Is Being “Gifted” a Blessing or a Curse,or Some of Both?

Gifted students are one of the most precious resources any country has. Ellen Winner has spent much of her career studying gifted students and especially creatively gifted ones (see, e.g., Winner, 1985, 1997). She has recognized something, however, that our society, as a whole, has not—that trivial definitions of giftedness are not really helpful. I argue in this essay that they are not only unhelpful but actually harmful.

Three decades ago (Sternberg, 1985, 1988), I wrote about the origins of the triarchic theory of human intelligence, a theory based on the notion that intelligence comprises more than just IQ. The origins were in part a result of my interactions with three graduate students at Yale. One, Alice, was highly analytical; another, Barbara, was highly creative; and a third, Celia, was highly practical in her intelligence. (These are not the real names of the students who are depicted.)

My concern at the time was that our society, and especially our schools, greatly valued students like Alice (who are highly analytical) but not those like Barbara (who are highly creative) or like Celia (who are highly practical). This valuing process, I feared, would lead to many people in positions of leadership who would be strong in memory and analytical skills but not in creative or practical ones. Such people, I believed then and have continued to believe, would later prove to be ineffective and often even destructive leaders (Sternberg, 1997a, 1997b, 2003). I argued later (Sternberg, 2011, 218) that also lacking among those in leadership positions would be wisdom-based skills or the skills involved in using one's intelligence to help achieve a common good for all.

The mechanism by which these effects would take place was the filtering mechanism schools use to decide who is worthy of praise but also of admission (in the case of selective private schools, colleges, graduate schools, and professional schools). In essence, admitting students like Alice (high-analytic) to universities at the expense of Barbara- (high-creative) and Celia-like (high-practical) students would allow students with Alice-like skills first dibs at the best jobs. Later, the Alice-like students would be eligible for promotions to higher level jobs that the Barbara-like and Celia-like individuals could not attain because they were never hired in the first place. At the very least, they were never hired for the jobs that would lead them to the top of their professions. Put another way, society would be creating self-fulfilling prophecies that would convince it that it was doing the right thing in identifying the Alice-like students alone as “gifted.” The same mechanism operated, of course, in the days when women were excluded from leadership positions, and their not being in those positions was taken as evidence that they must not be qualified to be in them. The logic is circular, but most people are not bothered much, if at all, by circular logic. Indeed, experts in the field of intelligence continue to believe, circularly, that intelligence is what IQ tests test, and that IQ tests measure whatever it is that is intelligence.

At the time I wrote, three decades ago, I thought the problem stemmed from three basic factors in schooling, in particular:

Basic Factor 1. Implicit theories among teachers and school administrators of intelligence as comprising memory and analytical abilities.

Teachers and administrators have come to believe that Alice-like students—who are gifted in memory and analytical skills—are our gifted students, and that they are the ones therefore who “meritocratically” deserve the best grades, the best schools, and the best opportunities (Sternberg, 1988).

Basic Factor 2. Implicit theories among teachers and school administrators of intelligence as being fixed.

Although Binet believed that abilities are modifiable, this aspect of his views never caught on among education professionals (Binet & Simon, 1916). Furthermore, Dweck (2009) has shown that a student’s belief that intelligence is modifiable leads to better academic outcomes than does the belief that intelligence is fixed. Yet many educators continue to believe, as does much of the intelligence establishment (e.g., Gottfredson, 2018), that intelligence is largely fixed.

Basic Factor 3. Standardized testing identifies the best and the brightest.

Standardized testing, ever since the work of Binet and Simon (1916) and Spearman (1927), has largely reflected this implicit theory. That is, standardized testing provides a concrete vehicle for the implicit theories to affect society and how it identifies its gifted children.

It was clear to me at the time that Alice-like students had an enormous edge at all levels of schooling. What I did not realize is that society would change in ways that would make the problem much worse than I originally thought. Thus, I argue, changes in society have amplified what I henceforth will call the “Alice effect” in our society.

Amplifying Factor 1. Rising IQs around the world.

At the time I was writing, James Flynn was just beginning his work on the Flynn effect (Flynn, 1984, 1987; see also Flynn, 2016, in press). His work has shown that IQs around the world rose continually throughout the 20th century to the tune of roughly 30 points. Most of this increase was in fluid abilities, or those abilities formerly believed to be innate (Cattell, 1971), and which are used for dealing with novel kinds of tasks and situations. These abilities are measured by tasks such as geometric analogies, series, classifications, and matrix problems. They are quite close to what psychologists call g, or general intelligence (see Sternberg & Grigorenko, 2002).

