Role Models

The impact of being gifted or talented on the development and well-being of individuals has been thoroughly discussed and speculated on by scholars, educators, and parents. Some believe that being gifted or talented leads to additional barriers that negatively impact well-being, while others believe that being gifted or talented is actually a protective factor for children and adolescents. Generally, the latter idea is more accepted within the psychology literature. Although gifted students encounter the same challenges as their non-gifted peers, in addition to other barriers specific to being gifted (i.e., feeling isolated in school, feeling unmotivated or unchallenged in course work, etc.), being gifted or talented provides children with more internal resources to cope with such barriers. Though gifted and talented children may have the internal resources, such as advanced problem-solving skills, environmental and interpersonal influences promote resiliency in children. Interacting with role models facilitates the growth of the positive intrapersonal factors that promote well-being among gifted and talented children.

Though there has been limited research on the impact of role models on well-being, self-efficacy, and self-esteem among gifted and talented children, Albert Bandura stressed the idea that general modeling and vicarious learning are part of social learning theory. He suggested that individuals learn behaviors based on what they observe from others, thus learning vicariously. His theory, developed to explain how self-efficacy (the confidence one has in successfully completing a task) influences career decisions, has been applied to career development and how role models influence one's decision to choose a specific career path through direct and indirect fostering of self-efficacy.

Role models can be defined as people who influence one's behaviors and/or beliefs. Role models tend to have three components that make them especially influential: (1) the individual perceives the role model to be similar to him or her, (2) role model behavior is imitated by the individual, and (3) the belief system of the role model is incorporated into the individual's own attitudes through the process of vicarious learning. Watching someone succeeding in a similar situation and facing similar challenges and barriers can have a profound impact on individuals who have lower self-efficacy in a given area, particularly if the role model is similar in gender, race/ethnicity, or other identifiable aspects. A role model with a similar racial/ethnic background and/or the same gender as the observer may be a protective factor against stereotypes related to these background characteristics that can negatively impact the observer. Furthermore, role models whose achievements were deemed attainable by the observer are more likely to have a positive impact on the observer's self-beliefs as compared to those role models whose accomplishments are perceived as too lofty for the observer to attain.

Being gifted often involves the skill of relating well to others, which makes role models especially impactful. Not only do role models promote understanding of academic and vocational information, they also have been found to help women develop more positive views on careers in which women are typically underrepresented. Exploring the factors influencing academic motivation in gifted children, scholars have found that family role models lead to more positive beliefs and behaviors related to motivation. Peers, parents, and teachers who are role models can have a positive influence on child and adolescent development.

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