Humanitarian giftedness

The nature of humanitarian giftedness

Humanitarian giftedness is about helping others on as large a scale as is feasible for the individual. In some ways, it is the opposite of the self-centered and perhaps even narcissistic view of giftedness that, we would argue, has come to encompass the field. This prevalent view is that giftedness is a property of the individual that the individual can use for whatever purpose they choose, or not use at all. This view is a result, in large part, of the individualistic societies in which we live. Even collectivist societies may fail to develop humanitarian giftedness, when the collective is the majority (e.g., people like oneself) or is a disguise for the political party in power (as in many autocratic societies that claim to be collectively oriented but really work primarily to benefit the politically, socially, and economically well connected).

Could anyone who is gifted be humanitarianly gifted? Certainly. Actually, almost anyone could be humanitarianly gifted. Humanitarian giftedness is clearly not an inborn trait—no one has genes that somehow require them to give of themselves to humanity. And it is not a characteristic that is much, if at all developed, through traditional educational systems. Schools around the world continually reward those who are self-serving and look out for themselves. In totalitarian settings, they may serve themselves through blind obedience--by unquestioningly serving, or at least appearing to serve, the state, state-approved religion, state-approved political party, or really, any cult that requires unswerving devotion.

It is perhaps no coincidence that Darley and Batson (1973) found that divinity students who were about to lecture on the Good Samaritan were no more likely to help someone in distress than were those who were not going to give such a lecture—the only thing that affected their likelihood of helping was how much of a hurry they were in, with hurried students less likely to help. Studying divinity does not necessarily make one a more humanitarian person. Doctrinaire religious groups in the world are often not the most humanitarian (e.g., Hall et al., 2010). Relative to population, a religious country, Iran, identified as an “Islamic Republic,” has the highest rate of executions in the world (Death Penalty Information Center, 2021). The State of Texas in the United States has both the highest number of Southern Baptists in the United States (Baptist Press, 2020), and the highest rate, across the years, of executions (Death Penalty Information Center, 2023). Humanitarian giftedness is an individual choice: It does not derive from being part of a society that commends itself for the elevation of its religious or ethical principles. But it can be encouraged by role models, a group, or a society that truly believes in humanitarianism.

There is an aspect of giftedness that is given to one and developed—but there is another aspect of giftedness, perhaps a more important aspect—that is a choice (Sternberg, 2023c). To deploy one’s abilities, talents, motivations, and general goodwill to help others is a choice—it is a gift one bestows upon others, and perhaps way too few people make that choice. Abilities and talents help, but what matters most is how one deploys them (Sternberg, 2021c). Humanitarian giftedness is in large part a choice.

Terman (1925) identified gifted children by IQ and then looked at their accomplishments later in life. Predictably, some of the children gave a great deal back to society, others gave a great deal to themselves, and others did not do much of anything. One view, that of Terman, would be that the individuals who did not do much of anything were under-achievers. An alternative view—that of this article---is that the children were simply mis-identified because IQ is not a sufficient basis for an identification of an individual as gifted (see also Sternberg et al., 2022b). We could even say that IQ is a reductionist evaluation of a person’s talents, which does not take into consideration other characteristics (such as humanitarian aspects) that would allow us to know more globally the type of person he/she will become.

Current approaches to identification

Three of the ways in which children currently are identified as “gifted” are through the use of (a) standardized tests of intelligence and related abilities, (b) standardized tests of achievement, and (c) academic performance in school (see, e.g., Pfeiffer, 2018; Sternberg & Ambrose, 2021). All three of these means of identification have long histories. They provide three different means of assessing giftedness, and thus provide a set of converging operations (Garner et al., 1956) to ensure that identification is not based on just a single kind of measure. The measures are not entirely conceptually independent, as most standardized achievement tests measure in large part what is sometimes called general mental ability (GMA) (Sackett et al., 2020), and thus tend to be at least moderately correlated with each other. Indeed, tests of achieved college preparation show quite high correlations with tests of IQ (Frey & Detterman, 2004; Koenig et al., 2008).

