Baudson, T. G. (2016). The mad genius stereotype: Still alive and well. Frontiers in psychology, 7, 368.
Introduction
In order to increase knowledge on giftedness, this survey has been funded by the Mensa German association. Mensa defined itself as an international association created in order to reunite people with high intellectual potential. Mensa assumes that gifted people feel out of step with the rest of the population, so they need to be reunited to share moments, activities (board games, conferences…) without feeling judged, in abenevolent atmosphere.
The study is in the field of social psychology : it refers to stereotypes according to gifted people. This article will be appreciated by anyone who’s interested on gifted population.
Summary of the work
“Mad Genius stereotypes: Still Alive and Well” is an experimental investigation which follows on from the findings of different surveys. Two main hypotheses are argued by the scientific community about gifted socioemotional characteristics : the first one is the “harmony” hypothesis, the other is the “disharmony” hypothesis. The harmony one is supported by the majority of studies. It contends that gifted people show similar or slightly superior socioemotional skills than the “all-comes” population. The disharmony one disagrees with this claim and objects that gifted people know some downsides / disadvantages which affect their individual development. This argument is supported essentially by subjective conceptions and media representations, and has been realized essentially with samples composed of children and youth ; according to the author.
The author adds two statements to these hypotheses. First, what she calls the “stigma of giftedness” is, according to her, undervalued on adult population (most of studies relies on children and youth). Second, she explains that this field of study doesn’t use representative samples : the subjects concerned are not surveyed, their teachers are most of the time questioned for them.
To explore representations regarding gifted people, the author listed five stereotypes characterizing this population according to the literature : higher potential, higher achievement, general superiority (in reflexive areas), emotional problems and social issues. She asked a representative German sample of 1029 adults about their agreement with those representations evaluated thanks to a Likert scale.
Results show that a major part of the sample agrees with the stereotypes about gifted people. Participants are influenced by their personal characteristics : depending on their gender, social situation and familial situation they are more likely to qualify gifted people as more disharmonious on their functioning. Baudson recommends that more studies should be conducted to understand how stereotypes mechanisms work. She suggests the ones who devalue gifted people do so because they might feel somehow inferior to them.
Critical evaluation
For several years, giftedness has been scrutinized by a lot of researchers and it is currently considered positively by the scientific community and general population. Tanja Gabriele Baudson, the author, is a scientist specialized in research on intelligence and giftedness. She is interested in the quality of life, representations and identity development of people with high potential. Besides, she expresses that the main objective of her works is to enable gifted people to accept themselves as they are and to consider their potential as an asset.
She carried out this study with this in mind. She knew that, usually, when someone is asked about what he thinks of intelligence and giftedness, he answers by stereotypical visions of high intellectual potential. Rare are those who considered giftedness in these positive and negative aspects. Most of laypeople, as she takes it up in her review of the existing literature on the gifted, constructs they definition of “giftedness” based almost exclusively on their stereotypical vision : “[They] rely on subjective theories that are based on personal and media experiences with gifted individuals and may or may not be in line with scientific findings” (Baudson, 2016, p.2). She argues that people refer to celebrities or fictional characters to illustrate their vision of outstanding intelligence.
In this work, Baudson wanted to consider the german population’s stereotypes towards the gifted in a comprehensive manner. She wanted to offer them choices through scales of agreement with stereotypes. By doing so, she permits to highlight the whole stereotypes continuum.
However, even if Baudson focused on adults representations about giftedness and added more categories of stereotypes than most of the research, she didn’t take into account gifted people’s opinions. Yet, it could be quite interesting to ask those people if they have ever suffered from any specific representations / clichés.
Conclusion
This article looks like a picture of society representations about giftedness at a given time. It might be used as a support, a lever to an hypothetical work on people’s perceptions of gifted persons. The main idea would be to eventually descontruct those conceptions and ideally modify them. Thus, it could help gifted people change their own mind about themselves. By accepting their particularities more positively, considering and using it as an asset ; gifted people might get more fulfillment and feeling of self realization. Furthermore, such work on representations would allow the all society to think giftedness – even difference in general -, differently. It would introduce more respect and a single regard on people, at least : a break away from stereotypes.
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Vocabulary we have learned :
A break away from : une rupture avec / un détachement avec
A comprehensive manner : une approche globale
Benevolence : bienveillance
Board games : jeux de société
Findings : résultats, conclusions
Laypeople : in this survey, people who are out of the scientific community / les personnes profanes
Out of step : en décalage
Take into account : prendre en compte
To scrutinize : étudié, examiné