There is no evidence, however, that creative (or practical or wisdom-based) skills rose at the same time that IQs did. Indeed, I would argue that the increase in IQs placed a greater and greater premium on exactly the skills that were increasing, namely, IQ-like as opposed to creative and practical skills. People without a higher IQ have found themselves in less and less challenging jobs, and there were fewer and fewer of those less challenging jobs to go around. The result has been polarization of incomes across the society, with some benefiting from the new world of the analytical elite and others falling short in their effort to keep up with, or even seriously to enter this world. These skills have enabled people to use ever more complex machinery, complicated cell phones and televisions, alarm clocks in hotel rooms with obscure mechanisms for setting alarms or even the time, and the like.

On this view, rises in IQ have been a mixed blessing. According to Flynn (2016), the rise in IQ represents people’s changing to meet the increasingly complex demands of their society. But the street is almost certainly a two-way one. That is, increasing IQs also have allowed societies to make increasingly complex demands on their citizens, with those who are higher in IQ skills having an increasing edge as the IQ-based skills have become more and more important. Being gifted has come to mean too little—someone who excels, but only in a range of skills that is too narrow to make the world a better place.

As an analogy, imagine a hunter–gatherer society in which game were becoming increasingly scarce. Hunters would need to become better and better at hunting. On average, they most likely would become better in response to the demands of the environment for their survival. But those who did not become sufficiently better would be increasingly disadvantaged as game became more and more scarce, and the competition from other hunters increased more and more.

Amplifying Factor 2. Increasingly disparate opportunities for have's versus have-nots.

As a result of the increasing reliance of society on IQ-based skills—the Alice effect—and the increasing cost of not excelling or at least reaching fully adaptive levels in these skills, societies have begun to polarize, in the same way that hunting and gathering societies would as hunting skills became more important but did not increase equally for everyone. The cost to the have-nots only will increase over time. And indeed, our society and other societies increasingly have become economically polarized. Income disparities have reached levels unprecedented in modern times (McCarty, Poole, & Rosenthal, 2008). This situation creates frustration and an intense desire for change—perhaps any change at all—as the have-nots find their opportunities, status, and resources on a steady descent.

Amplifying Factor 3. The have's not only take the better jobs; they also take away jobs the have's never would want (e.g., work on a factory floor) from the have nots.

Whatever their expressed views on matters of increasing disparities in opportunities and incomes, the have’s have been taking away jobs from the have-nots through a variety of means.

One source of job loss to the society is outsourcing. Jobs that once were associated with the benefits of full-time employment are outsourced to consultants, often overseas. So individuals lose whatever jobs they have. The upper classes of IQ benefit; the lower classes of IQ lose jobs.

A second source of job loss is automation. Jobs that once were done by humans are increasingly done by robots or other machines put into place by the have’s. When jobs disappear due to automation, they are gone for good. That is, there is no realistic hope they will come back (unlike for outsourcing, where the jobs can be brought back). Again, the upper classes of IQ benefit at the expense of the lower classes of IQ. Other factors also play into the changing job picture, such as forces at the social, community, state, and national levels.

A third source of job loss is organizational consolidation. More and more big companies are merging or otherwise consolidating. Typically, after a merger or other consolidation, there is a substantial loss of jobs as supposed redundancy is eliminated. Often, the greatest number of jobs lost are those for people of lower intellectual skills.

No doubt there are other sources of job loss. But in each case, the Alice effect results in increased income for the have's and decreased income for the have-nots. It is understandable that the have-nots will be frustrated and feel the need for change.

Amplifying Factor 4. The death of the generation that lived through the dictators of World War II and shortly thereafter–and the rise of demagogues.

The dictators of the World War II period—Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini are perhaps the most notable examples—were evil but they were not subtle. They got their way by destroying countries in a public way and by imprisoning or executing their enemies, also in ways that became known, sooner or later. The generation growing up after World War II also was reminded of the tragedy that these dictators had brought to the world. But the people of those generations are either dead or dying off. The new generations have not seen why the liberal world order was viewed as so important after World War II. They often do not realize just how much damage autocrats and illiberal societies can cause.

On top of this effect, today’s autocrats, like Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orban, are smarter and more subtle. They retain the trappings of democracy without its core. They create what at best can be called “illiberal democracies”—democracies that seemingly may protect the rights of the majority but that fail to protect the rights of all their citizens (Mounck, 2018). As a result, people often do not even realize that they are no longer living in a liberal democracy. Confusion as to the meaning of the word “liberal” further exacerbates matters, because many of these people in the majority may view themselves fundamentally as conservatives, trying to restore old ways, and not realizing that the use of the word “liberal” in the context of democracy refers to “liberation” rather than liberal politics. And because many people were not alive for World War II, they simply do not realize how much damage these leaders can cause.

Today’s autocrats are as cruel as those of the past. They just are more intelligent and effective at hiding their cruelty. And they convince the have-nots that, after all, it is their turn now. They pretend that they will represent the have-nots, when in fact they will be representing only their own interests.

Amplifying Factor 5. The Internet and social media enter people's lives.