All these means of identification are based on three critical historical antecedent beliefs. The first is that intelligence is a property of the individual. Second is that the property is adequately represented by IQ or a related construct such as general mental ability, as described above (Sackett et al., 2020). Third is that intelligence as measured by scholastic or academic types of tests represents in an adequate way intelligence as it exists in the everyday world. But suppose instead that, first, intelligence is not merely an individual property, but rather a property of the individual and of collectivities as they interact with tasks and environmental contexts (Malone & Woolley, 2020; Sternberg, 2021a). Second, suppose intelligence is broader than just IQ or general mental ability and the abilities hierarchically contained within it (Carroll, 1993), as suggested by a variety of individuals in speaking of multiple intelligences and practical, social, collective, emotional, and adaptive intelligence (Garner et al., 1956; Hedlund, 2020; Kihlstrom and Cantor, 2020; Malone and Woolley, 2020; Rivers et al., 2020; Sternberg, 2021). And third, suppose that intelligence as tested provides only a limited access to what individuals can accomplish in the everyday world (Hedlund, 2020; Nuñes, 1994; Olson, 2005; Sternberg, 2021; Sternberg et al., 2022). Then perhaps we should expect something more than what we find through current methods of identification and instruction.

The somewhat narrow conception of intelligence as IQ dates back at least to Boring (1923). However well this conception may have served in the 20^th century—and that is debatable (Gould, 1981; Greenfield, 2020)—it seems not to be serving extremely well in the 21^st century. People, including traditionally “gifted” people, are finding ways to manipulate social media to serve corporate profits, to pollute the environment, to establish and maintain autocratic governments and dictatorships, to increase the gap in resources between the rich and the poor, and to fight to be elected to political office by undermining public health. Certainly, we need as many as possible of the gifted to deploy their giftedness to help humanity rather than to harm it. This view may sound like a matter of individual choice, but given that taxpayers fund gifted programs, might they not at least deserve a return that helps them rather than being indifferent to them or actually harming them? They deserve a positive return on investment for society, not just for the individuals that society helps. In a society that has become self-absorbed and often narcissistic, that may sound like an unreasonable request. But is it? Can the world afford to keep going the way it is going?

There is an issue with these three criteria described above for identification, which extends to other criteria like them. That problem is that they measure the extent to which children do as they are told and do it well—in essence, the extent to which the children are intellectually obedient. But gifted children are sometimes anything but intellectually obedient (see essays in Sternberg & Ambrose, 2021).

The problem with the “intellectual obedience” notion can be illustrated by movies such as “The Terminator” series, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. In the movies, a murderous cyborg seeks to kill a woman named Sarah Connor because her as yet unborn son will lead a battle against an artificial-intelligence system, Skynet, that will spark a nuclear holocaust. The cyborg tries a wide range of innovative ways to kill Connor. But basically, it is following directions---doing what it was told to do. One could argue, perhaps, about its effective level of intelligence in devising ways to assassinate Sarah. But if it was extremely innovative and persistent in going about accomplishing its task, was it thereby “gifted”? Were Nazi officers and soldiers “gifted” by virtue of the number and variety of ways they used to carry out their genocidal mission?

The term “gifted” extends back at least to the Judeo-Christian Bible. In the Bible, gifts come from God (James 1:17), and they are positive in nature. God would not give destructive gifts, according to the Judeo-Christian notion of God. Somehow, the meaning of “giftedness” has changed not only with regard to the origins of gifts, but also with regard to their positivity. Giftedness has become a utilitarian concept, with the subject and the object of the utility, primarily, oneself.

Most instruction is in acquiring a storehouse of knowledge and skills; it is not made clear, usually, who the beneficiary will be, but in an individualistic society, that is rarely in doubt. It is the self, and sometimes those perceived to be like oneself (at the same time that people are sometimes manipulated into not being themselves by believing that they are becoming themselves). This is not to say that there are not many gifted people who use their gifts for the benefit of others—but there are also many who use their gifts for the detriment of humankind. Some of the Russian military and civilian collaborators bombing Ukraine and slaughtering civilians, repeating atrocities of the 20th century that many thought were behind present-day humanity, are almost certainly gifted. Some of the gifted Chinese leaders who 1 day had a complete clamp-down of the society to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and who disappeared a day later to allow COVID-19 to spread through the society were probably intellectually gifted; and some of the Americans who have tried through violence and subterfuge to take over the government of the United States have been graduates of the most prestigious universities in the country. There always will be people like them; but can gifted education encourage more individuals to deploy their gifts for positive rather than for morally indifferent or repugnant ends? Is there a way to educate the gifted in values and ethical sensitivity?

