Gifts and talents as sources of envy in high school settings

Abstract

This article explores a new empirical approach to explaining some social difficulties experienced by talented students: peer envy toward their gifts and talents. A sample of 689 French Canadian high school students completed two questionnaires addressing both the envy they felt and the envy expressed toward them. The results focus on two themes: (a) the relative intensity and frequency of envy toward gifts and talents as compared to other potential objects of envy, and (b) the influence of various student characteristics or school settings on the students' answers. The results show a large discrepancy between the envious and envied perspectives. In the first perspective, students did manifest more envy toward their peers' social and financial successes than toward their academic achievements or intelligence. On the other hand, when invited to identify objects for which they were envied, academic talent became the object most frequently reported.