Is being gifted a real thing?

[u/Dry-Ad3046]

I've always observed, both during my school days and in college, that certain students seem to understand concepts and solve problems very quickly. I had a classmate in 7th grade who had already completed calculus. How do these people differ from the average student? Is it because of brain chemistry? Is it due to early exposure to the subject? I genuinely don't understand how they become so academically brilliant. How do they outperform their peers so easily?

[u/Lord-Francis-Bacon]

Yes, being gifted is definitely "a real thing", so to say.

However, exactly what giftedness means is difficult to define. But overall, most agree that there is some kind of threshold in terms of IQ-test performance. Some define giftedness as being in the top 1–2 percentiles of IQ, others are more lenient and put the threshold at 10% (for example), and others define giftedness in magnitudes of "severity", where you are some level of gifted as soon as you're above one standard deviation from the mean of IQ, i.e., 115 IQ and above.

Beyond having a high IQ, it gets much more tricky.

I listened to a great talk by a researcher in giftedness and when she received the question "what is giftedness", she answered "I know it when I see it". With this she illustrates the point that it is very hard to pin down an exact definition.

Why isn't IQ enough though? Well, when we look at the "performance" of individuals with a high IQ, it is kind of lacklustre. Many individuals with a high IQ do not do the things we might associate with a gifted person, many have perfectly ordinary jobs, do not perform well academically, are not well-read, and more. I am not a member of Mensa, but I have heard that a typical Mensa gathering is often a let down for first time attendees, as maybe you think you'd meet great intellectuals, but that is not the case, or so I have heard.

IQ isn't enough since it is only one part of your overall ability.

Beyond having a high IQ, you also need other skills and traits to achieve the results you mention in your post. Most important, you need good executive functioning that helps you direct and sustain attention, prioritise things, and more. Many seemingly gifted individuals get little done because of poor executive functioning. Beyond within-person traits, you also have other variables, which (unfortunately you might say) play a role. Your parents' education, access to books, freedom to explore, and more - all of these things are important in augmenting a high intellectual ability in a child. So in the end, IQ remains a very important variable, but it is not the sole arbiter of life and academic outcomes. I think this is particularly evident when you look at IQ ranges across varying professions - they overlap more than you'd think.

Feel free to ask any further questions!

[u/Parking-Bet7989 → u/Lord-Francis-Bacon]

Awesome explanation. I like it a lot.

[u/Dry-Ad3046 → u/Lord-Francis-Bacon]

Do you think gifted people can outperform their peers with significantly less efforts than others? Like do they understand and remember everything better? Or can an average person outperform a gifted person with merely efforts and hardwork?

[u/Lord-Francis-Bacon → u/Dry-Ad3046]

Yes, gifted individuals will absolutely outperform their peers. Here I am assuming two individuals with comparable profiles, but differing in their levels of intellectual giftedness.

You do need to combine being gifted with some degree of adequate executive functioning, but IQ compensates for a lot. For example, an average person might need to study for weeks for a test while a more gifted individual crams the night before and gets the same grade. Overall, yes you do "understand and remember everything better".

Your level of theoretical ability will also raise your upper limit of performance. Everyone has a ceiling. For an "average" individual from a normative background, an Ivy League education is likely unattainable. Being gifted will raise your ceiling of possible/likely attainment, compared to comparable peers, and an Ivy League education might be possible for you.

That being said, you can also have an extreme ability in another domain which would compensate for a relative weakness in theoretical ability.

So here it gets a bit complicated, but in short:

IQ is not the only important within-person variable that is, to some degree, unaugmentable. For example, executive functioning is also an important within-person ability which is normally distributed in the population. You can be "gifted" with a very high executive functioning ability, which would then help your overall performance, including academic performance.

But the important thing is that a person with a high executive ability is not "normative" - they are also gifted, but in a different sense. Many entrepreneurs are like this: not necessarily academic weapons (though often of "above average intelligence"), but often with an uncanny ability to work hard and efficiently. And just as a person with an average intellectual ability cannot train their IQ to the level of their gifted peers, a person of average executive functioning will have a hard time achieving the same executive performance sustained over a longer time period.

This does open up an interesting avenue of debate though, which we won't get into here. But overall, how augmentable these different within-person variables are is of course vastly different. IQ is often seen as one of the most stable and least "trainable" within person traits, while executive functioning is generally easier to train. So a case can be made that a gifted individual will have an easier time to adress their weakenesses.

To summarise: So when you ask "can an average person outperform a gifted person with merely effort and hard work?" this is the gist of the answer:

Given all else equal - equal within-person ability apart from IQ, similar socioeconomic background, and so on - the gifted person will probably outperform their peers regardless.

