Two implicit metaphors can be seen as having dominated the study of the gifted--the savings bank and the investment bank. In the savings-bank metaphor, people have differential levels of IQ or general intelligence, which is viewed as determining whether they are gifted. Their cognitive ability is their metaphorical "money in the bank."…

Myside bias, a form of confirmation bias, is a major impediment to scientific thinking. It results in scientists, potential scientists, and consumers of science drawing conclusions that do not follow from data but rather that follow from prior scientific, ideological beliefs. Gifted people are at least as susceptible to these biases as are other…

Toxic giftedness is giftedness that is used for negative and even harmful ends. The field of giftedness has not been quick to recognize the importance to society of toxic giftedness, and its responsibility to combat it. This article defines the concept of toxic giftedness. Then it discusses two manifestations of toxic giftedness: gifted toxic…

This article reviews the implications of many of the major schools in the history of psychology for understanding giftedness and its inner workings: operationist, psychometric, psychoanalytic, associationist, behaviorist, Gestalt, cognitive, humanistic/positive psychology, functionalist/pragmatic/constructivist, cultural, and biological. Each…

Giftedness is usually conceived of in trait-like terms. But it often is expressed in the world in state-like terms--in response to challenging but often unpredictable situations where it is unclear who will rise to the challenges or even how we could know in advance who would be able to address the challenges at hand. Whereas traits tend to be…

The field of giftedness legitimates itself on the basis of correlations of gifted-identification measures with future success that do not mean what they often are taken to mean. When one views the inadequacies of these correlations, the field turns out to be much like the emperor who had no clothes. This essay reviews some of the assumptions upon…

Gifts can be individually, dyadically, or collectively chosen and oriented. Society, in its identification of the gifted, has chosen to focus on individual and sometimes dyadic goods. This practice represents a culture of individualism, but it has become solipsistic. We argue that identification instead should focus on those most likely to help to…

We propose that wisdom should be considered in understanding, identifying, and developing skills of thought translated into action in gifted children and adults. First, we review some of the history of the gifted field and conclude that ideas about understanding, identification, and instruction are largely obsolete and based on assumptions that…

The focus of the field of giftedness is on the wrong thing. Instead of focusing on identifying who is gifted, the field should identify how people will deploy their gifts and educate students to deploy their gifts in ways that will make the world a better place. In this article, I present at least a partial taxonomy of how gifts can be deployed…

The late James Flynn, to whom this Special Issue is dedicated, suggested that what will matter most to the future of the world is not levels of intelligence but rather how intelligence is deployed. In this article, I argue that we can distinguish between transactional and transformational deployments of intelligence. Loosely following Flynn, I…

The field of giftedness--including educators, theorists, and researchers--needs to show more cognizance of a phenomenon that is rearing its ugly head in more and more visible ways, namely, dark giftedness. Dark giftedness is giftedness used for bad and even toxic ends. Being gifted provides little, if any protection against the dark deployment of…

This article introduces the construct of personal talent curation. "Personal talent curation" is one's assessment of one's talents--of one's strengths and weaknesses--but also the building of an adaptive match in life between those talents and both one's career pursuits and one's personal lifestyle. Sometimes, this match means pursuing a…

Courage may be the most important gift of all. It is not something we are born with. It is not something that, for the most part, we learn in school. Rather, it is a choice that anyone can make--if they are willing to pay the price. This article discusses the gift of courage. It discusses what courage is, why it is important, and why it crucially…

This article discusses kinds of transformational giftedness, or giftedness that makes a positive, meaningful, and possibly enduring difference to the world. We extend previous work by suggesting that there are two kinds of transformation that matter: self-transformation and other-transformation. Combining these two kinds of transformation yields a…

This article describes a three-step process by which behaviors are associated with the concept of "giftedness." In the first step, a three-way interaction of a person x task x situation leads to some kind of excellence in a societally significant performance. In the second step, that performance is identified as excellent and societally…