Motivation and Emotions of Gifted and Regular Students Performing a Creative Task

Abstract

The study deals with the question whether gifted students differ from regular students when performing a creative task. A total of 140 students from a rural and an urban secondary school for gifted students in Germany took part in the investigation. The 58 students from gifted classes were similar with respect to age and gender distribution to the 82 students from regular classes. Students were tested on their motivation and emotions before they started to work on the creative task of either writing a poem or painting a picture. Most of the students, 129 out of 140, decided for picture painting. The gifted sixth and seventh graders showed a clearly higher creative achievement than regular sixth and seventh grade students. Gifted students were found to experience higher motivation for the creative task and had higher self-efficacy for creative achievements than average-ability students. No significant differences could be detected with respect to positive and negative affect. The study findings substantiate the main proposition of Renzulli's three-ring conception of giftedness that above-average abilities, creativity and task motivation are the defining factors of extraordinary talent.