What a New Study Reveals About Strengths in Adults With ADHD
ADHD is often discussed in terms of attention difficulties and challenges in everyday functioning. However, recent research has begun to examine another aspect that has received far less scientific attention: how adults with ADHD describe their own strengths. A new international study published in Psychological Medicine offers a detailed comparison of adults with and without ADHD, focusing on self-reported strengths and their statistical relationship with quality of life and well-being.
Note: This article is intended for general information and educational purposes. It summarizes scientific research in accessible language for a broad audience and is not an official scientific press release.
In 2025, a team of researchers from the United Kingdom and the Netherlands published a large comparative study examining psychological strengths in adults with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The research was conducted by Luca D. Hargitai and Graeme Fairchild from the Department of Psychology at the University of Bath; Emma L. M. Laan, Lessa M. Schippers, and Martine Hoogman from the Department of Psychiatry and the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour at Radboud University Medical Center, with Schippers also affiliated with Karakter Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Centre; Lucy A. Livingston from the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King’s College London; and Punit Shah from the Department of Psychology at the University of Bath.
The study was published in the peer-reviewed journal Psychological Medicine by Cambridge University Press and represents one of the first large-scale efforts to systematically quantify self-reported psychological strengths associated with ADHD in adulthood. Rather than focusing exclusively on symptoms or impairments, the researchers examined how adults with ADHD describe their strengths, how aware they are of those strengths, and how frequently they report using them in daily life.
Importantly, the authors situate their work within a broader scientific shift toward strengths-based perspectives in neurodevelopmental research, while explicitly limiting their conclusions to statistically observed, correlational associations. In line with this approach, the study examines how self-reported strengths knowledge and strengths use are associated with measures of quality of life, subjective well-being, and mental health across adults with and without ADHD.
What the Researchers Set Out to Examine
The authors point out that research on ADHD has traditionally focused on symptoms and difficulties, while research on ADHD-related strengths remains relatively limited and fragmented. Although certain strengths, such as creativity, have been examined in previous studies, much of the existing evidence is based on small-scale or qualitative research, with few large quantitative studies focusing on adults.
The study addressed three main research questions:
- Which psychological strengths are more strongly endorsed by adults with ADHD compared to adults without ADHD?
- Do adults with ADHD differ from non-ADHD adults in their awareness of their own strengths and in how frequently they report using them?
- How are strengths knowledge and strengths use statistically associated with subjective well-being, quality of life, and mental health symptoms across both groups?
The researchers emphasize that all strengths examined in the study were self-reported, reflecting participants’ own perceptions rather than objective measures of ability or performance.
Study Design and Participants
The study included 400 adults living in the United Kingdom, recruited through an online research platform. Half of the participants (200 individuals) self-reported a formal clinical diagnosis of ADHD, while the remaining 200 reported no ADHD diagnosis and did not score above the clinical cut-off for ADHD traits.
To ensure comparability, the two groups were closely matched on age, sex, education level, and socioeconomic status. Participants in the ADHD group also completed the Adult ADHD Self-Report Scale as a screening measure to confirm the presence of elevated ADHD traits.
All participants completed a comprehensive set of standardized questionnaires assessing:
- Endorsement of 25 potential ADHD-related psychological strengths, derived from prior qualitative research
- Strengths knowledge, defined as awareness and recognition of one’s own strengths
- Strengths use, referring to how often individuals report applying their strengths in daily situations
- Subjective well-being
- Quality of life across physical, psychological, social, and environmental domains
- Mental health symptoms, including depression, anxiety, and stress
The authors used both frequentist and Bayesian statistical methods to evaluate group differences and associations between variables.
What Makes This Study Distinct
According to the authors, this study represents one of the first large-scale quantitative investigations of self-reported psychological strengths in adults with ADHD. While previous research has often focused on a limited number of traits – most commonly creativity – or relied on small-scale or qualitative approaches, this study assessed a broad range of strengths derived from lived experiences reported by adults with ADHD in earlier qualitative work.
Another distinguishing feature is the study’s explicit comparison between adults with and without ADHD, allowing the researchers to examine which strengths are more strongly endorsed in adults with ADHD and which are shared across both groups.
