Originally Posted by
geoff332
Nature nurture once again.
You will get the people who tell you it's all about how much effort you put in ("give me the boy until he is five and I will show you the man..."). At some point, you'll get 10,000 hours quoted to you.
You may get a few people who talk about genetic determinism - evolutionary psychology or the like.
If you're very lucky then you will get a few people who actually know the research and tell you that nature and nurture - talent and effort, in your words - interact together strongly. This is particularly evident in high-performance fields.
In terms of dancing performance... I could spend a year doing nothing but dancing training with the best instructors and become a much better dancer than I am now. Someone with less natural dancing talent than I would probably not improve as much doing the same thing. Someone with more natural talent would probably improve a lot more. That's all pretty simple.
Where it gets more complicated is that someone with more talent is more likely to put the time, money and effort in to improving than someone without the natural talent.
One of the best examples of this is Dan Carter - the All Black's incumbant first five (and probably the best in the world). He was spotted young as a prodigious talent and his parents were rugby fans. As a result, he started training young, got good coaching, was sent to the right schools, and played in the right teams.
He also has the character and attitude that meant when young he put in the hours on his own: he grew up next to some friends of my parents': most evenings when he wasn't in team training, he was practising in the local park. One could easily argue that this attitude was a product both of genetic predisposition as well as the way he was raised and the person he has become.
He is certainly naturally talented, but he's also put in a lot of hours and it's the two together that have made him the best (unless he gets injured by the French).
My experience of ballroom is very similar: some people are naturally better than others. Those who are naturally better are far, far more likely to put the effort in. And when you get both together, you get a star. And being a star attracts better and better teachers and so the cycle continues.
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