Being labeled as gifted, self-appraisal, and psychological well-being: a life span developmental perspective.
This study examined the relation of being labeled as intellectually gifted to a midlife appraisal of having lived up to one's abilities and to psychological well-being at age eighty. Participants in the study were 399 individuals in the Terman Study of the Gifted who were between the ages of seventy-five and eighty-four in 1992. A proxy index of Terman Study membership was derived from participants' self-report during their mid-twenties of the age at which they first learned that they were members of the Terman Study. Learning at a younger age of membership in a study of intellectual giftedness was related to less likelihood of believing that one had lived up to one's intellectual abilities at midlife and to less favorable psychological well-being at age eighty. Results are discussed in terms of the possible implications of being labeled as gifted for the formation of unrealistic expectations about achievement.
Department of Kinesiology and Health Education, University of Texas at Austin, 78712, USA.
C K
CK
Holahan
C J
CJ
Holahan
D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000375:Aging / Q000523:psychology*; D002672:Child, Gifted; D005260:Female; D006803:Human Development; D006801:Humans; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D011581:Psychological Tests; D012647:Self-Assessment