Should moral issues be part of gifted identification?

To some, moral issues should be kept completely separate from the identification of the gifted. But should they be? Should we be indifferent to the education of those who use their skills to create biological or chemical weapons or weapons of mass destruction? Is our notion of giftedness really that nearly amoral that we, as educators, can say that we teach content knowledge and then, what students do with it, is not a matter of concern for us? Ambrose (2022) argues that some kind of moral education is an essential part of gifted education. Dabrowski (1946/2016) recognized the importance of positive disintegration in the development of giftedness. Positive disintegration is a process whereby, through psychological distress and often intense psychological challenges, one grows from one’s former dependent and often doubting self into a more autonomous, psychologically healthy individual. Dabrowsky (1946/2016) argued that in this positive disintegration, there is a progressive development toward a greater ethical conscience, which implies an assumption of responsibility, as well as a greater kindness and altruism toward other human beings, even beyond one’s own culture. But what if the disintegration of self is negative? What if it leads gifted individuals toward negative rather than positive creative or moral ends? Should not educators at least recognize this problem and try to deal with it as early as possible? Some of the gifted may not even “disintegrate,” in Dabrowski’s sense. They may simply become intellectually obedient, recognizing that blindly doing what they are told leads to society’s rewards.

One would have thought that the results of Milgram’s (1974/2009) research would have caused educators to think at least twice about their prizing of intellectual obedience. Milgram found that, when people were told that they would be teachers and that others would be learners, roughly two thirds of participants assigned to the teacher role were willing to deliver what they believed to be extremely high and possibly fatal levels of electric shock. (Unbeknownst to the participants, the shocks were not real but rather simulated.) The participants were more likely to administer what they believed to be the shock when the “experimenter” appeared to be more authoritative, but even with non-authoritative experimenters, the levels of blind compliance were frightening. The work has been replicated many times over an extended period of time and also cross-culturally—the results hold up.

Milgram was motivated to do his research by the blind obedience to the Nazi leaders of so many Germans and others during World War II. We have also learned about blind obedience from the Eichmann case, described by the philosopher Hannah Arendt (2006), as an example of “the banality of evil”; this “banality of evil” occurs, according to Arendt, when blind submission to power is lived as completely normal even if atrocities are committed, because orders are simply obeyed (as Eichmann said about himself when trying to explain his atrocities as a Nazi). One might like to believe that things have changed, but those who thought it would never happen again, or that it never could happen again, were wrong. Something similar is happening right now because of a genocidal dictator in Russia, and other countries, such as but not limited to Syria, Myanmar, Nicaragua, and China, have committed serious atrocities against their own people. Really, little or nothing has changed at all. The racism that led to slavery in the United States continues today, in other forms. What has changed?

Of course, people are discouraged from resisting dictators, in part, by the danger to themselves; but that was true in Nazi times too. The dictators of the 21^st century are not, in the end, much different from the worst of those of the 20^th century. If they are different, it is with the greater sophistication with which they carry out mass murder, but the result is largely the same. And the selling out of people to dictators, including those who have left their home country to go to other countries and thus should be protected, continues. Whether it is the American priest Father Coughlin in the 20^th century or the American supposed television journalist Tucker Carlson in the 21^st century, there will always be celebrity pseudo-populists in various positions who are unscrupulous in their actions and appear to care little about the truth, in Carlson’s case, apparently in the pursuit of ratings (Darcy, 2023; Peters & Robertson, 2023). Unfortunately, this behavior is not uncommon. There are very persuasive TV and other journalists around the world who use their podiums to spread the lies of their political party, government, or other group. They are “gifted” in persuading people to believe them but they represent, in some respects, the opposite of humanitarian giftedness. They advance themselves and their interests at the expense of others.

