CHAPTER NINETEEN THE DEVELOPMENT OF PERSONALITY IN HIGHLY INTELLIGENT CHILDREN [1]
The children included in the term "highly intelligent children" cover a very wide range in intellectual variation—from an IQ of 130 (S-B) to the topmost limit of human diversity. This topmost limit seems to define itself at approximately 200 IQ. The most extreme deviates reported in the literature as fully measured fall at or near this point. A considerable number falling above 180 IQ have been reported, many of them not fully measured by Stanford-Binet because of the limitations of the test. It is therefore clear that children in the upper 1 per cent are not all alike. On the contrary, the child at the top of this group exceeds the child who barely reaches the group by much more than the latter exceeds the average child. The most able child in the upper 1 per cent surpasses the least able in this group by as much as the average child surpasses a moron (in terms of IQ). The really difficult problems of adjustment to life and to people come to those who test above 170 IQ. As there are so very few of these children, parents and teachers are seldom called upon to consider their needs. Thus when one does appear, he or she is the more likely to be misunderstood.
GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS
Obviously, it is not possible to discuss every aspect of personality in the limited number of pages of this book. We shall confine ourselves, therefore, to a few of the more important phases of development which are unique in the case of gifted children; particularly to such complexities as arise from the combination of immaturity and deviation, these continuing for approximately twenty-one years. This is the period when development is taking place as distinguished from the period of maturity.
It should be stated emphatically at the outset that children of very superior intelligence are not, as a group, socially annoying. The problems of personality adjustment are those of the child, not those of society as ordinarily understood. If the gifted child should annoy society, society would pay more attention to him. Society builds splendid institutions and provides expert care and guidance for vicious and feeble-minded children. That society does not pay such attention to the gifted is in itself evidence of social acceptability. The researches of Terman, [2] of Hartshorne and May, [3] and of Haggerty, [4] among others, have shown that highly intelligent children are more stable emotionally than are children in general, are much more resistant to childish temptations, and exhibit far less of undesirable behavior than is exhibited by the dull. Teachers do, however, report them for "restlessness" and "lack of interest" somewhat more often than they report children of 100 IQ for these behaviorisms. The researches of Burt [5] and of Healy and Bronner [6] show few children testing above 130 IQ among delinquents, in proportion to their frequency in the population as a whole.
With these facts as to generally superior adjustment before us, let us inquire whether there are, nevertheless, special perplexities in the life of a gifted child, and at what point in the range of intellect these perplexities begin. Is it possible that a child who varies as far above his contemporaries as an imbecile or an idiot varies below them, will find only advantages and no special difficulties of development created for him by the fact of his wide deviation from the norm?
Observation and measurement of gifted children as they have grown from early childhood to maturity have made it possible to formulate definitely some of the special problems of development which arise from being an extreme and infrequently occurring deviate. The more intelligent the child, the more likely he or she is to become involved in these puzzling difficulties. Let us consider some of these problems.
THE PART PLAYED BY PHYSIQUE
The "looks" of a person has much to do with his social adjustment. If highly intelligent children really resembled the cartoonist's idea of them, there would be little chance of excellent development. Fortunately, the researches of the past twenty years have proved that the popular notions about the poor physiques of the gifted and the weird ugliness of their physiognomies are not only erroneous but the exact opposite of the truth. These are superstitions, founded perhaps on the unconscious longing for "a just nature" which will distribute gifts somewhat equally instead of bestowing everything upon a few persons.
It has been amply proved, by measurements, that highly intelligent children are tall, heavy, strong, healthy, and fine looking as a group, exceeding the generality of children in all these respects. This does not mean that every individual among the gifted is physically superior, but it does mean that a gifted child is more likely to have a fine body than is a child taken from the general population.
As for beauty of face, in two separate series of photographs in which the faces of highly intelligent adolescents were compared with the faces of adolescents of ordinary mentality, the faces of the former were found to be more beautiful. This was the impression made upon "naïve" judges who knew nothing concerning the comparative intelligence of those judged. It may be that one reason why teachers often do not identify gifted children accurately, is that they are looking for pupils who correspond to the cartoonist's picture, and thus are led away from consideration of the beautiful and the well grown!
