What Personality Traits Distinguish the Gifted from the Rest?

The war of words on giftedness rages on. Many who subscribe to an egalitarian ideology argue that, except for the mentally challenged, we all have roughly the same intelligence. They claim that those who demonstrate prowess in academics, athletics or creative invention are no more capable than anyone else–they merely work harder and longer. In 1993, psychologist Anders Ericsson challenged the concept of innate talent, asserting: 

Individual differences, even among elite performers, are closely related to assessed amounts of deliberate practice. Many characteristics once believed to reflect innate talent are actually the result of intense practice extended for a minimum of 10 years. Analysis of expert performance provides unique evidence on the potential and limits of extreme environmental adaptation and learning.

Six years later, psychologist Michael Howe in his book Genius Explained, asserted that Mozart had no special talent and that his “genius” was really little more than hard work over a prolonged period. In 2008, journalist Malcolm Gladwell In his bestselling book Outliers: The Story of Success, popularized Ericssons’ research asserting that talent is a myth and exceptional performance is merely the result of about 10,000 hours of deliberate practice–a conversion of Ericsson’s 10-year criterion with the assertion “Ten thousand hours is the magic number of greatness.” 

During the remainder of 2021 and into 2022, the California Department of Education will be vetting its draft of the Mathematics Framework for California Public Schools: Kindergarten Through Grade Twelve. Throwing down the gauntlet in a challenge to the concept of giftedness the document asserts:

An important goal of the Framework is to replace ideas of innate mathematics “talent” and “giftedness” with the recognition that every student is on a growth pathway. There is no cutoff determining when one child is “gifted” and another is not.

However, other researchers point to child prodigies as examples of those who rise to the top of their domain before they were old enough to log 10,000 hours of practice. Drawing upon research from MRI scans, Elizabeth Winner, psychologist at Boston College states:

Indirect evidence indicates that gifted children and savants have atypical brain organization (whether as a result of genetics, the in utero environment, or after-birth trauma). First, giftedness in mathematics, visual arts, and music is associated with superior visual-spatial abilities, and children with mathematical gifts show enhanced brain activity in their right hemisphere when asked to recognize faces, a task known to involve the right hemisphere.

Is Giftedness Manifest in Personality?

If, indeed, there is such a thing as giftedness, then we might expect that it might be evident in personality differences between the gifted and people of normal intelligence. The fact that high intelligence is one of the most treasured human attributes has spawned a variety of opinions about giftedness and many myths about its manifestation in personality. It is often suggested that the highly intelligent are more susceptible than people of average intelligence to personality disorders. It is also widely believed that highly intelligent people are lacking in what people call “people skills,” or “emotional IQ.” Are these perceptions valid or are they generalizations based on individual case studies. 

A recent study, titled One Personality Trait Distinguishes Gifted People, and reported in Psychology Today on November 14, 2021, looked at correlations between giftedness and the Big 5 traits (Extraversion, Conscientiousness, Openness to Experience, Neuroticism and Agreeableness). They found the following:^*

• Giftedness seems like a blessing but may be a burden.
• Gifted individuals have learning differences, including divergent thinking, quirky humor, and a penchant for complexity, that set them apart.
• Openness to experience is a key personality trait found in association with giftedness.
• Giftedness is not associated with less-social personality traits, dispelling the myth that gifted individuals have innate social problems.

If, indeed, giftedness doesn’t exist, then the first three of these four results would be false. However, the study involved a meta-analysis of 13 high-quality studies involving 3244 gifted individuals, so the research is relatively free of personal bias or unjustified generalization. Hence, it appears that individuals differ in intelligence and that some of our fellow beings have substantial intellectual gifts. Furthermore, these gifted individuals, if properly nurtured, will generate insights and create inventions that will serve us all.

• A free chapter on giftedness can be downloaded at: https://www.intelligence-and-iq.com/downloads/. Just click on the button titled, is talent a myth?
• The article in Psychology Today is accessible at: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/experimentations/202111/one-personality-trait-distinguishes-gifted-people
• *Uzeyir Ogurlu & Adnan Özbey (2021): Personality differences in gifted versus non-gifted individuals: A three-level meta-analysis, High Ability Studies, DOI: 10.1080/13598139.2021.1985438.