Creativity and Leadership: Causal Convergence and Divergence
If we are to judge from the research literature on the subject, creativity and leadership appear to be two very different topics. Creativity appears to attract the attention of more personality and educational psychologists, whereas leadership seems to fascinate more social and organizational psychologists. This separation is unfortunate, I believe, for in many respects these two phenomena can be subsumed under a single generic definition. Social psychologists are fond of defining a leader as that group member who exerts more influence over group performance and decision making than others. By this definition, creators are leaders, too, of a certain kind. A creative scientific researcher, for example, is one whose publications command respect in the scientific community, a respect that is displayed in the citations that the researcher receives in the professional literature. Those scientists who are less creative are not so acknowledged as leaders within their disciplines. The definitional similarity between creativity and leadership becomes particularly pronounced when we turn our attention to those creators and leaders who have in some sense “made history.” Clearly if someone is of sufficient importance to be found in encyclopedias, biographical dictionaries, and histories, that person can be said to have stood well above his or her contemporaries in influence, the specific nature of the achievement making little difference. Indeed, if the achievement is big enough, we often label the person a “genius”—as a kind of generic designation for any truly outstanding manifestation of creativity or leadership.
But the comparability of creators and leaders is not merely analytical; it is empirical as well. Many of the variables that are crucial to our understanding of creativity are also of value to our appreciation of leadership. Sometimes these factors operate in the same way, and other times in quite contrasting ways, but in either case their influence is felt. I have devoted a whole book to such etiological comparisons (Simonton, 1984a), so my intention here is to offer an abstract of what may be considered the more important points. What I will do specifically is go over five areas where these comparisons seem most instructive: birth order, formal education, productivity, age, and zeitgeist.
Birth Order
Francis Galton (1874) pointed out long ago that the firstborn child is overrepresented among those who attain distinction in scientific endeavors. A number of explanations have been offered for this finding. One possibility is that the firstborn is the favored child into whose development and education the parents channel most of their resources. Another explanation is provided by Zajonc’s (1976) confluence model of intellectual development: The firstborn child is exposed to an environment at a higher level of maturity than the later-born children, who are overexposed to literally infantile minds. However, both of these interpretations must face the ugly fact that the lastborn child also enjoys a high probability of success, though still not as great as the firstborn (Ellis, 1904). This finding may suggest that some kind of favoritism is operating in the form of a serial-position effect, the firstborn being the most spoiled for being first, the last born spoiled the next most for being the last of a series. We must not conclude that the middle children are invariably left out in the cold, nonetheless. One study of three hundred eminent twentieth-century personalities found that the politicians in their sample were likely to be middle children (Goertzel, Goertzel, & Goertzel, 1978). This result suggests that birth order may be crucial to the development of certain requisite social skills. The middle child, always caught between older and younger siblings, has plenty of opportunity for learning how to negotiate, compromise, and reconcile differences. An only child has no chance at all to nourish these abilities, at least not in the home.
Actually, the connection between birth order and success as a political leader may be a bit more complicated. Stewart (1977) has put forward a theory that the optimal birth order for a potential leader may depend on the political circumstances, or zeitgeist, in which he comes to power (his focus is on males). On the one hand, leadership styles are said to correspond to four unique sibling configurations: the only, firstborn, middle, and last-born child. Each configuration gives the child a special set of experiences during early development, experiences that help shape personality. On the other hand, four varieties of crises determine which leadership style is appropriate: the breakdown of social institutions; imperialistic expansion and confrontation; retrenchment and realignment of domestic and foreign commitments; and rebellion and revolt. According to Stewart, the first of these crises is the proper province of only children, the second of the firstborn, the third of the middle child, and the fourth of the last born. To make the case for his theory, Stewart studied the birth order and political zeitgeist for American presidents and British prime ministers, and obtains statistical endorsement. Curiously, the two leading candidates for the presidency in any given election year display a distinct tendency to be of the same ordinal position in their respective families. Moreover, other researchers have found results consistent with the theory. Revolutionaries, for example, are more likely to be later-born children (Walberg, Rasher, & Parkerson, 1980). Even the Goertzels’ conclusion that the politicians in their sample were predominantly middle children bolsters Stewart’s theory. Most of the politicians in the Goertzels’ study attained their power positions in the post-World War II period, when domestic and foreign commitments were being remade and consolidated—putting a premium on negotiation skills.
