Examining the “F” in Gifted: Academically Gifted Adolescents' Physiological and Affective Responses to Scholastic Failure

Abstract

The present investigation examined whether academically gifted children, relative to their nongifted peers (a) were subject to greater self-oriented and socially prescribed perfectionism, (b) endorsed higher levels of Ellis' (1962) irrational beliefs, and (c) were prone to more negative reactions to an experimentally induced failure. Relative to their nongifted and academically achieving peers, the academically gifted students demonstrated more negative affective and physiological stress reactions to the experimentally induced failure, as well as higher levels of self-oriented perfectionism and irrational beliefs. The present findings highlight the need for research within the relatively new and unexplored field of gifted students' reactions to scholastic failure.

How Children’s Cognitive and Affective Responses to a Novel Task Relate to the Dimensions of Perfectionism

“…Roberts and Lovett (1994) examined how academically gifted children compared with other middle school children in response to a failure experimentally induced by exposure to a set of solvable, but quite difficult, anagrams. Although the Maladaptive Evaluative Concerns dimension of perfectionism was not measured in this study, the gifted children did endorse higher levels of self-oriented perfectionism before the task and responded to a failure manipulation with significantly greater negative affectivity and physiological stress in comparison to the other comparison groups.…”

Gifted High-School Students' Perspectives on the Development of Perfectionism

“…Research examining perfectionism in gifted students has explored typologies of perfectionism (Dixon, Lapsley, & Hanchon, 2004;Parker, 1997;Vandiver & Worrell, 2002) as well as the extent to which this trait is more or less prevalent in gifted students compared with the general population (Orange, 1997;Parker & Adkins, 1995;Parker & Mills, 1996;Roberts & Lovett, 1994;Schuler, 2000). The origins of perfectionism in gifted students, however, are just beginning to receive attention in the literature.…”

Multiple Intelligences and Perfectionism

“…In these studies, generally speaking, characteristics of perfectionism have been investigated in relation to other personal characteristics, psychological disorders, attitudes, behavioral patterns, socio-demographic aspects, parents' attitudes, and different psychological characteristics (Baker, 1996;Bencik, 2006;Ciğerci Coşar, 2006;Kline and Short, 1991;Kramer, 1988;LoCicero and Ashby, 2000;Roberts and Lovett;1994;Schuler, 2000).…”

“…Kline and Short (1991) found that gifted female students' perfectionism levels increase along with their class level. Roberts and Lovett (1994) found that gifted high school students have a higher level of perfectionism than do students with a normal level of intelligence. Schuler (2000), in his study on talented adolescents, concluded that students have a high level of perfectionism.…”