Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-j824f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-18T20:21:54.183Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 3 - The Question of How Talent Develops

Individual Niche-Picking and Cultural Selection as Two Invisible Hands

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 June 2024

David Yun Dai
Affiliation:
SUNY Albany
Get access

Summary

Chapter 3 addresses the question of how TD takes place. Two driving forces emerge as individuals move from early spontaneous actions and reactions to environmental opportunities and challenges to more purposive real and projected actions. One driving force emerging in a personal context of surviving-thriving adaptation is individual niche-picking, which influences the direction and strengths of personal strivings, and the other driving force is cultural selection based on cultural norms and distinction, which determines what is culturally worth supporting given its priorities. These two “invisible hands” jointly regulate one’s characteristic adaptation (CA) in the exploratory stage of talent development, and maximal adaptation (MA) in the systematic developmental stage. Both CA and MA are seen by ECT as self-organizing motivational forces for long-term development. CA allows the person to explore their horizon of possibilities and identify a pathway to success that is most rewarding as well as most achievable, and MA allows the person to seek inner and outer resources to maximize their chance of success. Consequently, a developing person has to show patterns of CA and MA conducive to reaching the highest level of self-organization: building a personal enterprise.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Nature and Nurture of Talent
A New Foundation for Human Excellence
, pp. 62 - 82
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×