The days of the firstborn war leaders were over. The main point is that birth order may exert an influence on the personality development responsible for achievement, whether as a leader or as a creator. It is of interest to speculate on how creators might fit into Stewart’s interactionist theory. Are the revolutionaries in a creative endeavor more inclined to be later-born children? Are those creators who fight their way to dominating positions of prestige and influence more prone to be firstborns? And are middle children more disposed to become the administrators in research institutions?
Formal Education
The formal training we receive in our schools, colleges, and universities may be a mixed blessing. On the positive side, we can definitely argue that success in life requires a great many special skills that can only be acquired with an enforced discipline which only our educational systems conveniently provide. These skills range from reading to running a linear accelerator. On the negative side, there also can be little doubt that formal education can inculcate a certain conformity of thought, even rigidity, that may hamper innovation. Therefore, it is conceivable that the relation between formal education and achievement follows a curvilinear, inverted-U function. Two studies show this may indeed be the case (Simonton, 1983).
In the first investigation I reexamined the 301 geniuses collected by Catherine Cox (1926) in her famous study of the association between achievement and intelligence (Simonton, 1976a). This sample included both creators and leaders. They all were scored on achieved eminence using Cattell’s (1903) rankings. In addition, I devised a coding scheme for scaling the level of formal education they attained. I then did a test for curvilinear relationships using a multiple regression analysis. For the leaders the relationship was strictly linear, not curvilinear, but negative. That is, the most acclaimed (or cursed) leaders were those who had the least formal training. In the case of creators, however, the expected relationship appeared—an inverted-J curve in fact. Recipients of doctoral degrees were at a distinct disadvantage even in comparison to those with no college, and a peak occurred in the level of education that maximally contributed to attainment. That optimum point occurred somewhere between the junior and senior years of college. Up to around the third year, increasing formal education increases the chances of success, but thereafter additional education was negatively associated with achievement.
This finding is interesting, but it should not be accepted without first obtaining corroborating evidence. Such support came from a second study, and from a very unlikely quarter—an inquiry into American presidents (Simonton, 1981b). Maranell (1970) had 571 American historians rate 33 presidents (Washington through Lyndon Johnson, skipping W. H. Harrison and Garfield). The historians evaluated the presidents on several dimensions. For our purposes, two dimensions are pertinent—flexibility versus inflexibility, and idealism versus pragmatism. It turns out that these two dimensions are related: idealistic presidents tend to be inflexible, pragmatic ones flexible. Accordingly, a single dimension was created which I styled “dogmatism” (i.e., idealistic inflexibility). Now there is much research that suggests that creativity and dogmatism are negatively related (Simonton, 1983). If this is so, it follows that the impact of formal education on dogmatism should be the reverse of that on creativity. In other words, the graph for the 33 presidents should be a reflection of that of Cox’s creators. That is exactly what is found. The most dogmatic presidents are those with higher degrees, such as Dr. Wilson; the next most dogmatic are those with very little formal education, such as the totally unschooled Andrew Johnson. The least dogmatic—that is, the most pragmatic and flexible—were those who left college somewhere between their junior and senior years—precisely as was found before. Thus, as unlikely as it seems, the data for the 33 presidents fits almost perfectly that for the creators in the Cox sample. The only assumption we have to make is that creativity and dogmatism are inversely related.
Now I realize that there are a number of objections that may be raised to the above two studies. For one thing, the average birth year for the Cox sample is 1705, that for the 33 presidents 1820, and hence the results may not apply to twentieth-century personalities. Moreover, it can be argued that even though the curvilinear relationships hold for some creative activities, other disciplines may require more formal training for maximal chances of success. For example, even if a doctoral degree in the fine arts is detrimental, the sciences require greater technical competence and hence a doctoral degree may be desirable. To handle these two objections I conducted a third study, this time using the 314 eminent twentieth-century personalities collected by the Goertzels (Simonton, 1984a, chap. 4). Since their birth years are as recent as 1948 (with an average of 1902), we are dealing with more contemporary subjects. Furthermore, I separated those who attained distinction in the sciences from those who made their names in the arts and humanities. In addition to these two domains of creativity, I examined recent political leaders. Both leaders and creators were then scaled for achieved eminence and formal educational level. In the instance of the leaders, a marked contrast was observed with what was found for the leaders in the Cox sample: The function was described by a curvilinear curve with a peak at some modest amount of graduate education. Perhaps the greater complexity of modern political systems requires greater educational attainments, and the peak seems to coincide with the level of training reached by lawyer-politicians in most democratic societies. A similar function was found for scientists, only the peak is shifted a bit later, at some graduate education just shy of a Ph.D. This result endorses my conjecture that more technical disciplines require more formal training. Finally, the curve for the creators in the arts and humanities exhibits an inverted-U form, too, but in this case the peak falls somewhere between the junior and senior years of college—precisely as learned in the previous two investigations. Hence, I have succeeded in replicating the curvilinear function in a sample of more contemporary subjects, many of whom are still living and active.
