title: Are gifted adolescents more satisfied with their lives than their non-gifted peers?
abstract: Studies investigating the life satisfaction of intellectually gifted and non-gifted students are scarce and often suffer from methodological shortcomings. We examined the life satisfaction of gifted and non-gifted adolescents using a rather unselected sample of N = 655 German high-school students (n = 75 gifted), adequate comparison groups of non-gifted students, and a clear definition of giftedness (general intelligence g > 2 SD above the mean). There was no difference in life satisfaction between gifted and non-gifted adolescents (d < |0.1|). Girls reported somewhat lower life satisfaction scores than boys (d = 0.24). However, this result was not specific to giftedness but was instead found across the entire sample. Thus, gifted girls were not found to be especially unsatisfied with their lives. Our findings support previous research showing that giftedness is not a risk factor for impaired psycho-social well-being of boys or girls.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Technical University of Dortmund Dortmund, Germany.
authors.forename: Sebastian
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Bergold
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Technical University of Dortmund Dortmund, Germany.
authors.forename: Linda
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Wirthwein
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Psychology, Southwest University Chongqing Chongqing, China ; Department of Psychology, Philipps-Universität Marburg Marburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Detlef H
authors.initials: DH
authors.lastname: Rost
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Technical University of Dortmund Dortmund, Germany.
authors.forename: Ricarda
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Steinmayr
keywords: adolescents; gender differences; giftedness; intelligence; life satisfaction; subjective well-being