hours each, to graduate. I did ask wether I could just do the tests, but it's hihgly discouraged because there's a specific vocabulary content you must learn.
I participated in class, i was a shy student, but because you're also marked for active participation, I tried to be active. Now the problem was, since I'm terrible at memorizing lists, I'd forget a specific word used in the study text and used a synonym and long story short the teacher had to go check the dictionary to grade my answers correctly. She realized that I was actually in some respects more proficient and this was difficult for her to digest. I wasn't cocky, more timid and scared, because it wasn't the first time I'd had problems with this and each time it ended badly for me. First she had me hold classes in her absence which went well but after that no one wanted to do homework or group tasks with me because they were embarrassed of making mistakes...after that she concluded I was bored in class and actually told me I should propably not come to class anymore and take uni courses, which IS true, I was bored though ever the actress I was trying to hide it, HOWEVER without passing my exams I would not be able to graduate. I panicked, and since I was painfully shy and didn't have parental support or anyone to fight the issue for me I ended up panicking and dropping out of school.
But here's the catch: I wasn't considered very bright. I was concidered pretty much average and akward. There were some kids picked for advanced groups but not me because I tried to blend in to not get in trouble. I also had some other problems because I couldn't memorize lists or formulas and kept spacing out because I was bored. In my country there was no IQ testing in school, though one of my teachers actually for some reason made us do the short mensa test, which is why I found out I might have a higher IQ....
And again said teacher actually privately accused me of cheating because I kept failing his class, despite the fact the only student I could have cheated the right answers from sat accross the room. I've also done a short unofficial version of the WAIS(reg. trademark)-III-test and though the short tests aren't necessarily accurate they give some idea of what the actual IQ might be. I consistenly test around 130-135 (barely in the top 2% percentile) which sounds about accurate comparied to the my officially tested friends' who I think are about on the same level of smartiepantsness. So it's not like I'm a superbrain or anything.
Later in life I did something un-academic I wasn't exceptionally, though somewhat, gifted in but was which I was interested in and motivated and that became my niche and it helped my self esteem and my social issues dissapeared.
I think my point is that sometimes a type of giftedness does make it more difficult to achieve social success, though I don't think it outright makes it impossible. It depends on other factors like being able build a healthy self esteem and possibly some extra support from school.
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I think the connection being made between giftedness and social attractiveness is awkwardness. There's this stereotype of the highly intelligent having lower or less developed social skills because they are at an intellectual level above their peers, and those peers are viewed as unable to understand them or relate to them. This sometimes makes them withdraw, isolated, or separate from everyone. They may also feel excluded from everyone because of this "perceived" social difference between themselves and those around them. So, I think the issue is more about not feeling understood or finding people who can relate, or appreciate what that "gifted" individuals feels is their unique personality, intellect, and understanding.