To be sure, we do not know why the curvilinear relationship holds. One interpretation would be that excessive formal education actively inhibits creative development by stamping in a conformist perspective. An alternative is to say simply that beyond a certain point formal education becomes merely irrelevant to further creative development and so the more self-directed creators tend to drop out after the irrelevancy becomes apparent. But whatever the explanation, it is fair to say that a maximal amount of formal education is not always the optimal amount.
Productivity
Thomas Edison took out almost 1,300 patents over his career, still more than any other inventor. No wonder, then, that he said that genius was 90 percent perspiration! And Edison’s case can be considered fairly typical. Earlier we defined a leader as one who exerts more influence than average, and noted that creators are leaders who exert their influence in the form of notable contributions. A number of researchers have shown, in fact, that a small percentage of workers in any given field of creative activity account for a disproportionate amount of contributions to their discipline (Dennis, 1955; Price, 1963). The top 10 percent most productive creators are responsible for about half of all contributions, whereas the 50 percent least productive are responsible for only about 15 percent of all contributions. The most productive contributor is at least 100 times more productive than the least productive, for whom the modal number of contributions is one. This means that the distribution of contributions is highly skewed. The plurality of creative individuals produce only one contribution each, a smaller proportion only two each, and so on, until a mere handful make as many as 100 contributions or more. According to Lotka’s law, the number of creators who produce n contributions (e.g., patents and publications) is inversely proportional to n2, a function that yields a fast drop-off and a long tail (Lotka, 1926). This formal expression is remarkable because of its similarity with Pareto’s law of income distribution in which income is inversely proportional to n1.5 (Price, 1963). Productive output, like income, tends to be equally distributed, a small, even elite, group accounting for a lion’s share of the “wealth.” Price’s law expresses the same idea in a slightly different but perhaps more instructive way: Half of all contributions to a particular endeavor is produced by the square root of the total number of creators working in that field (Price, 1963). For example, if 100 scientists make up a certain enterprise, 10 will be responsible for half of all papers; whereas if 10,000 work in a popular area, 100 will account for half of the publications. Price’s law implies that as a creative discipline grows, the proportion of contributors who are responsible for half of all output shrinks. If 100 are in the area, 10 percent account for half; but if 10,000 are in the area, only 1 percent do. Thus as a field expands it becomes ever more elitist.
We have been speaking of total, lifetime productivity. There are three components to this final score: The creator can begin to produce at an early age, to produce at an exceptionally high annual rate, and to produce until quite late in life. Although there is no mathematical or logical reason for these three components to be associated—indeed, many people subscribe to the folklore belief that those who are prodigiously productive at a precocious age will be subject to early burnout—the three components are in fact positively related to one another (Dennis, 1954a, 1954b; Simonton, 1977b). Those creative individuals who begin their careers earlier tend to end them later, and to maintain high productivity rates throughout their careers (at one period during Edison’s long career he was averaging a patent every five days). I have proposed a mathematical theory, too elaborate to discuss here, that predicts that these three components must all correlate due to their common dependence on a variable called “creative potential” (Simonton, 1984b). Another explanation of their interrelationship stems from the doctrine of cumulative advantage (Merton, 1968). Those who publish first will receive rewards first, and those rewards will reinforce further output at higher rates and for a longer duration. In a sense, creative individuals are like rats in a Skinner box receiving food pellets for bar pressing: The first to catch on to the trick and press the lever will get a head start in the rat race for ever more rewards.
Total lifetime output, however generated, is not synonymous with influence, naturally. There are “mass producers” who are prolific but trivial, and “perfectionists” who put out a handful of quality contributions. Even so, empirical research has shown that quality tends to be the consequence of quantity (Simonton, 1981a). In fact, a constant-probability-of-success model seems to be operating so that the proportion of hits over misses tends to be relatively even across contributors. Those who produce more masterworks also produce more rubbish. Thus, the best approach is to massively generate ideas in the hope that some pan out. This, of course, is the notion underlying “brainstorming” and similar techniques. This approach also has a theoretical justification in Campbell’s (1960) random-variation and selective-retention model of creativity that develops an analogy with the operation of natural selection in the biological world.
