Talent Hierarchy: A Research Study on the Social Value of Talent Types

According to some theorists, giftedness is a social construction. This research study was grounded on the psychosocial classification of talents proposed by Tannenbaum (1983), according to whom talents can be classified as scarcity, surplus, quota and anomalous talents based on their societal values. According this classification, the social value of a talent determines its place in a talent hierarchy. In this study, the importance of talent types and the validity of the classification were investigated among Turkish lay people. A scale consisting of 60 different types of talents was administered to 601 people. Paired samples t-test analysis showed that scarcity talents had more value than the others, surplus talents had more value than quota and anomalous talents and quota talents had more value than anomalous talents. Furthermore, females attached more value to scarcity and surplus talents than did males. Findings clearly show that people attach different levels of importance to different talent types and talents can be classified in a hierarchy based on their social values.