Major Life Decisions of Gifted Adults in Relation to Overall Life Satisfaction

Perrone, Kristin M.; Ksiazak, Tracy M.; Wright, Stephen L.; Vannatter, Aarika; Hyatt, Claudine C.; Shepler, Dustin K.; Perrone, Philip A.

doi:10.1177/0162353211425101

Cited by 8 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…Although the gifted educational literature is redundant in information and studies on children and adolescents, there is a shortage of gifted adults' studies. Only very few have explicitly explored well-being (Perrone-McGovern et al 2011;Dijkstra, Barelds, Ronner, & Nauta, 2017;Pollett & Schnell, 2017).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Life satisfaction for gifted adults: Its relation to gender, age, religiosity, and income

Katanani

2020

Journal for the Education of Gifted Young Scientists

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The study's main objective is revealing the level of life satisfaction for gifted adults and its relation to gender, age, religiosity, income. The researcher used a descriptive approach with its two analytical and relational aspects. The study participants consisted of 80 (48 males and 32 females) members of the Jubilee School graduates from the first fifteen cohorts (Jubilee school is a special school for gifted and talented students in Jordan). To achieve the study goals and answer its questions, the researcher used the Satisfaction with Life Scale (SLS) developed by Diener et al. (1985). The finding shows that gifted adults were highly satisfied with their lives, with their living conditions, with their semi-ideal life, and they were highly satisfied that they have gotten the important things they want in life. The results also indicate no significant differences in the degree of life satisfaction among the gifted due to gender, religiosity, and income. However, there were significant differences between gifted adults' scores of life satisfaction due to age. The study concluded that gender, religion, and income have little influence on gifted adults' life satisfaction. However, further research is required to bridge the literature gap concerning different life aspects amongst gifted adults, potentially impacting their life satisfaction.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Life satisfaction for gifted adults: Its relation to gender, age, religiosity, and income

Katanani

2020

Journal for the Education of Gifted Young Scientists

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“…During early adulthood, a gifted adult's career contributes most heavily to life satisfaction (Wirthwein & Rost, 2011b) and most gifted adults across the studies examined here are satisfied with their careers (Perrone, Tschopp, et al, 2010;Siekańska & Sękowski, 2006), but as gifted adults age, contributors to life satisfaction include romantic relationships (Perrone et al, 2006;Perrone-McGovern et al, 2011) and parenting (Ferriman et al, 2009). Strong romantic relationships are even viewed as helpful in attaining professional goals during early and middle adulthood (Hansen & Hall, 1997).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 95%

“…As gifted individuals age, though, indicators of life satisfaction begin to include social relationships, in addition to one's career. In a study of 57 gifted adults (ranging in age from 36 to 39 years) from the 1988 Midwestern Study, Perrone-McGovern et al (2011) examined the role major life decisions (i.e., the top five most important decisions participants had made since graduating from high school) and the effect those had on life satisfaction. The most common category for participants' best life decision was related to an increase in level of commitment in romantic relationships (e.g., getting married).…”

Section: Life Goals Satisfaction and Well-beingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The available research is often flawed by methodological shortcomings, including imprecise and unclear definitions of giftedness, small sample sizes, and a lack of adequate comparison groups. Some studies are based on anecdotal experiences rather than empirical observations (such as that by Lovecky, 1986;Roeper, 1991), and many studies of gifted adults come from the same databases (e.g., Perrone et al, 2004Perrone et al, , 2006Perrone et al, , 2007Perrone et al, , 2011Perrone et al, , 2012 ; Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth, see . Some research on high ability adults exists outside the field of gifted education, such as in the field of individual differences, which has produced a large amount of research on IQ differences among individuals of varying ages.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Gifted Adults

Rinn

Bishop

2015

Gifted Child Quarterly

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What happens when a gifted child grows up? Educators, parents, researchers, policy makers, and counselors spend a considerable amount of time planning for, and attending to, the educational, cognitive, and socioemotional needs of gifted children, but for what purpose? To ensure the gifted child is adequately intellectually stimulated during childhood and that his or her social and emotional needs are met? Do we also have a bigger end goal? Many in the field of gifted education would argue that we want to prepare gifted children to meet their potential and to be capable, productive, successful, happy, and even eminent (Subotnik, Olszewski-Kubilius, & Worrell, 2011;Subotnik & Rickoff, 2010) adults. But, how do we know gifted education has met these goals? If we accept that gifted education has a larger purpose than the day-to-day activities, projects, and homework assignments that come along with a gifted program, we must also accept that gifted children grow up. "It's not as though these former children slough off their giftedness like discarded skin at the age of sixteen or eighteen or twenty-one. Gifted children do grow up, and they become gifted adults" (Jacobsen, 1999a, p. 9). Yet we know very little about what happens once a gifted individual graduates from high school (Rinn & Plucker, 2004), and even less about what happens when a gifted individual "grows up."Over the past two decades, a number of provocative book titles regarding gifted adults have appeared in mainstream media that attempt to answer some questions about the lives of gifted adults:

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“…The decision to commit to a romantic relationship in early adulthood leads to greater life satisfaction and successful long-term marriages and relationships for most gifted women (Perrone et al, 2007). What stands out is the importance of deliberateness in choosing to have a career and relationship (Perrone-McGovern et al, 2011). Those smart women who treat these aspects of life as equally important and equally worthy of deep reflection, planning, and careful decision-making seem to have the most satisfying lives.…”

Section: Older Gifted Womenmentioning

confidence: 99%