The above remarks are based on studies of creators, not leaders. Nonetheless, I think the same principles may apply to leaders, especially to creative leaders. A truly great leader is one who begins generating ideas at an early age, keeps on producing ideas at a prolific rate, and continues the process for many years, never seeming to run out of steam. Even if some ideas prove to be off the mark, the constant-probability-of-success model may assure that enough hits will come to make the effort profitable. The doctrine of cumulative advantage may also prove germane. In the realm of leadership, as in creativity, the rich may indeed get richer; the poor, poorer. Initial success breeds further success, and advantage accumulates to those who start off on the right foot. In military leadership, for example, there is an almost perfect correlation between the number of battles fought and the number won (Simonton, 1980a). Finally, it may be that Lotka’s and Price’s laws may be descriptive of the achievement of leaders too. A small elite may be responsible for a disproportionate number of innovative ideas, whether they be in government or in the private sector.
A creator’s lifetime productive output, needless to say, is not distributed evenly throughout a career—nor is achievement generally. Harvey C. Lehman has systematically documented the agewise distribution in his book Age and Achievement (1953). In broad terms, creative output in most fields tends to rise fairly rapidly to a peak in the late thirties or early forties and thereafter decline somewhat gradually. Recent investigations have established Lehman’s chief results (Simonton, 1977a, 1984b). To be sure, the precise nature of the age function is a bit more complicated. In some fields, such as mathematics and poetry, the ascent to an early peak is quite sudden, as is the plunge afterwards. In other disciplines, such as scholarship, the peak occurs much later in life and the decline is virtually nonexistent. But for the most part the fortieth year appears to be the highwater mark of creative achievement.
Interestingly, a similar peak may hold for some types of leadership. A study of military success on the battlefield found that those generals who were closest to age 45 were more likely to exhibit superior military competence and experience (Simonton, 1980a). Another inquiry into absolute monarchs discovered a peak age for political success around age 42 (Simonton, 1984c). Here, too, the exact placement of the peak depends on the endeavor: Revolutionaries tend to be young, heads of state in established political systems old; founders of religions are usually young, those leaders top in the hierarchy of established faiths old. And in the case of American presidents, the best age for getting elected seems to be in the late fifties (Lehman, 1953). Nonetheless, the early forties still appears to be a good point estimate, especially in those areas that require creative (rather than traditional) leadership. This may even be true in the economic sphere: 40 years is the approximate peak age of wage attainment, for example (Stolzenberg, 1975).
The question that now comes to mind is why achievement tends to be a curvilinear function of age. Though it is impossible to offer a complete answer here, I should briefly describe two theories. The oldest, by Beard (1874), proposes that creativity is a function of two factors, enthusiasm and experience. Enthusiasm without experience produces original work only, whereas experience without enthusiasm produces routine work only. Since enthusiasm rises quickly up to the early thirties and then just as quickly declines, while experience grows continuously, the optimum age emerges in the late thirties where the conjunction is maximal. One nice asset of this theory is that it helps explain why creativity may peak at different ages for various disciplines. Poetry, mathematics, religious innovation, and political revolution all likely require more enthusiasm, but scholarship, religious administration, and political consolidation all demand more experience. The main drawback of Beard’s model may be that it does not make precise predictions. The second theory, recently proposed by myself and mentioned briefly above (Simonton, 1984b), is actually a mathematical model which predicts the productivity rate for each year of a creator’s career. In simple terms, this model assumes that each individual begins with an initial supply of creative potential which is then transformed into actual contributions through a series of cognitive operations. This model explains different peak ages according to the different information-processing needs of a given discipline, and, as noted before, accounts for certain features of individual variation in productivity. One intriguing implication of the model is its prediction that creativity never really has to end, even when the creator is quite old. As the model has it, most creators die without fully actualizing their creative potential.
This last point brings us to one final precaution about interpreting the age curve found for achievement. It would be erroneous to discount the contributions of persons simply because they appear to be older than the peak age. Previously we spoke of the constant-probability-of-success model that asserts that quality is a repercussion of quantity. This model has been shown to hold across the life span too (Simonton, 1977a). That is, the proportion of successful contributions to total output remains constant with age. Hence, even if elderly persons are less prolific than those in their “prime,” the probability that any given product will have an impact is not a function of age. The efforts of mature contributors must therefore be taken with equal seriousness to those of their junior colleagues.