The pseudo-populists who become dictators or their fervent advocates are gifted in their own way. They can be referred to as “pseudo-transformationally” gifted, in that they attempt to appear to be seeking to make the world better when in fact their only major interest is their own self-enhancement (Sternberg et al., 2021), or that their own perceived “tribe” gets more power through a kind of collective narcissism.

There are lots of bad role models around for how not to use gifts in a humanitarian way. Are there outstandingly good ones? If one looks at two of the most gifted young people of current times—Malala Yousafzai, who won a Nobel Peace Prize when she was 17 years old, and Greta Thunberg, who was named Time Magazine Person of the Year at the age of 16—both have been characterized by rather extreme intellectual and other forms of disobedience. Malala, as she is known, was shot in the face for defying authority, and Thunberg went on strike from school to protest adults’ unwillingness seriously to confront climate change.

In terms of current theories, both showed the kind of creative-productive giftedness that Renzulli and Reis (1993, 1994) have distinguished from “schoolhouse” giftedness. We do not know what their school grades or their IQ or achievement-test scores were, and most likely, we do not care. General mental ability is not what catapulted them to the pantheon of some of the most gifted young people in recent history. In terms of Sternberg’s (2021b) theory of adaptive intelligence, both showed adaptive intelligence—the use of their abilities to make the world a better place—and wisdom (seeking of a common good) far beyond their years. Humanitarianly gifted individuals are wise in terms of using their gifts to make a positive, meaningful, and potentially enduring difference to the good of humanity.

Beyond gifts that are “Bestowed”

Often, when young people today are labeled as “gifted,” the label represents the view that they have been, in one way or another, bestowed with one or more gifts. Someone or something—God, genes, parents, good upbringing—has given them a gift, with which they can do, more or less, as they please, so long as they stay within societal legal and ethical constraints. How has that notion of “giftedness” worked out for humanity?

On the one hand, humanity has numerous extraordinary accomplishments to show for itself as a result of gifted individuals—great works of art, literature, music, science, statesmanship, and numerous other domains. On the other hand, and from another point of view, that of the secretary-general of the United Nations, humanity is committing collective suicide (Harvey, 2022). The secretary-general, António Guterres, was referring to the looming catastrophe of climate change. But how many other crises are also paths to collective suicide: nuclear weapons, mentally unbalanced dictators who threaten to use the nuclear weapons, air and water pollution, degradation of the environment, massive inequality in wealth? Oddly, these problems are also caused, in large part, by individuals who are, in a sense, gifted.

It takes some kind of “gift,” or set of gifts, to be chosen as a dictator of a country and to stay alive while, well, dictating; inevitably, other people are interested in your job, and many will stop at little or nothing to get it. It takes a gift to design and build the machines—industrial plants, trucks, cars, massive burn-offs—that fuel pollution and climate change. It takes a kind of gift to accumulate massive (non-inherited) wealth, even if the gift is in deceiving others into giving up their money to benefit you. It is possible that, in using the word “gifted,” societies are looking at the wrong kinds of gifts or have not considered the purpose of these gifts with adequate criteria. Certainly, IQ and school grades provide no guarantee that whatever gifts they are alleged to represent will be used for good purposes rather than bad ones. Indeed, a number of top Nazis had doctoral degrees, and there is no lack in many countries of well-educated individuals, even graduates of Ivy League or other top universities, working in political positions to undermine their societies to enhance their own power and wealth. But do we want to include people who undermine society in our group of people labeled as “gifted,” in effect commending them for their depredations?

“Giftedness,” in a traditional sense, can be used for good or ill. One possibility is to accept this fact as a given—as the way the world works. Another is to reconsider what is meant by “giftedness.” Sternberg (in press) has suggested that giftedness be conceptualized not in terms of the “gifts” an individual has received, whether through genes or environment, but rather in terms of the gifts an individual offers to the world. He likened the difference between his conception and the traditional conception as analogous to the difference between a bank account and a foundation gift. The bank account is evaluated by the total amount of assets accumulated in the account. The foundation gift is evaluated by the magnitude of the gift given but also by the cause to which it is donated.

