Naturals and strivers: Preferences and beliefs about sources of achievement

Abstract

a b s t r a c tTo understand how talent and achievement are perceived, three experiments compared the assessments of "naturals" and "strivers." Professional musicians learned about two pianists, equal in achievement but who varied in the source of achievement: the "natural" with early evidence of high innate ability, versus the "striver" with early evidence of high motivation and perseverance (Experiment 1). Although musicians reported the strong belief that strivers will achieve over naturals, their preferences and beliefs showed the reverse pattern: they judged the natural performer to be more talented, more likely to succeed, and more hirable than the striver. In Experiment 2, this "naturalness bias" was observed again in experts but not in nonexperts, and replicated in a between-subjects design in Experiment 3. Together, these experiments show a bias favoring naturals over strivers even when the achievement is equal, and a dissociation between stated beliefs about achievement and actual choices in expert decision-makers.

A multidisciplinary review into the definition, operationalization, and measurement of talent

“…The personnel selection literature and the social psychology literature-beyond the scope of the present article, but nevertheless useful-show that talent definitions and measurements are subjective by nature due to the influence of assessor and assessee personal characteristics (Tormala, Jia & Norton, 2012;Tsay & Banaji, 2011;Vaughan & Hogg, 2005).…”

The psychology of talent management: A review and research agenda

“…of the 'high potential' label) on ratees. Important recent findings include a generalized preference for potential (i.e., a phenomenon whereby raters consistently rate people with high potential in a certain domain more positively than people who have already demonstrated good performance in that same domain; see Tormola, Jia & Norton, 2012); naturalness bias (i.e., the tendency to rank innate over acquired sources of performance; see Tsay & Banaji, 2011); and incremental induction (i.e., experimental interventions that can alter a rater's mindset so that he or she demonstrates less naturalness bias; see Heslin, Latham & Vandewalle, 2005).…”

“…Although this latter perspective seems particularly attractive considering the changing demand-supply dynamics in the labor market (cf. the discussion on 'making or buying' talent), research has shown that most organizational decision makers tend to believe that talent is, for the largest part, inborn (e.g., Tsay & Banaji, 2011).…”

“…Also, the literature on attribution has shown that exceptional achievements attributed to effort and hard work are valued more (at least by the employees themselves) than achievements attributed to high ability alone (Tsay & Banaji, 2011).…”

Translation of corporate talent management strategies across subsidiaries in emerging economies

“…Social psychology "operationalizes talent as the perception of talent", and focuses on different issues including decision-making and mindsets (Dries, 2013b, p. 278). As depicted in the work done by Dries (2013b), research on social psychology comprises studies on generalised preference for potential (e.g., Tormola, Jia & Norton, 2012), naturalness bias (e.g., Tsay & Banaji, 2011) and incremental induction (e.g., Heslin, Latham, & Vandewalle, 2005). Recent studies suggest that the cognitive psychology discipline should be considered as a "further source of potential understanding about talent management decisions" (Boudreau, 2013, p. 287).…”