As gifted children approach and reach maturity, they reap the benefits of superior vitality, size, and beauty. However, many of them suffer, while growing up, from feelings of inferiority connected with size and strength, for typically they are somewhat accelerated in school status and they naturally choose children older than themselves as chums. Thus in physical competitions they are at a disadvantage. Observation shows that they tend to develop sedentary forms of play, or forms of physical enjoyment that do not depend upon being included in a group; such as swimming, skating, horseback riding, and walking.
PROBLEM OF LEADERSHIP
Also, in all matters pertaining to leadership, the competition with older classmates and friends exerts an influence, particularly during adolescence. The very young boy (or girl) in high school is not so likely to be elected to a post of leadership because of his comparative size, his voice, and the juvenility of his clothes. Thus a feeling may be engendered in him that he cannot gain the confidence of contemporaries; and this, in turn, may impair his self-confidence.
If long continued, this state of affairs may lead to emotional straining after social recognition. In social gatherings, size and physical maturity are important as absolute quantities and qualities, and not in relation to age. Thus a child should not be placed too far out of his age-group. A very gifted boy, reaching at twenty years a stature of five feet nine inches, remarked, "It is very odd to be as large as the people you're with!" Being always the smallest member of a social group may develop attitudes which are hard to revise when eventually the boy or girl achieves adult stature and is "as large as the people you're with."
This difficulty in assuming a normal place among more mature schoolmates arises especially in adolescence, when association with members of the opposite sex makes its introduction. Being in high school or in college with much older classmates, the boy of thirteen to sixteen finds himself at a disadvantage with the girls whom he meets. The girls brought to parties by the older boys are "too old" for him, and he feels unable to claim their attention. Many of these young boys show sufficient insight and sufficient management of their disadvantage to take care of it. They know that the trouble lies in being "too young," and that later they will achieve standing with the girls. In a few cases, however, this difficulty may lead to an unfortunate avoidance of girls, even in more mature years. In the case of girls, adjustment to the society of older boys in high school and college seems to present no special difficulties, since girls develop earlier than boys do, and are taken seriously by boys who are older than themselves.
The "inferiority complexes" of gifted persons have been little studied, but it is certain that many such persons do feel socially inferior and shy. Some of this may be due to the physical comparisons just suggested, arising from prolonged association with older persons.
PROBLEMS OF ADJUSTMENT TO OCCUPATION
Where the gifted child drifts in the school unrecognized, working chronically far below his capacity (even though young for his grade), he receives daily practice in habits of idleness and daydreaming. His abilities never receive the stimulus of genuine challenge, and the situation tends to form in him the expectation of an effortless existence. Children with IQ's up to 150 get along in the ordinary course of school life quite well, achieving excellent marks without serious effort. But children above this mental status become almost intolerably bored with school work if kept in lockstep with unselected pupils of their own age. Children who rise above 170 IQ are liable to regard school with indifference or with positive dislike, for they find nothing in the work to absorb their interest. This condition of affairs, coupled with the supervision of unseeing and unsympathetic teachers, has sometimes led even to truancy on the part of gifted children.
On the other hand, if a very gifted child is placed in the regular grades as far ahead of his age as his learning capacity warrants, the evils of social dislocation may result, as previously described. Experimental education is at present trying to solve the problem of how to secure right habits of work for the highly intelligent child, and some progress has been made in recent years.
Another problem of development with reference to occupation grows out of the versatility of these children. So far from being one-sided in ability and interest, they are typically capable of so many different kinds of success that they may have difficulty in confining themselves to a reasonable number of enterprises. Some of them are lost to usefulness through spreading their available time and energy over such a wide array of projects that nothing can be finished or done perfectly. After all, time and space are as limited for the gifted as for others, and the life-span is probably not much longer for them than for others. A choice must be made among the numerous possibilities, since modern life calls for specialization.
The dangers in development with respect to work habits are, therefore, that the child may not develop any habits of sustained effort, and that he may fail of success as a worker through being interested in too many things ever to accomplish very much at any one of them. His problem as he goes into adolescence is to make a definite choice, and to form the habit of effort.
LEARNING TO "SUFFER FOOLS GLADLY"
A lesson which many gifted persons never learn as long as they live is that human beings in general are inherently very different from themselves in thought, in action, in general intention, and in interests. Many a reformer has died at the hands of a mob which he was trying to improve in the belief that other human beings can and should enjoy what he enjoys. This is one of the most painful and difficult lessons that each gifted child must learn, if personal development is to proceed successfully. It is more necessary that this be learned than that any school subject be mastered. Failure to learn how to tolerate in a reasonable fashion the foolishness of others leads to bitterness, disillusionment, and misanthropy.