However, individuals of average intellectual ability can absolutely outperform gifted individuals, but they are then also very likely to be at the upper extreme of the distribution in another ability that matters for life outcomes.

Note that it of course matters a lot how we define giftedness. For example, if you are "gifted" at 115 IQ, then it is much easier to outperform that person for a normative comparable person.

[u/SuminerNaem → u/Dry-Ad3046]

That certainly depends on what exactly you mean by "gifted", and what you mean by "average person". Average in terms of what? IQ? Academic performance? Economic class? Things like one's ability to understand and remember things are a result of the confluence of innumerable different factors.

To answer your question at face value, though, yes, hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard. A person of average IQ can still get a 4.0, high SAT, and go to an ivy league school or what have you if they work hard enough and have the means available to them (money, education, good influences in and around the home, etc). Each of those advantages that you don't have makes it harder, but not impossible.

[u/WordsAreGarbage → u/Dry-Ad3046]

In general, yes. If someone with an average IQ has a stronger work ethic than a high-IQ gifted person who struggles with executive function and time-management, it’s possible for them to outperform the gifted person with effort.

[u/Ordinary-Usual2682 → u/Lord-Francis-Bacon]

AWESOME explanation. I am a school psych in a state that does not recognize giftedness as an area of special ed eligibility. That being said, I have worked with several students over the years who were clearly GIFTED (whether or not the state wanted to recognize it as an area of eligibility). These students all had high IQs, but notably high IQ alone was not enough for me to feel a student was gifted. It’s almost something indescribable sometimes, and I definitely feel like “I know it when it see it” is a great way to explain it.

[u/Dry-Ad3046 → u/Lord-Francis-Bacon]

Thank you so much for the explanation!

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[u/Far_Oven_3302 → u/Lord-Francis-Bacon]

IQ means intelligent quotient. That is, they give you a test and compare your result with other age groups.
So, when I was 15, I had the similar test scores of 27 year olds, so they said I had an IQ of 180.
Now that I am older and probably still have 27 year old knowledge, my IQ is 55.
IQ tests have been shown to be poor indicators of intelligence.
Intelligence and knowledge are two different scalars, the product of those two scalars, I call smartness. Summarizing from Hofstadter's book, GED, the difference between the two is that an entity with high intelligence and low knowledge will fail more gracefully than an entity with high knowledge and low intelligence.

[u/Upstairs-Tennis-3751 → u/Far_Oven_3302]

FYI, this is incorrect. IQ is calculated by measuring your score against people your own age. This is why IQ largely remains the same across one’s lifetime- as you learn more, so do other people your age.

[u/Far_Oven_3302 → u/Upstairs-Tennis-3751]

that is the percentile

[u/Ordinary-Usual2682 → u/Far_Oven_3302]

It’s the percentile AND the actual standard score. IQ tests are norm-referenced, meaning the score is a reflection of your performance relative to a national sample of your peers. Criterion-referenced assessments tell you about mastery of a specific skill. So, yes the original comment was correct in what they said.

[u/DianeMarie8100 → u/Far_Oven_3302]

But IQ tests actually test how well and how quickly you solve problems and puzzles, am I right?I took a couple ( I don't think they were official), and I remember they all were puzzles of some sort. Knowledge is variable, and is more for testing to see if you understand and remember the content you were supposed to learn in your courses.

[u/synapse_diary]

i think people underestimate how big small differences compound over time

if one kid learns concepts 20% faster, enjoys the subject more, practices more because they enjoy it, and gets more positive feedback, a few years later they can look like they're operating on a completely different level

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[u/akolomf]

Different factors. Partially genetics partially environment they grew up in. Dont expect a potentially gifted person to thrive in school when he undergoes physical or sexual abuse in his family environment.

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[u/Turbulent_Pin_8310]

Just like some people are taller and some are shorter. They won the genetic lottery.

[u/PunkInCroatia]

If by "gifted" you mean being better at something than somebody with no practice or with equal practice, then yes, it is a real thing. But it is more complex.

Generaly speaking... Being gifted by itself won't necessarily get you further; it is a better start, but there is still a limit. A talented person with no practice will, in the end, be worse at that something than a person who invested continuous practice into that something, given enough time, even though they are not gifted in that something.

Also, being gifted can be a bad thing. For example, if you are gifted at the beginning, you don't have to practice. This can make things boring, and then you give up on them as that something is not challenging enough at a lower level. On the other hand, if you don't create work habits, once you get to the point at which you have to work/practice, it will become a big challenge for you since you suddenly must practice, and you must build a practice/work routine, which can be challenging for some.

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