Roundtable Presentation 6th World Congress on Positive Psychology 2019

Sad Genius? An Analysis of three Qualities of Meaning among Gifted Adults (#362)

Bernadette Vötter 1 , Tatjana Schnell 1
  1. University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck, TYROL, Austria

This session reports on a study exploring the life meaning of gifted adults (IQ > 129). Therefore, three qualities of meaning - meaningfulness, crisis of meaning and existential indifference (Schnell 2009, Schnell 2010) - among three gifted groups (N = 100/N = 52/N=65) and a control group (N = 134) were examined. Two aspects of giftedness were considered: intellectual giftedness and high academic achievement. We will examine the link between life meaning and subjective well-being, resilience, as well as other constructs which have been linked to giftedness (e.g. self-criticism, hypersensitivity, perfectionism, and depression). Furthermore, differences between the groups and the distribution of the qualities of meaning will be discussed. Results highlight, for instance, that intellectually gifted adults experienced significantly lower meaningfulness and more crises of meaning than the control group. Subjective well-being and resilience were higher among those gifted who experienced their lives as meaningful, while depression was more prevalent among those who suffered from a crisis of meaning.