This point may be illustrated by the behavior of a seven-year-old boy with an IQ of 178. He was not sent to school until the age of seven because of his advanced interest in reading. At seven, however, the compulsory attendance law took effect and the child was placed in the third grade at school. After about four weeks of attendance, he came home from school weeping bitterly. "Oh Grandmother, Grand-mother," he cried, "they don't know what's good! They just won't read!"
The fact came to light that he had taken book after book to school—all his favorites from his grandfather's library—and had tried to show the other third-grade pupils what treasures these were, but the boys and girls only resisted his efforts, made fun of him, threw the treasures on the floor, and finally pulled his hair.
Such struggles as these, if they continue without directing the child's insight, may lead to complete alienation from his contemporaries in childhood, and to misanthropy in adolescence and adulthood. Particularly deplorable are the struggles of these children against dull or otherwise unworthy adults in authority. The very gifted child or adolescent, perceiving the illogical conduct of those in charge of his affairs, may turn rebellious against all authority and fall into a condition of negative suggestibility—a most unfortunate trend of personality, since the person is then unable to take a coöperative attitude toward authority.
A person who is highly suggestible in a negative direction is as much in bondage to others around him as is the person who is positively suggestible. The social value of the person is seriously impaired in either case. The gifted are not likely to fall victims to positive suggestion but many of them develop negativism to a conspicuous degree.
The highly intelligent child will be intellectually capable of self-determination, and his greatest value to society can be realized only if he is truly self-possessed and detached from the influences of both positive and negative suggestion. The more intelligent the child, the truer this statement is. It is especially unfortunate, therefore, that so many gifted children have in authority over them persons of no special fitness for the task, who cannot gain or keep the respect of these good thinkers. Such unworthy guardians arouse, by the process of "redintegration," contempt for authority wherever it is found, and the inability to yield gracefully to command.
Thus some gifted persons, mishandled in youth, become contentious, aggressive, and stubborn to an extent which renders them difficult and disagreeable in all human relationships involving subordination. Since subordination must precede posts of command in the ordinary course of life, this is an unfortunate trend of personality. Cynicism and negativism are likely to interfere seriously with a life career. Happily, gifted children are typically endowed with a keen sense of humor, and are apparently able to mature beyond cynicism eventually in a majority of cases.
THE TENDENCY TO BECOME ISOLATED
Yoder [7] noticed, in studying the boyhood of great men, that although play interests were keen among them, the play was often of a solitary kind. The same is true of children who "test high." The majority of children testing above 160 IQ play little with other children unless special conditions are provided, such as those found in a special class. The difficulties are too great, in the ordinary course of events, in finding playmates who are appropriate in size and congenial in mentality. This fact was noted some years ago by the present writer. Terman [8] in 1930 made a special study of the play of those in his group of children who tested above 170 IQ and found them generally more solitary in work and play than children clustering around 140 IQ.
These superior children are not unfriendly or ungregarious by nature. Typically they strive to play with others but their efforts are defeated by the difficulties of the case. These difficulties are illustrated in the efforts of the seven-year-old boy already mentioned. Other children do not share their interests, their vocabulary, or their desire to organize activities. They try to reform their contemporaries but finally give up the struggle and play alone, since older children regard them as "babies" and adults seldom play during the hours when children are awake. As a result, forms of solitary play develop, and these, becoming fixed as habits, may explain the fact that many highly intellectual adults are shy, ungregarious, and unmindful of human relationships, or are even misanthropic and uncomfortable in ordinary social intercourse.
This difficulty of the gifted child in forming friendships is largely a result of the infrequency of persons who are like-minded. The more intelligent a person is, regardless of age, the less often can he find a truly congenial companion. The average child finds playmates in abundance who can think and act on a level congenial to him because there are so many average children.
Adding to the conditions which make for isolation is the fact that gifted children are often "only" children, or they have brothers and sisters who differ widely from them in age. Thus playmates in the home are less numerous for them than for children generally.
The imaginary playmate as a solution of the problem of loneliness is fairly frequent. We know but little at present of the psychology of this invention of the unreal to fill real needs. Reasoning from the general principles of mental hygiene, one would say that the pattern of companionship represented in the imaginary playmate is less valuable for personal development than a pattern founded on reality, and that effort should be made to fill the real need with genuine persons, if possible.
