The self-esteem of high IQ individuals spans the full range from low self-esteem to high self-esteem. Our personal self-evaluation, when it is linked to our perception of our ability depends to a large extent on the people to whom we compare ourselves. We see this in sports like golf, where golfers are divided into flights A through D, in order of increasing handicap. The person who wins the D-flight trophy walks to the podium with great pride, even though he or she is in the category of lowest competence. By contrast, the A-flight golfer who observes his fellow golfers shooting scores in the 70’s may suffer a low self-evaluation. Stephen Covey once told me of an athlete who was aspiring to enter the Olympics, but felt that he could not qualify because there were five people who were more capable than he. Covey told him that as long as he felt that they were better athletes, he would not perform as well as they. After a series of psychological sessions, this young athlete qualified for the Olympics and won the decathlon. That athlete was Bruce Jenner.
A study published in an educational journal a few years ago explored the connection between achievement and self-esteem of students in classes that were divided into ability groups with the designations, bluebirds (high level learners), robins (average level learners) and starlings (low level learners). it was found that the students of highest self esteem were not those in the bluebird group, but rather they were those who were at the top of each group. That is, those at the bottom of the bluebird group had lower self-esteem than those who populated the top of the starling group. People compare themselves to those within their group rather than the entire population. For this reason, some of those at the bottom of a gifted class may feel intimidated by the very top students. That’s why there are numerous cases of mental stress among very bright students who attend the top universities like MIT. This was reported by journalist Malcolm Gladwell in his book, Outliers.
Many very high IQ people have low self-esteem because they set unrealistic goals for themselves. The intensity that people in this top intellectual echelon bring to the quest for “top-dog” status was captured in the 1997 movie Good Will Hunting. When Fields Medalist, Professor Gerald Lambeau, acknowledges that the young janitor at the University, named Will Hunting [played by Matt Damon] has superior mathematical talent, he says:
I can’t do this proof. But you can, and when it comes to that it’s only about..it’s just a handful of people in the world who can tell the difference between you and me. But I’m one of them… Most days I wish I never met you…Because then I could sleep at night, and I wouldn’t have to walk around with the knowledge that there’s someone like you out there…
The great physicist, Paul Ehrenfest, who collaborated with Einstein and found a contradiction in the equivalence principle, committed suicide because he felt he could no longer understand with enough clarity, the new abstract formulations of the general theory and quantum physics.
Of course cases like that of Ehrenfest are relatively rare, and it’s true that having a high IQ often brings accolades and approval from parents and teachers and, after elementary school, from classmates. Consequently there is probably a moderate correlation between IQ and self-esteem, but there are so many bases for comparing ourselves to others, including, beauty, wealth, athletic achievement, and power, that the correlation is not strong.
