Gifted Students’ Implicit Beliefs About Intelligence and Giftedness

Growing attention is being paid to individuals’ implicit beliefs about the nature of intelligence. However, implicit beliefs about giftedness are currently underexamined. In the current study, we examined academically gifted adolescents’ implicit beliefs about both intelligence and giftedness. Overall, participants’ implicit beliefs about giftedness and intelligence were significantly positively correlated while also having statistically significant mean differences, suggesting that they perceived the nature of the two constructs differently. Specifically, many students viewed intelligence as malleable (incremental view) and giftedness as fixed (entity view), whereas very few students viewed giftedness as malleable and intelligence as fixed; however, heterogeneity was observed. The beliefs identified in the current study provide important insight into the domain-specific nature of implicit beliefs of gifted students and suggest that caution be used against using terms like giftedness and intelligence interchangeably.