Word: simonton
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Personality traits also matter. Simonton writes that geniuses tend to be "open to experience, introverted, hostile, driven, and ambitious." These traits too are inherited - but only partly. They're also shaped by environment...
...Simonton falls back on his "intelligence, enthusiasm, and endurance" formulation. But what about accidental discoveries? Simonton mentions the case of biologist Alexander Fleming, who, in 1928, "noticed quite by chance that a culture of Staphylococcus had been contaminated by a blue-green mold. Around the mold was a halo." Bingo: penicillin. But what if you had been in Fleming's lab that day and noticed the halo first? Would you be the genius...
Recently, the endurance and hard work part of the achievement equation has gotten a lot of attention, and the role of raw talent and intelligence has faded a bit. The main reason for this shift in emphasis is the work of Anders Ericsson, a friendly rival of Simonton's who teaches psychology at Florida State University. Gladwell featured Ericsson's work prominently in Outliers. (See the top 10 non-fiction books...
...Simonton rather dismissively calls this the "drudge theory." He thinks the real story is more complicated: deliberate practice, he says, is a necessary but not sufficient condition for creating genius. For one thing, you need to be smart enough for practice to teach you something. In a 2002 study, Simonton showed that the average IQ of 64 eminent scientists was around 150, fully 50 points higher than the average IQ for the general population. And most of the variation in IQs (about 80%, according to Simonton) is explained by genetics. (See pictures of Bobby Fischer, chess prodigy...
Still, genius can be very hard to discern, and not just among the young. Simonton tells the story of a woman who was able to get fewer than a dozen of her poems published during her brief life. Her hard work availed her little - but the raw power of her imagery and metaphor lives on. Her name? Emily Dickinson...