Genius 101 (Psych 101) Review

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Genius 101 (Psych 101) ReviewDean Keith Simonton is widely recognized as a pioneer and leader in the academic study of genius, so this book is about as authoritative as one can get. My personal interest in genius stems partly from a feeling of awe at what geniuses in various domains have been able to accomplish, but mostly from a desire to "learn from the best" in order to improve my own performance in my areas of interest.
This book responds to the latter motivation more than the former, since Simonton is a careful researcher who avoids getting into speculations unsupported by convincing evidence. The result is that this book has a "scholarly light" feel, with the aim being to educate rather than entertain, but the material is inherently fascinating and Simonton has a very personable writing style, so I found this book quite easy and enjoyable to read.
Here are the key points I noted from the book:
(1) Genius is hard to define, but it tends to involve achieving something which is both original and highly valued. The difference between genius and "ordinary" high performance may therefore be more quantitative than qualitative.
(2) Manifestation of genius tends to be domain-specific rather than universal, although it's not uncommon for geniuses to attain some distinction in more than one domain.
(3) Various ways of measuring genius (psychometric, historiometric, etc.) tend to converge in their findings.
(4) Adult geniuses tend to have had high IQ as children and adolescents. Based on IQ, the definition of genius is somewhat arbitrary and fuzzy, but some would use 140 (top ~1%) as the cutoff, with 130 (top ~2%) to 140 being considered borderline genius.
(5) Variation in achievement may be about 30% to 40% due to genetics, leaving the other 60% to 70% to other factors (see below).
(6) Genius-level achievement invariably involves apprenticeship and hard work over a long period of time (~10 years).
(7) In some domains, overtraining can be detrimental to creativity. In these cases, cross-training can be more effective.
(8) Intellectually-stimulating homes tend to foster development of genius.
(9) Scientific geniuses tend to come from more conventional and stable environments, whereas artistic geniuses tend to come from more unconventional and unstable environments.
(10) Genius is more common when people have something to build on from the previous generation.
(11) Interaction with heterogeneous groups increases manifestation of genius, but genius is still more of an individual rather than collective phenomenon.
(12) Geniuses tend to have long careers, with peak achievement occurring somewhere around age 40 (though this varies with domain).
(13) Typically, the people representing the top 10% in a domain produce about half of the creative output in that domain (perhaps the "80-20 rule" also applies).
(14) The creative processes underlying genius-level achievement are still not well understood, although use of heuristics and combinatorial thinking appear to be typically involved.
(15) Geniuses are roughly twice as likely as the general population to experience psychopathology, with depression being most common. However, the prevalence of psychopathology varies greatly with domain, being much more common in the arts (especially poetry) than the sciences. Psychopathology has a positive correlation with level of genius, but outright madness inhibits genius and higher intelligence tends to provide the capacity to prevent outright madness.
This is easily the best introduction to the academic study of genius that I've run across so far, so I highly recommend it to anyone interested in this topic.Genius 101 (Psych 101) Overview

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