Some researchers have concluded that no relationship between subjective well-being and intelligence exists; for example, Gottfredson (2008) concluded that intelligence “does not correlate with happiness (subjective well-being)”; however, less research has been done on psychological well-being and its relationship to intelligence. The purpose of the study was to explore the relationship between these dimensions of well-being and intelligence in incoming college students. Rinn and Plucker (2004) noted that further study of young adults of high ability is of special interest to higher educational institutions and their attempts to improve both scholastic and non-scholastic opportunities. This age marks the beginning of a new milestone in a person’s development, a transition out of childhood and into adulthood. Although some interest has been paid to the development of some of these dimensions of college students’ well-being (e.g., Astin and Astin 2010, studied purpose in life from a spiritual perspective as “spiritual quest”), a review of the extant literature could find none relating this well-being to intelligence in this population. Therefore, the relationship between these constructs in younger (child/adolescent) and older (adult) populations are reviewed.
Prior Investigations of a Possible Link Between Well-Being and Intelligence in Children
Intelligence has often been studied in the context of gifted education, as it is one means of identifying children as gifted (Davis and Rimm 2004, p. 86). One early line of research in gifted education into the relationship between high intelligence and mental health suggested either no difference or that intelligent children have more robust mental health. Terman (1925) explored the psychological characteristics of a group of high intellectual ability groupa,b of 643 elementary and middle-school aged children from California, with a control group. The former group had a lower level of social play, was more likely to favor older friends, and was rated by teachers to have more positive interpersonal characteristics, goal-directed behavior, and creativity.
Gallucci (1988) explored rates of psychopathology in 83 extremely intelligent Louisianan adolescents ages 12–16 (defined as at least the 99.2nd percentile).c Problematic behaviors were identified through the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL; Achenbach, 1991). Gallucci also compared the rate of psychopathology between 31 children with IQs between the 99.2nd and 99.6th percentilesd and 18 children with IQs above the 99.96th percentile.e Neither comparison yielded significant differences on CBCL scores, suggesting no PWB-intelligence relationship.
Richards et al. (2003) studied Australian adolescent students of normal and high intelligence with respect to their interpersonal, intrapersonal, and environmental activity as measured by the Behaviour Assessment System for Children (BASC; Reynolds and Kamphaus 1992), which uses ratings from children, parents, and teachers on these aforementioned domains. The authors contrasted scores on two groups, those at or above the 96th percentilef on IQ tests and those who did not. Ratings across the BASC subscales indicated either more or equally adaptive parent and teacher ratings for the intelligent students in domains of emotions and behavior. Together, this line of literature suggested, a positive relationship between intelligence and Ryff’s Autonomy, Positive Relations with Others, Environmental Mastery, Purpose in Life, and Personal growth dimensions of PWB.
Grossberg and Cornell (1988) noted that this line of research is contradicted by another line of findings, beginning with Hollingworth (1942), who detailed several case studies of children above 180 IQ (original Stanford-Binet, ratio IQ). She found such children were generally more autonomous but had difficulties in normal social development (suggesting lower levels on Ryff’s Positive Relations with Others). To Hollingworth, these difficulties went hand in hand with the extremity of their intelligence, an observation she generalized to a lower limit just above 160 IQ (original Stanford-Binet).g She believed that the apparent difficulty in highly intelligent children’s social functioning had to do with their cognitive content being different and rare, in contrast to their age-mates’. Given that IQ scores become rarer in curvilinear fashion as they deviate from the mean, this suggests a curvilinear relationship between intelligence and social functioning.h
Affirming Hollingworth’s characterization, Kline and Meckstroth (1985) argued that very intelligent children may experience psychological difficulties. Basing their conclusions on their clinical psychological and school consulting experience, they argued that such childreni are in jeopardy of cognitive, affective, and interpersonal issues, which are in proportion to the level of intelligence. They also argued that such issues may be related to the others’ inability to comprehend these children, and coping with the hopes that their elders have for them.
Paralleling this view, Betts (1986) argued that school programs for intelligent (he did not suggest a cutoff) children need to address their special needs of affective and interpersonal development. Many of these needs overlap with some of Ryff’s dimensions of well-being, such as “awareness, understanding, and acceptance of self…and others…and interpersonal skills”. According to Betts, intelligent children also have needs related to original ideation and working out one’s difficulties, unwinding, and optical imagination, and maintaining supportive milieus.
Neihart (1999) exhaustively reviewed empirical literature with respect to the relationship between intelligence and well-being, and agreed with Richards et al. that the empirical evidence supports the view that high intelligence either has no effect or has a beneficial factor to psychological well-being. She included in well-being such components as a lack of deviant behavior, depression, anxiety, and psychiatric disorders, as well as the (healthy) presence of social competence. Nonetheless, in general Neihart argued that overall the literature supports the first line of research (that highly intelligent children are generally as well or better adjusted than the general population).