The Internet has brought tremendous benefits to the world. When I was young, a salesman for an encyclopedia company told us that an advantage of buying his encyclopedia was that we could send in questions we wanted answered and researchers would do research that would help us answer the questions. Now, with the Internet, anyone can do what those professionals did. The availability of knowledge has increased exponentially, but so has the availability of informational garbage. Rational or critical thinking is quite different from IQ (Stanovich & West, 2018). People are besieged with information on the Internet but lack the cognitive mechanisms adequately to distinguish what is true from what is false. They accept as true what “feels right.”

Amplifying Factor 6. Truth goes on life support.

When I was young, truth was not negotiable. Arguments were true or false. Facts were real or unreal. Everyone received more or less the same news from major print outlets and television networks. It did not matter whether you listened to Walter Cronkite on CBS, Chet Huntley or David Brinkley on NBC, or Howard K. Smith on ABC. They all had roughly the same things to say. The Internet has contributed toward making truth negotiable. Gilbert (1991) suggested that when people receive information, they assume it is true. They need to use an additional cognitive process to decide whether perhaps the information is false. But how often do people actually do this? How often do they carefully vet the information they receive, whether from the Internet or elsewhere? If schools taught students better how to think critically, the students would be in a better position to recognize fake news when they see it, rather than let self-serving demagogues and paid-off pundits decide for them what is real and what is fake.

In the 20th century, there are too many sources of information, and they all claim to provide truth. But the “truth” of Fox News is very different from the “truth” of CNN or MSNBC. Because people tend to tune in to what they like to hear, people come to live in different realities, determined in part by the sources from which they obtain their news.

At least part of the blame for the rise of “truthiness” goes to the academics of postmodernism (Derrida, 1985), at least those who believe truth is what we make it. In a way, they were too successful.

Amplifying Factor 7. Mobbing goes viral.

In times of old, mobbing was local. Whether it was the Ku Klux Klan or local witch-hunters, people would go after real or more likely, imagined enemies in person. That no longer is necessary. With the Internet, people can go after others remotely and virally (Harper, 2013). And their increased IQs, relative to the past, enable them to do so more effectively.

Amplifying Factor 8. The have's over-rely on IQ.

Because there will be more and more “Alices” (i.e., highly analytical people who are not particularly creatively- or practically oriented), the Alices will be looking for outlets for their skills, even in domains where there may not be so many opportunities. What can happen, and I believe has happened, is that, in at least some fields, those with creative skills are viewed as more and more suspect. Creative people always have been viewed with suspicion (Sternberg & Lubart, 1995). But now it is worse, because the Alice’s, who are have’s in so many respects, find domains in which they are not. And they do not necessarily accept their exclusion from those domains. IQ cannot solve all the world’s problems, but the Alice’s try to use it to solve those problems, nevertheless. Of course, creative and analytical skills are generally correlated, but it is the people who are highly analytical who never developed creative skills who are most likely to become frustrated and seek outlets that are not prosocial.

Where does all this lead? I believe it has led to the world in which we live today—a world in which memory and analytical skills are overvalued, where they are being used to pick other outgroups and unfavored individuals apart, and where the civic norms that once were taught in school are replaced by more and more content that is easily testable on standardized tests. High scores on such tests can get one very far in schooling, and in some cases, if one has a mentor who is creative, one can ride the coattails of the creative mentor to get a first job that will give one an edge on success in one’s later life.

I suggest a different, broader, conception of giftedness, much as has Ellen Winner. It would recognize that the Alice effect is damaging society as much as it is helping it, and maybe more. Educational institutions and especially organizations looking for employees seriously would seek to measure the other aspects of giftedness that matter for job and everyday-life success. These skills would include:

Creativity. High IQ helps with certain kinds of creativity—those that carry forward already existing paradigms (see Sternberg, 1999; Sternberg, Kaufman, & Pretz, 2002). But it does little for paradigm-defying creativity. At this point, our society badly needs paradigm-defying creativity, whether in science, art, or perhaps most of all, in politics. We need people who will break out of the mold, not who will harden it.

Ellen Winner (1997) provided a much broader conception of giftedness than that which dates back to Lewis Terman in the early 20th century and which emphasizes largely IQ. But the fault is not with Terman. I have argued in this essay that a number of factors, many of which could never have been anticipated at Terman’s time, have conspired to increase the importance of IQ to society. In some ways, this is good. People are perhaps smarter, at least in a conventional sense, than ever before. But the world also has more pressing problems than ever before, many of them in large part created by these very smart people—increasing economic disparity, pollution, antibiotic resistance, a decline in democracy (Levitsky & Ziblatt, 2018), loss of unskilled jobs, and failure to seek out the common good. Political leaders increasingly are appealing only to those who support them, and using the mechanisms of their power to undermine the interests of those who do not. Of course, all these problems are not fully due to overvaluing IQs. But I cannot help but wonder whether there is not some truth to the story that the Earth has not been visited by aliens from Outer Space because those aliens who were smart enough to travel through space first would have destroyed themselves. Are we next?