If we were to evaluate giftedness not in terms of gifts received but rather in terms of gifts given, or at least, potentially given, how might we refer to such giftedness to distinguish it from traditional giftedness? Sternberg (2020b, 2022b) has used the term “transformational giftedness” to refer to giftedness deployed in the service of a common good. And indeed, such gifts would seem to be, metaphorically, the goal of a charitable foundation---to give transformative gifts that will advance a worthy cause. But in everyday life, not every gift that exceptional individuals have to offer will be transformational, at least in any meaningful sense. Indeed, those individuals who are been around for a while in the business of giving gifts sponsored by foundations know that very few gifts turn out to be transformational. One might hope they will turn out that way, but they usually don’t.

If an educator of the gifted wishes to develop giftedness to serve humanity (and other species perhaps as well!), a more realistic goal may be to cultivate the gifted individual’s humanitarian impulses and thus to develop what is being called here humanitarian giftedness, or giftedness in the service of humanity that, at some level, makes the world a better place, whether or not the gift is transformational.

One can argue, and some scholars do, about the extent to which traditional giftedness, for example, as determined by IQ or other measured intellectual abilities, is genetically based. What is being called here humanitarian giftedness is certainly not genetic although it, like any other human trait, can build upon genetic predispositions. However, people are not born somehow ready to contribute to humanity. Giftedness is humanitarian by virtue of the way it is deployed. On this view, much of humanitarian giftedness, like adaptive intellectual functioning, lies in the attitudes of gifted individuals, not just in their abilities (see Sternberg, 2022a). Arguably, it is deployment that matters more than what one metaphorically might have stored inside the head.

What are the characteristics of humanitarian giftedness? Perhaps three stand out:

1. Desire to help humanity. The individual wants to improve the conditions under which humanity lives and to make things better. The desire may be limited to some group that needs help, but it is based on positive universal human values, not just on benefiting oneself and people like oneself—one’s tribe. In part, humanitarian gifted people are distinguished not only intellectually, but also by their having developed great senses of caring, compassion, and concern for others than do those who are intellectually gifted but whose giftedness extends little, if at all, beyond their intellect (see Chowkase, 2022; Chowkase & Watve, 2021). But they not only have these senses: They go beyond that to act upon them. Traits do not make one humanitarianly gifted. Some might view these additional skills and attitudes as beside the point, but in today’s world, perhaps more than any other skills and attitudes, they are the point. What got the world through the COVID-10 pandemic was in part some scientists in laboratories, in part some reflective government officials, but more than anything, front-line workers who were willing to help others, often at great risk to themselves. They had precious gifts to give and were not content just to receive.

There are obvious examples of humanitarian giftedness—the usual cast of characters such as Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King, Harriet Tubman, Mahatma Gandhi, Malala Yousafzai. These wise people used their gifts in the service of humankind, in every case at least somewhat at their own expense. But not everyone who is humanitarianly gifted is quite in their league, at least as an individual. Sometimes, one serves in a gifted way through a group. The 2022 Nobel Peace Prize, for example, was awarded to a single human-rights advocate, Ales Bialiatski from Belarus, but also to two human-rights organizations, the Russian Memorial and the Ukrainian Center for Civil Liberties. The latter two recipients were organizations, but they represented the collective efforts of many individuals who chose to deploy their gifts in the service of humankind. Time Magazine awarded the 2022 Heroes of the Year Award to the women of Iran for their courageous and systematic resistance to the repressive and murderous regime governing their country. These group awards were to people, collectively, who have risked their livelihoods and even their lives to stand up for humanitarian rights. They may or may not have “transformative” impact. The murderous regime in Iran may or may not fall; the genocidal regime in Russia may or may not fall. But the humanitarianly gifted set examples for all of humanity, through their service to humanity. What are their IQs or school grades? Does anyone know? Does anyone care? If one wishes to think of giftedness not just in terms of the resources people have in some mental bank account, but in terms of the resources that people give back to the world in the service of humanity, IQ tests and school grades are not going to provide an answer. Often, however, what people mean by giftedness is what gets the individual into a high-IQ organization rather than what get them into the service of humanity.

