Generalist/Specialist factor

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During an aptitude test I took as a teen -- which is a test to determine which careers match your innate skills and interests -- they graded me on something called the "generalist/specialist factor".

It's a percentage ratio. Generalists are people who are gifted at stepping back and seeing the overall truths of a situation. Specialist are, I imagine, highly represented among Aspies and Auties. Specialists are the detail-oriented people, who are gifted at dealing with the nitty-gritty, tiny stuff. I scored right in the middle, 50/50.

Just curious if anyone else is familiar with this concept, and if so, has anyone been tested and scored on it? Those who are unfamiliar with the terms, do you see yourself as a "detail" person or a "big picture" person more?

I'm almost completely incapable of seeing the "big picture".

Never took any test regarding that, I don't think...

But I definitely DO need details. So you can consider me a specialist.

Well, I AM a specialist, but I can do general things in various areas as well. Then again, only an idiot would say they can do EVERYTHING.

It seems very vague, I would need some examples.

Well, looking at this like I would when I draw, I'd have to say specialist. The details are fine, and when I do pics that can be created entirely by details, I'm good, but drawing things like trees is insane, because there are so many details that I can't look at all of them and AGH!! !

Like, which one of these are you better at doing:

1. Memorizing statistics.
or
2. Having a correct general impression of the statistics, where you tend to feel the trend of the numbers more than you actually memorize them.

Another (perhaps a bit more vague) example would be:
When you see a group of similar objects, do you tend to "zoom in" and focus your attention on one of the objects, or do you simply get an instinctive sense of what you're looking at without analyzing it?

For the first one, 2. For the second one, I'd tend to focus on each object in turn. And having thought of a few scenarios armed with those examples, I'd say I'm pretty evenly split between generalist and specialist.

it depends on the data.
about some things/types of data/info i am big picturish, about other things teeny detail gets my attention.

About moving house last year for instance i planned the programme for the day of the move, with limited rental van time available, to the closest five minutes, calculated how long each lift to our floor at old address would take, and how much and what would get in lift each load, aswell as how to fill the lorry. I calculated travel time with adjustment for being in van, over stretch done only in car before etc. I calculated snack and rest breaks. I calculated the order to do the unpacking in at other end so I could get our son to bed at almost normal time etc.
The holiday we went on this year, ( the first, apart from three short family visits, in 5 years) the first ever holiday in my adult life which was really organised in advance, I arranged months before, and calculated everything, hotel nights, tent camping, caravan, travel times and expenses, living expenses, all the paperwork and what we would need etc.
But there's other things I am super good at big picture; describing famous people in shortest time possible in a team party game ( i beat everyone, and astonished people, me included, playing this once , many years ago now; how efficiently i conveyed to my team the salient facts about personalities so that they knew who it was), history, conveying info/ideas generally maybe, etc.
Don't know.
Couldn't answer the poll because don't know. Would like to have clearer idea in fact about what things I excell at fine close-work in, and what things tend to see the whole.

It has changed over time too i think.

Last edited by ouinon on 18 Nov 2007, 10:23 am, edited 1 time in total.

I would consider myself a generalist, as my primary strength is for collecting and memorizing information on a wide variety of subjects of interest. My primary specialty is knowledge. This is a great asset in my job at the library.