Up to this point my emphasis has been on the psychological variables behind creativity and leadership. Yet I received my degree in social psychology, and so it should come as no surprise that I have devoted a considerable part of my own research to discovering how the sociocultural milieu affects the appearance of creativity and leadership. For example, I have published several inquiries into the adverse effect that warfare has on scientific innovation (Simonton, 1976b, 1980b). I have also shown how political violence affects, and is a partial consequence of, the prevailing ideological stance of a generation (Simonton, 1976d). But perhaps the most characteristic studies are those I have done to determine the relative importance of zeitgeist, genius, and chance in creativity and leadership. By zeitgeist I mean those social and cultural context (or situational) factors beyond the control of any single individual; genius is taken to signify an exceptional set of personal qualities. Chance is sort of what is left over—the residual complex of myriad inconsistent effects that defy classification. Anyhow, I have scrutinized political and military leaders along with musical, philosophical, and scientific creators to weigh the comparative impact of these three factors (e.g., Simonton, 1976c, 1979, 1980a, 1980c, 1984d). Two illustrations must suffice.
In the case of military leadership, both individual and situational factors prove to be germane to the prediction of tactical victory (Simonton, 1980a). The general who takes the initiative by attacking first has the best odds of success (and younger generals are more prone to be aggressive in this respect than older generals). On the other hand, the side that fights under a divided command where two or more generals are equal partners in tactical planning and execution tends to be more successful. This falls into line with the research on problem solving. For simple problems, individuals working alone do as well as individuals working in groups, but for complex problems individuals do better if they can pool their abilities in a group. The decision-making processes required on the battlefield are complicated, if nothing else, and hence it is to be expected that collaborating generals do better than those working alone. In any event, several individual and situational factors emerged as good predictors; though the individual predictors were the best predictors of tactical victory, situational predictors were best predictors of a battle casualty advantage (army size being the most important). In either case, the predictive accuracy was not perfect. The victor, for instance, could only be predicted 71 percent of the time, leaving some room for chance to operate.
In scientific creativity, too, all three factors participate. To demonstrate this fact I examined the phenomenon of independent discovery and invention—what Merton (1961) calls “multiples.” Classic cases include the independent invention of the calculus by Newton and Leibniz and the independent formulation of the principle of natural selection by Darwin and Wallace. Proponents of a zeitgeist position have often argued that instances of multiples—and hundreds of cases exist—prove that scientific progress is essentially inevitable and that genius per se is more or less irrelevant to that progress (Ogburn & Thomas, 1922). On first glance this argument certainly looks watertight. Nevertheless, when cases of multiples are subjected to detailed mathematical analysis, a different picture emerges (Simonton, 1978, 1979).
In the first place, genius does play a role. For example, the more highly productive scientists also tend to be the ones who participate in multiples. Even more critically, chance seems to play the biggest part in the appearance of multiples. The overwhelming majority of multiples are doublets involving just two independent discoverers, the next most frequent is the triplet, then the quadruplet, and so on. The more scientists involved in a multiple, the more rare the event. This distribution is very peculiar, and, in fact, it can be shown to hold for extremely rare events (namely, it is a Poisson distribution with a small mean). As a consequence, singletons, or discoveries made only once, are more commonplace than doublets and, even more significantly, nulltons, or discoveries never made at all because luck ran out on them, are very common as well. Hence, scientific progress is far from inevitable. Although the zeitgeist exerts some influence on the operation of genius (mostly in the rank-ordering of events), chance seems to govern more than anything else what actually ends up in the annals of scientific discoveries and inventions.
The principal conclusion to be drawn from these studies is that creativity and leadership do not function totally at the individual level. Rather, if the situational context moderates the manifestation of even high-level geniuses, can we expect that our own enterprises on a more mundane plane are any less subject to the milieu? And if the history-making leaders and creators are subject at least in part to the whims of luck, certainly we all must take that factor into account. Yet, as we saw in the section on productivity, we can also take advantage of chance for our own purposes: Chance can be an instrument as well as a determinant.
