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The Inner World of the Young and Bright

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Morality, Ethics, and Gifted Minds

Abstract

William James (1902) made the connection between intensity of character (ardor) and moral action more than a 100 years ago. In the 1960s and 1970s, when cognitive psychology supplanted behaviorism, moral development was seen as development of moral judgment through reasoning. However, reasoning does not guarantee that behavior will follow the dictates of reason. Behavior follows what one believes and feels to be right rather than what one thinks is correct. Emotional rather than cognitive development is the key to congruence between moral motivation and behavior. Dabrowski constructed his theory of emotional development from the study of lives of gifted and creative people. The theory provides insight into emotional life of the gifted and into what motivates moral action.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Three different studies provided 158 OEQs (open-ended) with a total of about 5,000 responses from 79 boys and 79 girls, ages 9–19; the majority were teens (Piechowski 1979; Piechowski and Colangelo 1984; Piechowski and Miller 1995). The first study used an OEQ with 46 questions, subsequently replaced by a 21-item open-ended OEQ.

  2. 2.

    Additional empirical support comes by way of a positive correlation (.44) between the Jungian intuitive type (N) and developmental level, and that all five overexcitabilities correlated with developmental level: psychomotor .26, sensual .31, intellectual .57, imaginational .38, emotional .59 (Lysy and Piechowski 1983). Furthermore, on detailed scrutiny, Dabrowski's construct of Level IV corresponds exactly to Maslow's description of self-actualizing people (Piechowski 2008). When two independent sets of observations and constructs converge, we can be confident that a real phenomenon has been identified.

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    Michael M. Piechowski

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    Piechowski, M. (2009). The Inner World of the Young and Bright. In: Cross, T., Ambrose, D. (eds) Morality, Ethics, and Gifted Minds. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-89368-6_14

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