“Anxious Assessment of Prospects” and Psychological Well-Being of Gifted Adolescents

Abstract

The article addresses subjective factors of psychological well-being of gifted adolescents. This work was focused on the relationship between psychological well-being of gifted adoles-cents and their anxiety level in assessment of future prospects. To achieve this goal, we used the Integrative test of anxiety, which approaches anxiety as a multidimensional mental phenomenon, and the Ryff Scales of Psychological Well-Being, which has an integral scale of psychological well-being, as well as six subscales aimed at studying its structure. The study involved 422 adolescents aged 15-17 who passed the expert selection for spe-cialized educational programs in St. Petersburg and Nizhny Novgorod. To compare the data, we used the results of a control group survey that consisted of adolescents with standard level of abilities enrolled in secondary schools in St. Petersburg and Smolensk. The results of this study suggest that anxious assessment of prospects, as a structural component of anxiety, in gifted adolescents and adolescents with standard level of abilities has a common trend: an increase in anxiety in predicting the possibility of an unfavorable outcome is associated with a decrease in psychological well-being. In gifted adolescents, it is associated with a decrease in the sense of self-acceptance, autonomy and competence. At the same time, an increase in anxious assessment of prospects (in the range of standard values) in gifted adolescents is associated with an increase in personal growth - a desire to cognize and improve oneself and one's own behavior, to realize one's own potential and increase one's effectiveness. In gifted adolescents, the values of the scale "Anxious assessment of prospects" were much more variable than in the control group, while the highest values on this scale were found in adolescents with intellectual giftedness and the smallest - in adolescents with sports giftedness. The obtained results might be applied in primary prevention of the gifted teenagers’ maladaptation during age and social crises, as well as in secondary prevention, when rates of overall anxiety and its structural components can serve as markers of early (latent) maladjustment phases.