High Cognitive Minds

An email from Netflix this morning notified me that they had received The White Countess, and would be sending out my next movie. Included in the email was a reminder to check out their recommendations in Romance. What it did remind me of is that such recommendations, whether they're from Netflix, Amazon, or any other site, are based on assumptions about how you make choices. I know that the next few times I go to the Netflix site I'll be greeted by recommendations in the Romance category.

The fact is that I seldom watch romances and when I do, romance isn't the criteria on which I select them. In fact, some of the movies so labeled barely qualify to be included in that category. In the case of The White Countess, my choice was based on the actors (Ralph Fiennes and several of the Redgrave/Richardson clan), and the setting (1930s Shanghai).

What does this have to do with giftedness? Assumptions about the gifted are very much like those that Netflix programs into its recommendation process, based on too little information to have any value. I can ignore a movie site's assumptions about my viewing preferences, but it's not so easy to ignore (or escape) similar assumptions in the real world. What people think of you depends on what they think they know about you, and a good deal of that revolves around what you are capable of doing and what you are allowed to do.

If job skills and performance are evaluated on the basis of what's normal, you can find yourself stuck in jobs far below your abilities because "you aren't trained for that." One of the "knowns" is that skills generally aren't transferable across domains, so workers have be educated or trained for each aspect of a job. Your ideas about how various aspects of the workplace could be improved will be ignored because "that's not your field." Your prospects for promotion to a more challenging and interesting job will be judged by your formal qualifications and, lacking them, you'll stay right where you are.

There are many operative assumptions, both in the workplace and social life, all of them based on the norm, on what is "known" about what we are capable of, what we like and dislike. Some of the assumptions are pretty obvious; some are hidden. But, to the extent that you fail to identify and understand them, they can control your life.