A research study on the social value of talent types of Tannenbaum?s classification of talents

According to some theorists, giftedness is a social construction. Therefore, while some types of talents have high value, others have little or no value in different socies. In fact, time, culture and geography can determine which aspects of human characteristics are talent or not talent.Tannenbaum (1983) proposed that giftedness has social value and according to this social value are considered either gifted or not gifted. In fact the social value of a talent determines its place in a talent hierarchy. According to Tannenbaum?s proposition, there exist four types of talent: Scarcity, surplus, quota and anomolous.In this study, the social value or the importance of different types were investigated among Turkish lay people. Consisting of 60 different types of talents, a scale was used to collect data. Participants included 601 people who lived in the city of Eskişehir. Data analysis showed that the scale was reliable with a .95 alpha level. Paired samples t-test analysis yielded that:?Scarcity talents had more value than the others?Surplus talents had more value than quota and anomolous talents?Quota talents had more value than anomolous talentsFurthermore, females attached more value to scarcity and surplus talents than did males, and people with less education attached more value to anomolus talents than people with high education.Findings show that the importance of each talent vary within a sciety both by gender and by educational status. Findings also show that most of the scale items talent classification propopsed by Tannenbaum.