What Kinds of Things Did I Ask the Highly Gifted Adult Subjects in 1992?

Unlocking the Minds of the Highly Gifted: Intriguing Questions from a Landmark Study

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Last Sunday I posted the beginning of a “paper” (that’s what they call academic articles that are usually based on one’s research). I contributed a chapter to an academic book edited by Ambrose, D., Cross, T. (2009) (Eds.) Morality, ethics, and gifted minds. Springer Publishing. https://a.co/d/gCzFbPx The research originated from my doctoral dissertation study of highly gifted adults, Environmental, Familial, and Personal Factors That Affect the Self-Actualization of Highly Gifted Adults: Case Studies (D. Ruf, 1998) Environmental, Familial, and Personal Factors That Affect the Self-Actualization of Highly Gifted Adults: Case Studies

Here I reintroduce where we left off last week and then move on to what kinds of things I asked my 41 highly gifted adult subjects.

The Doctoral Study of Gifted Adults

STUDY PARTICIPANTS

Participants volunteered in response to the announcement of the Gifted Adult Study via a mailing list of the Minnesota Council for Gifted and Talented and an ad in America Online. Numerous highly gifted adults were also nominated by friends and colleagues. Subjects, then between the ages of 40 and 60, were selected on the basis of a self-reported 99th percentile test score of intellectual ability. A variety of measures were in evidence and will be introduced in later posts. A number of the participants agreed to participate because their own careers are aligned with gifted children and adults and they wished to contribute to a study that particularly emphasized the treatment and outcomes of highly gifted individuals. Out of 183 who volunteered, the final selection comprised 41 participants: 20 men, 20 women, and one acknowledged transgendered person. Twenty-seven are examined here in search of the understanding of the transition from unilevel development (Level II) to multilevel development (Level III).

METHODS

The participants answered questionnaires specifically designed for this study: evidence of giftedness (2 pages long), childhood experiences (11 pages), adult life (11 pages). Another questionnaire was sent to the parents asking about the participants’ childhood (Ruf, 1998, 2009).

The participants filled out the Defining Issues Test (Rest, 1979) to assess level of moral reasoning. An outline of the scoring scale is presented in Table 1, which will show up in a later post from this serial.

Just to pique your interest, I’ve included one of the most famous of the “dilemma’s” from the Defining Issues Test here. Before you look past the words “Should Heinz have broken into the laboratory to steal the drug for his wife? Why or why not?” test yourself to see what you would have answered. It is not in my original chapter of the Ambrose and Cross book. It’s for those of you who are now reading my blog posts. Also, I knew about self-actualization back in the 1990s. And I knew I wanted it and didn’t yet have it. I’ve grown a lot since then and will be commenting on what I knew then and what I know and think now.

DATA ANALYSIS

The written responses of the participants were evaluated for indications of self-actualization along with information on education, growing up, occupation, and so on.

Primary Sorting Categories

The following categories showed usefulness in explaining levels of adult success, happiness, satisfaction, and levels of inner development:

• Childhood abuse

• Tone

• Searcher, Nonsearcher, Neutral

• Counseling or therapy

• DIT P-score

It was initially theorized — by me — that subjects who had been abused would have more difficulty self-actualizing. Here, abuse is meant to indicate any treatment, as perceived and reported by the study participants, which made them to feel unloved, or unworthy of love, respect, or admiration. Although some abuse is intentional, it need not be intentional to cause harm. The following kinds of abuse were considered:

1) Emotional — putting child down, criticizing, especially suggesting the child is unwanted

2) Physical — including excessive punishment

3) Sexual — including exposing child to sex inappropriately

4) Spiritual — using threat of God’s wrath

5) Neglect — parent caught up in own problems

6) Ignorance — good intentions but stupid actions that result in emotional harm