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Is There a "Gifted Personality"? Initial Evidence for Differences between MENSA and General Population Members in the
Jonathan Fries1, Kristof Kovacs2, Elisabeth L Zeilinger3
1Department of Developmental and Educational Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, University of Vienna, 1010 Vienna, Austria.
Journal of Intelligence
|November 22, 2022
Summary
Gifted individuals exhibit distinct personality traits, scoring higher in Honesty-Humility and Conscientiousness, and lower in Emotionality, compared to the general population. These findings highlight differences within the HEXACO personality framework.
Area of Science:
- Psychology
- Cognitive Science
- Personality Psychology
Background:
- Personality and intelligence are often considered unrelated, but studies show significant associations.
- Intellectually gifted individuals display unique personality profiles compared to the general population.
- Previous research primarily used the Five-Factor Model (FFM), neglecting the HEXACO framework.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate personality differences between gifted individuals and the general population using the HEXACO framework.
- To compare findings from the HEXACO model with existing knowledge based on the FFM.
- To explore how giftedness relates to the six broad dimensions of personality in the HEXACO model.
Main Methods:
- Recruited 617 adult members of the high-IQ society MENSA.
- Compared MENSA members' HEXACO-60 personality inventory scores against three large reference samples (N = 112,637).
- Analyzed personality differences across HEXACO dimensions: Honesty-Humility, Emotionality, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Openness to Experience.
Main Results:
- Gifted individuals scored higher in Honesty-Humility and Conscientiousness.
- Gifted individuals scored lower in Emotionality.
- Slightly higher scores in Openness to Experience and no consistent differences in Agreeableness were observed for gifted individuals.
Conclusions:
- Some previously identified personality differences between gifted and non-gifted individuals translate to the HEXACO model.
- The HEXACO framework reveals more pronounced differences in sociability among gifted individuals compared to intellect-related traits.
- This study provides novel insights into the personality structure of gifted individuals within the HEXACO model.
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