Common elements in the humanitarianly gifted

People who deploy their giftedness in a humanitarian way have made very different contributions, but one could argue that they have at least six underlying things in common, which distinguish them not only from more typical children but also from Renzulli and Reis’s (1993, 1994) notion of children with schoolhouse giftedness.

1. They choose their problems carefully. If one were to focus on school-based problems presented even to gifted teenagers—geometry or trigonometry problems, canned laboratories in a biology or chemistry class, analyses of literary works, great and not so great—one would not be in a position to change the world, as Malala and Greta have. Rather, they chose problems of global significance and then, through creativity and incredibly hard work and determination—they managed to make a dent in addressing them.

Consider each of these characteristics in turn.

Humanitarian giftedness in practice

People who are humanitarianly gifted may or may not become eminent. Eminence is not what determines their contribution, but rather, simply determines how well known that contribution becomes.

Conclusion

Humanitarian giftedness is not something one is born with. It is not something that can be well detected in children, although there may be signs. It is closer to a kind of developing expertise that can be acquired through focus and hard work (Ericsson & Pool, 2017; Sternberg, 1998). Parents and teachers develop it by role-modeling it, teaching about people who have exhibited it, and most of all, by encouraging children to give of themselves to others—as did the mother who took her children to help an elderly woman chop ice on her driveway. So, if we wish to see more people who bestow their gifts not only on themselves but also on others, the way to see it will not be to look for signs from existing tests or to develop new tests. It will be to encourage all children to have as a purpose in life the sharing of their gifts with generosity, whatever the gifts are, with others, and with the world, at any level.

We often think about giftedness as something given to the gifted person. Here, we think of giftedness as something given by the gifted person. Their giftedness depends not on a test score or set of grades or activities that redound to themselves. It depends on a decision they make—to serve humanity, and hopefully, make a difference to others that otherwise would not have been made.

Individuals who are humanitarianly gifted are wise and ethical, but they go beyond being wise and ethical. One can be wise and ethical in one’s interactions with one’s siblings or family or relatives, or coworkers, or whatever. Certainly, wisdom and ethics are foundations of humanitarian giftedness. But humanitarianly gifted individuals go further and choose to deploy their wisdom and ethics to help humanity, at whatever level they can. Often, to do so, they pay a considerable price. Being a humanitarian is close to a kiss of death in many occupations, and certainly it is in the politics of some political parties worldwide, in which leaders seem to vie with each other to show how inhumane, uncaring, callous and even cruel they can be. These days, Vladimir Putin, Alexander Lukashenko, and Xi Jinping, and other malign types seem to be much more common than humanitarian Angela Merkel, Mohandas Gandhi, or Nelson Mandela types. To be humanitarianly gifted is often an expensive choice, as teenage leaders such as Malala Yousafzai and Greta Thunberg have discovered at a very early age, and as Alexei Navalny and others in Russian penal colonies have discovered on a daily basis. Trying to help humanity, in general, runs one up against strong vested interests. Not all of these vested interests are malign in their interactions with the world. Many are simply indifferent.

Humanitarian giftedness is in some ways related to Sternberg’s (2020b, 2022c) concept of transformational giftedness. But people can be transformationally gifted without being humanitarianly gifted. Transformationally gifted individuals may focus on transforming science, or business, or literature, or art, or whatever, rather than humanity. And humanitarianly gifted individuals are not necessarily transformational in what they do. Rather, they are incredibly helpful, beneficent, and altruistic in being willing to give to the world, whether or not they necessarily benefit themselves.

Today we need gifted humanitarians who develop a greater ethical awareness that will lead them use their gifts to make this world a better place. They may or may not make the headlines; they may or may not ever be labeled by today’s society as “gifted.” But they should be labeled as such, because they recognize that “giftedness” is not just in the luck of the draw of what one receives at birth and by upbringing, but also, and more importantly, in the gifts one brings to the world, at whatever level.