High Giftedness and Personality

Dr. Russell T. Warne

Sep 10, 2023

What are “highly gifted” people like? What is the personality of a highly gifted person? Traditionally, highly gifted people are seen as eccentric, with stereotypes like the “mad scientist” or the “nutty professor” being common.

In the late 20th century, a different perspective emerged that gifted people have more intense inner experiences that can lead them to higher empathy, a mission to correct injustice in the world, or a more profound appreciation for fine aesthetic experiences.

Neither perspective is supported by the evidence. Decades of research show that most people with high IQs are well adjusted. People with higher IQ scores generally have better mental health, and their marriage rates are high. They also have lower divorce rates. Additionally, the idea that there is a tradeoff between success and psychological adjustment is not true. Claims of a more profound or intense psychological inner life are also unsupported. (It’s not even clear how that could be tested. There’s no way to determine whether my experience of looking at a van Gogh painting is more sublime and profound than yours.)

However, researchers have found correlations between personality traits and IQ. There is a weak relationship between IQ and openness to experience, with openness being slightly more common in higher-IQ people. There is also a weak negative with neuroticism, meaning that neuroticism is slightly lower in people with high IQ scores. But these tendencies are too weak to imply that there is a particular personality profile that most high-IQ people have and that is largely absent in other populations.

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