High Giftedness

Dr. Russell T. Warne

Sep 10, 2023

One topic that has been part of intelligence research since its beginning is giftedness. In the early 20th century, psychologists equated being “gifted” with having a high IQ score. The most prominent example of this was Lewis Terman, who launched a study of gifted children that lasted over 70 years. Terman’s position was mainstream for the first half of the 20th century and into the 1960s.

Today, views in the gifted education world are much more diverse. Legally, “giftedness” takes on many different definitions in the United States, depending on state laws and local policies. In one state, gifted children may be defined as those who display high creativity, while another state may use IQ as its primary definition. Most states allow multiple methods for children to qualify for giftedness.

While the plethora of definitions broadens access to gifted programs and democratizes the field, it has led to incoherence. Some scholars’ definitions of who is “gifted” and who is not are inherently contradictory. This makes it difficult to discuss the individual differences through the lens of “giftedness.” In other words, no one can really say much about the “highly gifted” because who is highly gifted and how they obtain the label is inconsistent.

That is why incorporating IQ scores into a definition of giftedness is useful. Intelligence is one of the best understood concepts in all of psychology, and IQ tests are some of the best designed and most useful tests ever created. IQ provides a much firmer foundation for understanding giftedness than any of the alternatives proposed by gifted education scholars in the past 60 years. This does not mean that “gifted” = “high IQ,” but it does mean that intelligence needs to be part of the conversation about giftedness.

So, what does the research on high IQ tell us about highly gifted people? Generally, strong performance on an IQ test is associated with better life outcomes. People with high IQ scores generally are healthier, live longer, earn higher incomes, have fewer mental health problems, and more positive life outcomes. There are exceptions to these tendencies. Some of these tendencies are individual; in other words, not every person who scores high on an IQ test has these beneficial outcomes. But there are also exceptions to the outcomes themselves. Anorexia and high-functioning autism, for example, are more common in higher-IQ samples. Despite the exceptions, it is better to have a higher IQ than not (all other things being equal).

These findings are at odds with the stereotype of troubled gifted genius or the mad scientist. The subjects of Terman’s study of gifted children mostly grew up to become well adjusted adults who had less criminality and higher rates of occupational and family success than the general population. Claims that high IQ causes its own problems seem to be largely unsupported. There is also no evidence that high IQ leads to a different “inner psychological experience” that makes gifted people more empathetic or more “overexcitable” in response to their environment. Generally, the highly gifted are like anyone else, except they’re better at solving problems and planning, and they think more quickly. But there is not any unique psychological profile that highly gifted people share that others do not.

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