One objection that can be raised against the above review is that much of it is based on historimetric studies of distinguished creators and leaders. Most of us venture far humbler designs. Maybe our best hope is to make a comfortable living or to keep ahead of the pack. Nonetheless, an interest in creative leadership implies some ambition, and I maintain that it’s only a matter of degree, not kind, between those who make history and those who leave a mark in some more subtle fashion. And even if the foregoing findings may not always help us to become creative leaders, they should increase our sensitivity to those who display creative leadership themselves. Such factors as birth order, formal education, productivity, age, and zeitgeist may be useful constructs for organizing that awareness.
Bibliography
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Simonton, D. K. (1976a). Biographical determinants of achieved eminence: A multivariate approach on the Cox data. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 33, 218–226.
Simonton, D. K. (1976b). Interdisciplinary and military determinants of scientific productivity: A cross-lagged correlation analysis. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 9, 53–62.
Simonton, D. K. (1976c). Philosophical eminence, beliefs, and zeitgeist: An individual-generational analysis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 34, 630–640.
Simonton, D. K. (1976d). The sociopolitical context of philosophical beliefs: A transhistorical causal analysis. Social Forces, 54, 513–523.
Simonton, D. K. (1977a). Creative productivity, age, and stress: A biographical time-series analysis of 10 classical composers. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 35, 791–804.
Simonton, D. K. (1977b). Eminence, creativity, and geographic marginality: A recursive structural equation model. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 35, 805–816.
Simonton, D. K. (1978). Independent discovery in science and technology: A closer look at the Poisson distribution. Social Studies of Science, 8, 521–532.
Simonton, D. K. (1979). Multiple discovery and invention: Zeitgeist, genius, or chance? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37, 1603–1616.
Simonton, D. K. (1980a). Land battles, generals, and armies: Individual and situational determinants of victory and casualties. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 38, 110–119.
Simonton, D. K. (1980b). Techno-scientific activity and war: A yearly time-series analysis, 1500–1903 A.D. Scientometrics, 2, 251–255.
Simonton, D. K. (1980c). Thematic fame, melodic originality, and musical zeitgeist: A biographical and transhistorical content analysis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 39, 972–983.
Simonton, D. K. (1981a). The library laboratory: Archival data in personality and social psychology. In L. Wheeler (Ed.), Review of personality and social psychology (Vol. 2). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications.
Simonton, D. K. (1981b). Presidential greatness and performance: Can we predict leadership in the White House? Journal of Personality, 49, 306–323.
Simonton, D. K. (1983). Formal education, eminence, and dogmatism: The curvilinear relationship. Journal of Creative Behavior, 17, 149–162.
Simonton, D. K. (1984a). Genius, creativity and leadership. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Simonton, D. K. (1984b). Creative productivity and age: A mathematical model based on a two-step cognitive process. Developmental Review, 4, 77–111.
Simonton, D. K. (1984c). Leader age and national condition: A longitudinal analysis of 25 European monarchs. Social Behavior and Personality, 12, 111–114.
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Dean Keith Simonton has pursued, in a very persistent manner, the precursors and concomitants of effectiveness in creativity and leadership. He is the author of many articles and presentations since his appearance at Creativity Week VI (see the partial list below).
His longitudinal macroview of the context of creative leadership is both intriguing and daunting. In this view, we are all linked together as striving human beings, as we face the forces of circumstance and zeitgeist. Individual accomplishments and failures disappear in this situation. But perhaps there is an encouraging, unifying thread: Win or lose, the creator, the leader, the inventor, or the military general all share a willingness to persist and a readiness to take some calculated risk. Neither creativity nor leadership seems to be for the timid or lazy, whenever or wherever we were born.
Simonton received his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1975 and currently is a full professor at the University of California, Davis. SSG.
Selected Bibliography
Simonton, D. K. (1986). Presidential greatness: The historical consensus and its psychological significance. Political Psychology, 7, 259–283.
Simonton, D. K. (1988). Age and outstanding achievement: What do we know after a century of research? Psychological Bulletin, 104, 251–267.
Simonton, D. K. (1988). Presidential style: Personality, biography, and performance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 55, 928–936.
Simonton, D. K. (1989). Age and creative productivity: Nonlinear estimation of an information-processing model. International Journal of Aging and Human Development, 29, 23–37.
Simonton, D. K. (1989). The swan-song phenomenon: Last-works effects for 172 classical composers. Psychology and Aging, 4, 42–41.
Simonton, D. K. (1991). Career landmarks in science: Individual differences and interdisciplinary contrasts. Developmental Psychology, 27, 119–130.
Simonton, D. K. (1992). Leaders of American psychology, 1879–1967: Career development, creative output, and professional achievement. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 62, 5–17.