However, Neihart also cited research supporting the idea that highly intelligent children experience social difficulty. Specifically, she cited Dauber and Benbow’s (1990) study comparing students achieving at least the 99.99th percentile on either the verbal or mathematics component of the SAT (College Board, 1926–2005) vs. those who only met a lower standard, the 95th percentile on one component. The authors found that highly intelligent students rated themselves as less socially adept, more inhibited, and more introverted than their counterparts of above-average intelligence.
More recently, Gross (2004), in her research on 15 very intelligent children (6–13 years at or above the 99.997th percentile of intelligencej), finding that such children were that they generally evaluated themselves higher in scholastic ability, but lower interpersonally. Unfortunately, the children in her research, as in Hollingworth’s, were referred by parents, teachers, and psychologists responding to advertising for the study, thus potentially creating a sampling bias.
Vialle et al. (2007) compared 65 intelligent adolescents (defined in this study as those in the 90th percentile of each of two tests of reading and mathematical achievement) and a comparison group of normal intelligence on self-reported social measures. The intelligent adolescents in Vialle et al.’s study rated themselves higher on measures of sadness (measured by the PANAS-X; Watson and Clark 1991) and lower on the self-reported set of social support variables (quantity and quality measured by the Social Support Questionnaire; Sarason et al. 1983). Teachers, however, rated that the intelligent adolescents as less prone to affective disturbance and had higher general adjustment relative to students of normal intelligence. Thus, while teachers reported that these students exhibited little maladaptive behavior, the students themselves reported that they have poor social support.
Norman et al. (1999) compared students within the intelligence range of the 84th–98th percentilesk to those above the 98th percentile,l and then a separate comparison of students ranging from 84th to 99.4th percentiles with those above the 99.4th.m The dependent variables were several social subscales of a self-report instrument, as well as two separate measures, one of “emotional autonomy” from their parents and the other of anxiety. The students were recruited from summer programs for intelligent students. The authors did not observe significant differences between the groups in either comparison.
Thus, a pattern emerges with respect to Ryff’s well-being and high intelligence in children and adolescents. Some literature suggests that highly intelligent children appear to have higher levels of Ryff’s Autonomy (though adult expectations may derail this to an extent; Betts 1986), Environmental Mastery, Personal Growth, Positive Relations with Others, and Purpose in Life. This would possibly correspond to the application of superior cognitive ability to manage one’s own affairs and master one’s immediate environment, and some theoreticians have linked constructs similar to these PWB dimensions, such as resilience, to intelligence (e.g., Bland and Sowa 1994). Given the affective comorbidity associated with mental retardation mentioned earlier, this line of research suggests a general relationship between intelligence and PWB. On the other hand, the second line of research and theory, suggests that intelligence, as it becomes more extreme, may be a hindrance to one’s level of Positive Relations with Others.
Together, these studies and perspectives appear to be contradictory with respect to a potential relationship between PWB and intelligence. There are some possible reasons for this. First, some of the studies in this review suffered methodological limitations. After the publication of some of these studies, MacCallum et al. (2002) suggested that the use of ANOVA and t-tests rather regression on continuous variables (such as intelligence) generally lowers the statistical power of the analysis. Next, these studies did not always focus on PWB (for example, the CBCL in Gallucci’s study focuses primarily on problematic behavior, not mental wellness), or intelligence (e.g., Vialle et al. used achievement tests) per se. Nonetheless, it remains possible that no relationship exists between these constructs, which may be indicated by the nonsignificant findings of Norman et al.
Distal Causes of Intelligence-Based Differences in Psychological Well-Being in Adults
Some empirical studies have explored the relationship between intelligence and PWB in adulthood quantitatively. Parker et al. (2008), for example, found a relationship between a correlate of intelligence (brain size) and apparent indicators of psychological well-being (e.g., “feeling useful”). In a sample of schizophrenic adults, Lysaker et al. (2001) found small correlations between tests of specialized cognitive abilities and the well-being subtest score of the Attitude Questionnaire. Plescia-Pikus et al. (1988) found higher intelligence in both adult children of alcoholics who reported high well-being and controls, compared to adult children of alcoholics who reported low well-being.
These studies did not reflect the population of interest to this study, the general population of adults, nor did these studies explicitly consider well-being in Ryff’s theoretical framework. A literature review of general characteristics of adults with above-average intelligence instead finds mostly observational findings, with few quantitative studies of well-being. Of the former, Lovecky’s (1986) discussion of intelligent adults and well-being reflects most of the literature on this subject, which will provide the theoretical basis on adults for the hypotheses in the present study.
Lovecky posited social and emotional needs of intelligent adults based on her (1) discussions with gifted adults and observations in counseling them, and (2) extending previous work with gifted and creative children by Paul Torrance (1962). She believed that intelligent adults are marked by intensity of five qualities: “divergency, excitability, sensitivity, perceptivity, and entelechy,” of which all but the second seem relevant to dimensions of PWB.
