Social and psychological adjustment of gifted students with different kinds of intellectual abilities

Abstract

In current psychology two competing positions exist: 1. giftedness is a risk factor for social and psychological adaptation, and 2. high intelligence makes the protective resource promoting individual resilience. The adaptation of gymnasium gifted students (N = 164) with different kinds of intellectual abilities measured by tests, achievement, self- and peer-estimations was investigated in this study. The main results demonstrate complexity and nonlinearity of relationships between the self-estimations of abilities and the criteria of adaptation.