TDC – Simonton (Lecture 1) 1
Intelligence - Creative performance, expertise acquisition, individual differences,
and developmental antecedents: An integrative research agenda
study showed that most eminent (Philosophers/ Psychologist/ historical leaders) are the ones
with taking extremist stances rather than the middle (e.g. Galton and Watson: Nature –
Nuture)
“deliberate practice” → extreme stand and exceptional achievement is too complex to only
focus on a one-sided explanation
◦ a full understand requires:
(a) identification of all individual-difference variables that correlate with acquisition
and performance
(b) determination of the developmental antecedents, both genetic and environmental,
of these identified correlates
1. Domain-specific expertise and creative performance
1.1 What is creative expertise?
→ “expertise acquisition is all you need” - assume from the very start the existence of some
precisely defined domain that can be mastered through sufficient training and practice (e.g. chess –
nothing changed since centuries so expertise is well established)
→ more complicated when domain-specific expertise is not so precisely defined:
1. the expertise does not exist until it is first created (e.g. Galileo's creation of
telescopic astronomy→ first rejected by scientific “experts”)
2. even when a domain-specific expertise is defined in advance, that expertise can be
conceived multiple ways, making it difficult to determine what optimal subset of that
generalized expertise is most relevant to a particular performance criterion (e.g.
composition of an opera → need ability to write music for orchestra and voice,
having multiple genres (comic, dramatic) → most successful ones are mixing genres
(cross-training instead of overtraining)) → most creative scientists engage in a
“network of enterprise” pursue a large number of loosely related projects
→ thinking out side of the box! (also with hobbies)
1.2 What is creative performance?
Many domains that initially inspired the expertise-acquisition framework featured well-
defined goals and explicit means to attain those goals
◦ e.g. chess or instrumental performance in the classical repertoire (Ericssion) → rely on
exact replicable behavior, however, in creative domains, specifically, the goals and
means may be constantly changing, and behavioral replication is antithetical to success
(e.g. Einstein only published his paper once to build up on that knowledge and write a
new one but had no intention to publish the same paper twice)
A creative idea must satisfy 3 quantitative criteria:
1. the idea must be highly original in the sense of a low probability of initial generation
2. the idea must be useful in the broad sense of satisfying some utility standards, whether
scientific or esthetic → standards change as direct result of past acts of creativity (what was
effective in a previous creative product frequently becomes ineffective in another— loses its
“shock value”)
3. the idea must be surprising → patent criterion is based on a person who has “ordinary skill
in the art,” that is, someone who has the relevant expertise (also includes discoveries like
Galileo’s)
Intelligence - Creative performance, expertise acquisition, individual differences,
and developmental antecedents: An integrative research agenda
study showed that most eminent (Philosophers/ Psychologist/ historical leaders) are the ones
with taking extremist stances rather than the middle (e.g. Galton and Watson: Nature –
Nuture)
“deliberate practice” → extreme stand and exceptional achievement is too complex to only
focus on a one-sided explanation
◦ a full understand requires:
(a) identification of all individual-difference variables that correlate with acquisition
and performance
(b) determination of the developmental antecedents, both genetic and environmental,
of these identified correlates
1. Domain-specific expertise and creative performance
1.1 What is creative expertise?
→ “expertise acquisition is all you need” - assume from the very start the existence of some
precisely defined domain that can be mastered through sufficient training and practice (e.g. chess –
nothing changed since centuries so expertise is well established)
→ more complicated when domain-specific expertise is not so precisely defined:
1. the expertise does not exist until it is first created (e.g. Galileo's creation of
telescopic astronomy→ first rejected by scientific “experts”)
2. even when a domain-specific expertise is defined in advance, that expertise can be
conceived multiple ways, making it difficult to determine what optimal subset of that
generalized expertise is most relevant to a particular performance criterion (e.g.
composition of an opera → need ability to write music for orchestra and voice,
having multiple genres (comic, dramatic) → most successful ones are mixing genres
(cross-training instead of overtraining)) → most creative scientists engage in a
“network of enterprise” pursue a large number of loosely related projects
→ thinking out side of the box! (also with hobbies)
1.2 What is creative performance?
Many domains that initially inspired the expertise-acquisition framework featured well-
defined goals and explicit means to attain those goals
◦ e.g. chess or instrumental performance in the classical repertoire (Ericssion) → rely on
exact replicable behavior, however, in creative domains, specifically, the goals and
means may be constantly changing, and behavioral replication is antithetical to success
(e.g. Einstein only published his paper once to build up on that knowledge and write a
new one but had no intention to publish the same paper twice)
A creative idea must satisfy 3 quantitative criteria:
1. the idea must be highly original in the sense of a low probability of initial generation
2. the idea must be useful in the broad sense of satisfying some utility standards, whether
scientific or esthetic → standards change as direct result of past acts of creativity (what was
effective in a previous creative product frequently becomes ineffective in another— loses its
“shock value”)
3. the idea must be surprising → patent criterion is based on a person who has “ordinary skill
in the art,” that is, someone who has the relevant expertise (also includes discoveries like
Galileo’s)