Key Findings: Strengths Endorsed by Adults With ADHD
When the researchers analyzed individual strengths, they found that adults with ADHD endorsed 10 specific traits more strongly than adults without ADHD. These traits reflect how participants described qualities they believed they possessed or used in daily life:
- Hyperfocus – the tendency to become deeply absorbed in tasks or activities of strong personal interest;
- Creativity – generating original ideas or novel approaches to problems;
- Imagination – the ability to think in images or explore ideas beyond immediate constraints;
- Humor – using humor or wit in social interactions;
- Spontaneity – acting quickly or flexibly without extensive preplanning;
- Intuitiveness – relying on gut feelings or rapid, implicit judgments;
- Seeing opportunities – noticing possibilities or options in situations that others may overlook;
- Having broad interests – being interested in a wide range of topics or activities;
- Image-based thinking – thinking primarily in visual or pictorial terms rather than words;
- Being “up for anything” – openness to new experiences or unexpected situations.
For the remaining strengths, there were either no meaningful differences between groups or only weak statistical evidence of differences. Adults without ADHD rated themselves higher on perseverance, although the authors note that the statistical evidence for this difference was limited.
Overall, adults with ADHD endorsed a slightly higher total number of strengths. However, the authors emphasize that the statistical evidence for a global difference between groups was modest.
Strength Awareness and Strength Use
One of the study’s key findings is that adults with ADHD reported similar levels of strength awareness and strength use as adults without ADHD. In other words, although the two groups differed in which strengths they endorsed most strongly, they did not differ in how well they recognized their own strengths or how often they reported using them in everyday life.
The authors note that this pattern differs from findings in autism research, where autistic adults have often been found to report lower awareness and use of their strengths compared to non-autistic adults. By contrast, in this study, adults with ADHD and those without ADHD showed comparable levels of strengths knowledge and strengths use.
Associations With Well-Being and Quality of Life
Across the full sample, regardless of ADHD status, the study identified consistent statistical associations between strengths-related measures and life outcomes.
According to the analyses:
- Greater strengths knowledge was associated with higher subjective well-being, better quality of life across multiple domains, and lower levels of reported mental health symptoms.
- Greater strengths use was associated with higher subjective well-being, higher quality of life – particularly in physical, psychological, and social domains – and lower levels of depressive symptoms.
Importantly, ADHD status did not moderate these relationships. The statistical associations between strengths-related measures and life outcomes were similar in adults with and without ADHD.
Within the ADHD group specifically, strengths use showed a significant association with global quality of life, even after accounting for ADHD symptom severity.
How the Authors Interpret Their Findings
The authors conclude that adults with ADHD tend to endorse certain strengths – such as hyperfocus, creativity, and humor – more strongly than adults without ADHD. At the same time, many strengths were similarly endorsed across both groups, highlighting the substantial overlap in self-reported strengths within the general population.
They further emphasize that strengths knowledge and strengths use are statistically associated with measures of subjective well-being, quality of life, and mental health outcomes in adulthood, regardless of ADHD status. However, the authors clearly state that these findings are correlational and do not allow conclusions about causality.
The paper also outlines several limitations, including reliance on self-report measures, potential self-selection bias, and the need for future research using objective assessments of strengths.
Broader Scientific Context
The authors situate their findings within a broader movement in neurodevelopmental research toward more balanced models that include both challenges and positive characteristics. They stress that research on ADHD-related strengths is still developing and that further studies are needed to refine how these strengths are defined and measured.
Conclusion
This large international study provides detailed empirical evidence on how adults with ADHD describe their psychological strengths and how strengths knowledge and strengths use are statistically associated with measures of well-being and quality of life. By examining these relationships in both adults with and without ADHD, the research offers a more nuanced picture of how strengths are perceived and reported across populations.
Importantly, the findings suggest that many strengths are shared across adults regardless of ADHD status, while certain traits are more strongly endorsed by adults with ADHD. Together, these results contribute to ongoing scientific discussions about ADHD in adulthood and underscore the value of examining both common and group-specific characteristics when studying neurodevelopmental differences.
The information in this article is provided for informational purposes only and is not medical advice. For medical advice, please consult your doctor.
Reference
Luca D. Hargitai, Emma L. M. Laan, Lessa M. Schippers, Lucy A. Livingston, Graeme Fairchild, Punit Shah, Martine Hoogman. The role of psychological strengths in positive life outcomes in adults with ADHD. Psychological Medicine, 2025; 55 DOI: 10.1017/S0033291725101232
