Behavioral Characteristics of Social Giftedness

Abstract

Social giftedness is understood as a person's ability to establish mature, constructive relationships with other people and groups, characterised by stable prosocial behavior. The search for factors affecting the behavioral characteristics of schoolchildren, reflecting their social giftedness, was the problem of our study. The work aimed at an experimental study of operationalised behavioral characteristics of prosocial behavior under the influence of the factors "the idea of the presence of a significant other in a behavioral situation" and "collectivistic/individualistic cognitive orientation". The study's novelty consists of distinguishing social giftedness at the implicit and explicit levels in a situation of the possibility of choosing prosocial behavior. Sustained conscious prosocial behavioral choice "in favour of the group" is interpreted as a behavioral characteristic of social giftedness. Collectivistic cognitive orientation is a reliable marker of social giftedness and affects behavioral choice stability. The factor of the imaginary presence of a significant other contributes to prosocial behavior. Therefore, it can be considered a resource for its development to disclose the potential of social giftedness.