Characteristics of Giftedness

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Giftedness is generally thought of in terms of having a high IQ (above 130).  But there is so much more involved when you look inside a gifted person.  This list gives a unique view of the inner working of the gifted and brings to light the essence of so much of our hard-to-capture identity.

SIGNS OF GIFTEDNESS

Some signs of giftedness in children and adults compiled by Annemarie Roeper, Ed.D. and Betty Maxwell, Ph.D.

  • Sensitivity
  • Remembering insults forever
  • Doing three things at once
  • Doing the outwardly foolish thing, taking up lost causes
  • Psychic
  • Interest in life and death
  • Driven to comprehend, complexity of understanding
  • Wanting to know the reasons and origins of things
  • Asks, “What is my purpose?”
  • Naive
  • Recognition of falsity, no “trophy friends”
  • Complexifying solutions
  • Finding non-conventional solutions, originality
  • Not motivated by extrinsic awards, discomfort with praise
  • Passionate
  • Undeterred by conventional expectations
  • Self taught, non-sequential learning
  • Need for precision
  • Recognition of unfairness, strong sense of justice
  • Making intuitive leaps, making logical projections
  • Noticing what no one else does
  • Manipulation and bargaining
  • Make and follow their own plans, less teachable
  • Devise practical experiments to see “What if?”
  • Saying, “Actually”
  • Large vocabulary, love of big words
  • Delayed in toilet training, difficulty in separating from mom
  • Early sense of responsibility
  • Not wanting to grow up and face the world
  • Less physical risk-taking
  • Zipping through Piagetian stages
  • Friends of both genders, later sexual interests
  • Abstract thinkers before having the emotional ability to handle it
  • Symbolic thinkers
  • Can animate their fears, powerful emotional imagination

So, what do you think?

Join the forum discussion on this post

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  4. Is giftedness really a gift, or is it something else?
  5. Gifted Adults, Does This Sound Like You?

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  • Hope

    Of course everybody wants to relate to this list. I bet if you did a study where you made a list of good traits and said it was a horoscope for every persons month, almost everyone would say that describes themself.

    • http://giftedforlife.com Sonia Dabboussi

      I agree in the sense that all people, or almost all people, want to see the good in themselves and want to know there’s something special about them.

      At the same time, this is a long list with quite a few oddball kinds of characteristics which might make the people who don’t really fit think twice. Who’s going to be in a hurry to admit that they’re naive, or that they do the ‘outwardly foolish thing’, or maybe took a little too long in the toilet training stage?

      Not all of these things apply to everyone who’s gifted, but if someone says they have all of the ‘good’ traits and none of the ‘bad, it might make you wonder…

      • mindy

        I have a son, 8, who is gifted and I stumbled on this site when trying to find helpful information for him about why he feels like he’s so different from everyone else. This list was incredibly helpful. Of course I tend to agree that most people will find themselves in this list, it helped him to see sensitivity was “normal”. Plus there are a few personality ticks we always thought were just him, but are listed here! For instance, from the time he learned to speak he said “Actually” constantly in conversation. So funny to see it as a characteristic!

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  • http://fluffylittleidiot.blogspot.com/ Elizabeth Braun

    Most of these describe me – including being naive! I’ll admit that! I’m forever expecting folk to do the right thing and am shocked if someone is shown to have an ‘impure’ motive. Lack of confidence makes me less ‘unteachable’ etc than many gifted people (but I understand that lack of self belief is another common gifted trait). Sigh. And yup, I’m nearly 40 and I still don’t want to grow up!!=)

  • gifted and unemployed

    I think the traits are pretty accurate and I feel pretty related to many of those traits. However I would post an open set of questions.. Gifted people are not trainable and have problems with authorities, that does not make gifted people in some way undesirable in work? Moreover that does not make working undesirable for the gifted? and If working has a lot to do with deal with the enviroment definition of intelligence by Weshler what would be the relationship between giftedness and intelligence in this sample?
    thanks.

    • http://giftedforlife.com giftedforlife

       The gifted certainly are trainable in that they have a deep desire to learn.  In the workplace, the best fit for a gifted person is somewhere where they have variety, room to grow and explore, and an opportunity to influence the direction in which they go.  This obviously isn’t going to be like every working environment, but those places are out there.  And if you have a gifted person working for you with these conditions, chances are good you’ll get some incredible results.

  • Robin Retzler

    My 2 sons and I are both gifted.  Because of this, I have educated my husband about being gifted as he is merely above average (ha, ha).  He now thinks of being gifted as a curse – and unfortunately, I think I mostly have to agree with him.  There is so much information about the characteristics of being gifted, and education options, etc, but there is not much information about the practical aspects of how one deals with being gifted on a day to day basis.  And by that I mean the things that make us hard to employ, difficult to be friends with, etc.  It seems the only option is to seek therapy which is costly (either that or win the lottery and found a town in which only the gifted can live there!)

    • http://giftedforlife.com giftedforlife

       Understanding what giftedness means and the characteristics that go along with it is the first step, but of course what to do with all of it is next.  Connecting with other gifted adults and sharing experiences helps because you can find out what others have done that has worked for them.  And you can have somewhere where you can just ‘be yourself’ which helps to alleviate some of the adaptive stressors you may experience in other areas of your life.  Both of these are a plus.

