Characteristics of a Good Researcher (Part 1)

The researcher must have specific intrinsic and acquired qualities, to be able to carry out research activities. Lack of these traits hinders the pursuit of research or makes conduction of research slow and difficult. The characteristics of a good researcher can be divided into the three categories of cognitive, emotional, and behavioral.

A) Cognitive Characteristics

The most important characteristic of a researcher is reflection and thinking with the aim of answering the questions. The researcher uses his intellectual and background information to try and provide an answer for unsolved questions. So the major part of research activity focuses on reflections and thoughts rather than the presentation of research works in the form of books and theses. To have a clear picture of the researcher’s characteristics, we classify these traits into three general domains:

1) cognitive characteristics

2) emotional characteristics

3) behavioral characteristics

Cognitive characteristics are also categorized into intrinsic and acquired sub-categories. Intrinsic characteristics refer to the innate abilities of a person. The most important of those are high intelligence and a good memory. So it’s not like that everyone has the ability to perform research, but only those who have talents. So many people may not have the capacity for intellectual and research activity. We will analyze the cognitive features in two domains of intrinsic and acquired characteristics. Intrinsic traits are given and acquired attributes are achievable by the individual through their efforts.

Intrinsic Characteristics

Being Talented: The most important characteristic of the intrinsic dimension is the gift of talent. If we classify different levels of talent into ranges of weak, medium, good, and brilliant talents. Considering the lowest level of talent (intellectually disabled) and the highest level of talent (geniuses), the talent required for the researcher is brilliant or good. So, people with poor and even moderate talents will not be very successful in their research activities. Given the importance of talent and the priority of one’s level of talent, we will analyze the concept of talent in greater detail.

a) The Concept of Brilliant Talent: Talent is one of the most ambiguous and complex concepts in the field of educational sciences. Besides the difficulties in defining the term “humanities”, explaining this concept suffers from special obstacles, such as the involvement of moral and broad factors regarding different situations and different cultures. So in the next part, we will explain the barriers in the way of defining the word “talent” and then the concepts of “gifted and talented”.