Lovecky argued that one’s divergency (of thought) makes adults “highly independent”, who “find creative solutions to a wide variety of problems, including interpersonal problems”, but also creates “difficulty in situations where group consensus is important”. To the extent that intelligence correlates with specialized cognitive abilities, greater intelligence would improve the ability to think divergently. Sensitivity, which Lovecky described as “depth of feeling that results in a sense of identification with others”, creates personal bonds with others and a drive to improve society. However, she held that this same sensitivity could lead to being dismissive of another’s personal requirements if they seem shallow, and that others could hide problems from intelligent friends, for fear of losing room for their own feelings in the face of such high emotional sensitivity. Lovecky observed that intense intrapersonal and interpersonal perceptivity allows intelligent adults a greater degree of objectivity in their relations with others; at the same time, however, others may fear being well-perceived. This same perceptivity allows intelligent adults to grasp the essence of a subject. Additionally, she believed that intelligent adults’ perceptivity clarifies their own desires. With respect to intelligent adults’ unusually high entelechy, (“motivation, inner strength, and vital force directing life and growth”), Lovecky suggested that others may respond to this desire with a heightened entelechy of their own, dependent on the former’s example and support, creating tension for the intelligent adult between personal growth and supporting others.
Why might the qualities Lovecky proposed exist in intelligent adults? Luthar et al. (1992) suggested that a positive relationship between intelligence and the number of cognitive schemas produced by an individual would lead the more intelligent to categorize their experiences into a greater number of existing schemas, leading to better adjustment. This may explain divergency of thought (e.g., more schemas allowing for multiple ways to interpret and synthesize information), but this model alone, however, does not appear to be sufficient to explain other qualities (e.g., sensitivity) observed by Lovecky.
Lovecky thus hypothesized about prominent qualities in intelligent adults that affect their social and emotional functioning, and would seem to have both positive and negative relationships with Ryff’s PWB, and these qualities appear to be somewhat supported by the literature. Unfortunately, she gave no indication of the percentiles of intelligence at which these qualities would emerge. Nonetheless, each of these qualities appears to generally have a positive relationship with intelligence in adults, except for social functioning, in which a curvilinear relationship to intelligence seems indicated by the literature.
Of the qualities that Lovecky mentioned in intelligent adults, each suggests a relationship between intelligence and at least one of Ryff’s dimensions of PWB. Divergency and entelechy suggest a positive relationship between intelligence and Autonomy (“resistance to enculturation”). Perceptivity and entelechy suggest a positive relationship between intelligence and Environmental Mastery. Entelechy suggests a positive relationship between intelligence and Personal Growth. Sensitivity and perceptivity suggest a positive relationship between intelligence and Purpose in Life. Sensitivity, divergency, perceptivity, and entelechy suggested a curvilinear relationship between intelligence and Positive Relations with Others.
Purpose of the Current Study
The present study examines in a sample of young adults the relationship between intelligence and those dimensions of Psychological Well-Being which previous research suggests may be related to it. It is desirable to examine the relationship in young adults between intelligence and PWB using quantitative methods with larger samples that are more sensitive to subtle effects. A literature review of older and younger populations revealed studies that yielded positive, negative, and nonsignificant relationships, yet did not include curvilinear effects (possibly due to smaller sample sizes). Additionally, it may be helpful to investigate the construct of intelligence as a continuous phenomenon, rather than a categorical phenomenon yielding groups of typical ability, moderate giftedness, or high giftedness.
Next, it is desirable to extend findings with respect to intelligence and PWB from a developmental perspective. This study sought to answer whether related research on the population of intelligent children and adolescents extend in a logical manner to young adults. It may be that results are similar to previous results found for adolescents, or instead change for some reason during the transition from adolescence to young adulthood. Likewise, results from this study could be informative based on whether they align with prior observations of intelligent adults.
This study was also conducted for its usefulness to higher education. As mentioned, Rinn and Plucker (2004) note that this specific population is of special interest to higher educational institutions and their attempts to improve “honors”, “early entrance”, and “personal counseling” programs for intelligent young adults. If a relationship exists between PWB and intelligence, it would suggest the need for these services to be specialized to such students’ unique PWB.
Finally, it is also desirable to determine whether these effects of intelligence, if any, may be replicated in a newer population. Many of the aforementioned studies were conducted some time ago.
The previous research often seemed contradictory, but overall, the literature seemed to suggest a positive relationship between intelligence and psychological well-being. The exception was the dimension of Positive Relations with Others, which generally had positive relationships at elevated levels of intelligence, and negative relationships at extremely high levels of intelligence. Therefore, the following hypotheses were proposed:
H1: Intelligence has a positive relationship with Ryff’s Autonomy.
H2: Intelligence has a positive relationship with Ryff’s Environmental Mastery.
H3: Intelligence has a positive relationship with Ryff’s Purpose in Life.
H4: Intelligence has a positive relationship with Ryff’s Personal Growth.
H5: Intelligence has a negative quadratic relationship with Ryff’s Positive Relations with Others.