  • noyb

    Being gifted is a curse for the most part, cuz you can never fit in and just go through life not dwelling over how screwed up this world is and being over sensitive with feelings and stuff… it sucks, and I don’t want it. I feel completely alone and miserable all the time and having to correct ppl’s mistakes all the time and seeing ppl do really dumb things and refusing to take your advice on anything you say is ridiculously frustrating and makes me constantly annoyed with everything and everyone around me. I have been depressed for many years, and I’ve had 2 counselors refuse to give me any long term help because they probably disbelieve that I am depressed. I have a major sleeping disorder because of that depression, and because of that, I have a really hard time falling asleep at night. I just recently went to a sleep clinic and was told that I had no REM sleep at all and only fell asleep for less than 2 hours worth. Now, I’m no doctor, but if all that connects to being “gifted”, then I don’t want it at all. I don’t want to be generally smarter than others and obsess over a lot of things. I just want a normal life.

    Those of you who want to be apart of that list are morons and aren’t gifted at all.

    • http://giftedforlife.com giftedforlife

      I can understand why you feel like being gifted is a curse. For many it feels that way, especially those who haven’t been able to connect with others who think and feel the way they do.
      There really isn’t any way to become ‘ungifted’, other that to try to shut off your intensities and complexities, which then of course creates other kinds of problems. The best way to handle all of this is to keep doing more of what works for you and do less of what doesn’t. That may sound kind of vague, but it can work out better in the end.
      I’d love to talk more about this with you. You can post something in the forum here if you’d like at http://giftedforlife.com/forum, or join our Facebook group where there are many others who have experienced events similar to yours and are finding ways to improve their lives. That group is called On the Edge: Gifted Adults Redefining Possible an is at http://www.facebook.com/groups/intellectuallygifted. I hope we can talk more there.

  • Knight of Virtue

    It’s not gifted so much that are left out of society, but just about anyone who doesn’t fit in the “norm”, with the more extremes having it worse. Unfortunately, being gifted means we understand the significance of this at a deeper and more emotionally painful level then others. Giftedness only seems like a curse because society makes it that way. Don’t give in to the pressure! We have to much to bring to the world, even if they don’t understand the significance of what we do for them. I also have suffered much, both from being different (gifted) and compounded by ignorance of how big the difference is in some ways (though I’d say in many cases it’s more a bunch of small differences added together).

    Sadly, there pretty much always be people in your life telling you how worthless of a human being you are and how you don’t belong. Don’t listen to this, if you view yourself in a negative manner, you’ll become what you fear you are! Instead think positive of yourself, sure you’ll make mistakes, we all do, but you are still valuable and wonderful in your own right.

    As part of my faith I  know the creator (or at least a small portion of him, hard to completely understand an infinite being with a finite mind). And my God does not make mistakes, including you, and no matter what others or yourself think of what you are, he still treasures you and not only values you, but actively seeks you out (he even went so far as to give his life for you! he finds you valuable enough to sacrifice himself). Now, you may have differing views, and perhaps are even atheist or are in a spiritual crisis where you wonder why a wonderful God would put you through such pain. But even if that’s the case, know that there are others out there who value you and believe you have high value even if they have never known you! (if you’re interested in more then feel free to PM me on the forums and I’ll try to get back to you as soon as I can).

    I’d also encourage you to question your views on things like human perfection, or what you feel you should be. If you don’t like yourself, why? What don’t you like about yourself? Are the things you don’t like from yourself, or from others? I find that a lot of things that I beat myself up about aren’t things I personally dislike about myself, but rather things that others and society says aren’t favorable.  So think positive, find who you are, and like it! Just because others say something like a lack of focus in your passions is bad, doesn’t mean it is, rather it’s an awesome and important part of who you are! The funny thing about self, is that only you can truly know who you are, yet everyone else seems to think it’s there job to tell you who that is.

    Know that you’re an awesome person, even if you haven’t found it out yet! Once you realize internally how amazing you truly are (not in a competitive fashion, as everyone is awesome in different ways, and we’re designed for those different types of awesome to be put together for something even greater) then it will start to show outside. It sounds cliche, but believe in yourself!

    • john

      I express great contempt for people such as yourself, who make themselves out to be martyrs and impose a pretentious demeanor.  A very important aspect to being gifted is constantly analyzing yourself, coupled with a fortuitous strive  for perfection.  While you may believe your gifted, stating your beliefs explicitly as truth veers far from fact.  Realizing ones own giftedness is an understanding, not an action.

      • Knight of Virtue

         I fail to see how stating the fact that people on the ends of extremes tend to suffer due to being misunderstood and people’s general fear of anything different, is saying that I’m a matyr, I’d also consider myself much more fortunate than many others.

        Being gifted isn’t about striving for perfection, it’s about striving to always be better, sky’s the limit. I also must ask you, what is perfection? What you basing this “perfection” on? Is it what others say it is? Is it what the media portrays? Is it determined by some outside factor? Have you made your own view of what it is? What did you use to come up with this view? Do you believe yourself knowledgeable enough to truly know what perfection is? (I know I’m sure not, and likely never will be as it is something hard to pin down, assuming it even exist.) etc. I’m not saying to not strive to be better, I’m saying to question what that is, and to be happy with who you are while seeking to achieve more.

        Note that understanding itself is an action, even if it’s often not one you always have to actively strive for. That said one cannot make themselves gifted or not gifted, what’s important is how you deal with it. Gifted people seem more prone to negative thinking and viewpoints, in part because of the scale they understand things and also because of being a smaller and less understood part of society. Positive thinking is more powerful than people usually give it credit for, not only is it more healthy for you, but it is a stronger motivator and allows you to achieve even more, it helps you withstand failure and resist the negativity that others will throw on your project, don’t underestimate it.


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