Also, the deep interest in reading which typifies the gifted child may further his isolation. Irwin believes that reading should be deferred in the education of the highly intelligent. "I believe it is especially important that intellectual children get a grasp on reality through real experiences in making and doing things before they are ever introduced to the wonders that lie within books." From this point of view, the development of the physical, social, and emotional aspects of personality would have first attention in the education of a gifted child, the intellectual being fostered last of all because it comes of itself and is too likely to run away with the other three and lead to isolation.
This tendency to become isolated is one of the most important factors to be considered in guiding the development of personality in highly intelligent children, but it does not become a serious problem except at the very extreme degrees of intelligence. The majority of children between 130 and 150 IQ find fairly easy adjustment, because neighborhoods and schools are selective, so that like-minded children tend to be located in the same schools and districts. Furthermore, the gifted child, being large and strong for his age, is acceptable to playmates a year or two older. Great difficulty arises only when a young child is above 160 IQ. At the extremely high levels of 180 and 190 IQ, the problem of friendships is difficult indeed, and the younger the person, the more difficult it is. The trouble decreases with age because as persons become adult, they naturally seek and find on their own initiative groups who are like-minded, such as learned societies.
THE CONCEPT OF "OPTIMUM INTELLIGENCE"
All things considered, the psychologist who has observed the development of gifted children over a long period of time from early childhood to maturity, evolves the idea that there is a certain restricted portion of the total range of intelligence which is most favorable to the development of successful and well-rounded personality in the world as it now exists. This limited range appears to be somewhere between 125 and 155 IQ. Children and adolescents in this area are enough more intelligent than the average to win the confidence of large numbers of their fellows, which brings about leadership, and to manage their own lives with superior efficiency. Moreover, there are enough of them to afford mutual esteem and understanding. But those of 170 IQ and beyond are too intelligent to be understood by the general run of persons with whom they make contact. They are too infrequent to find many congenial companions. They have to contend with loneliness and with personal isolation from their contemporaries throughout the period of immaturity. To what extent these patterns become permanently fixed, we cannot yet tell.
There is thus an "optimum" intelligence, from the viewpoint of personal happiness and adjustment to society, which is well below the maximum. The exploration of this concept should yield truths of value for education, and for social science as well. The few children who test at the very top of the juvenile population have a unique value for society. On them depends in large measure the advancement of learning. If they fail of personal happiness and human contact, their work for society as a whole may be impaired or lost.
CONCLUSION
As far as observations go at present, intellectually gifted children between 130 and 150 IQ seem to find the world well suited to their development. As a group, they enjoy the advantages of superior size, strength, health, and beauty; they are emotionally well balanced and controlled; they are of good character; and they tend to win the confidence of their contemporaries, which gives them leadership. This is the "optimum" range of intelligence, if personal happiness is being considered. If a parent would want his child to enjoy "every advantage," he could not do better than wish the child to be endowed with an IQ not lower than 130 or higher than 150.
Above this limit, however—surely above 160 IQ—the deviation is so great that it leads to special problems of development which are correlated with personal isolation. As one boy with an IQ of 190 has said: "It isn't good to be in college so awfully young (twelve years of age). It produces a feeling of alienation."
How to provide against alienation from contemporaries of both sexes, and how to prevent the negativism that results from continuous living under inefficient or unreasonable authority, are two of the important problems for education in its attempt to insure good adjustment of personality for children of extremely high intelligence.
[1] For the original discussion of this topic see the paper by this title, by Leta S. Hollingworth, in the Fifteenth Yearbook of the Department of Elementary School Principals, National Education Association (July, 1936), pages 272-281.
[2] Terman, Lewis M. Genetic Studies of Genius: Vol. I. Stanford University Press, Stanford University, California; 1925.
[3] Hartshorne, H., and May, M. A. Studies in Deceit. The Macmillan Company, New York; 1927.
[4] Haggerty, Melvin E. Evaluation of Higher Institutions. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Illinois; 1937.
[5] Burt, C. The Young Delinquent. D. Appleton-Century Company, Inc., New York; 1924.
[6] Healy, W., and Bronner, A. F. Criminals and Delinquents: Their Making and Unmaking. The Macmillan Company, New York; 1928.
[7] Yoder, G. F. "A Study of the Boyhood of Great Men." Pedagogical Seminary (1894).
[8] Op. cit.