Below are abstracts for most publications. These are provided for two reasons.
First, because of the interdisciplinary nature of my research program, no abstract service covers all journals in which I publish.
Second, abstract services too often provide abbreviated, misleading, or erroneous versions of the original published abstracts. With respect to publication #3, for instance, PsycINFO, begins "Using 38 paid college students" when the sample actually consisted of 40 student volunteer participants! Or regarding #43, PsycINFO specifies an "inverted backward-U function" when the original publication correctly says "inverted backward J function" (how can a U function be backward anyway?).
Of course, it is also more convenient to have all of the abstracts in one place, especially from the perspective of internet searches.
20. Simonton, D. K. (1978b). Erratum to Simonton. Psychological
Bulletin, 85, 1000.
Reports an error in the original article by D. K. Simonton (Psychological
Bulletin, 1977 [May], Vol No. 84, 489-502). There is an error
on page 497. Contrary to the author's statement, each and every independent
variable (namely, the dummy, time, and product terms) should be transformed
in the same manner as the dependent variable, using Equation 4.
209. Simonton, D. K. (2000b).
Artistic genius: The three analytical perspectives. Bulletin of Psychology
and the Arts, 1, 8.
211. Simonton, D. K. (2000d).
Creativity and psychopathology from a Darwinian perspective. Bulletin
of Psychology and the Arts, 1,
38-40.
Darwin's theory of evolution by
natural selections provided an explanation of how new species could emerge
by a simple process of "blind-variation and selective-retention" (BVSR).
A similar BVSR mechanism provides a comprehensive theory of creativity,
albeit the process is far more complicated and operates on multiple levels.
The empirical support for this theory is documented two ways. First, the
theory's explanatory power is shown with respect to the cognitive processes,
individual differences, developmental antecedents, and sociocultural influences
underlying creativity. Second, the theory's predictive power is demonstrated
with respect to creative careers, stylistic evolution, and multiple discoveries.
In addition, the BVSR model provides the foundation for the only computer
programs that have generated authentic creative products. Finally, by conceiving
creativity in Darwinian terms, the phenomenon is linked with evolutionary
psychology, the only framework for a theoretical integration of the biological,
behavioral, and social sciences.
213. Simonton, D. K. (2000f,
December). Déjà vu.
Monitor on Psychology, 31
(11), 8, 86.
215. Simonton, D. K. (2000h).
Human creativity, cultural evolution, and niche construction. Behavioral
and Brain Sciences, 23, 150-151.
Cultural evolution may be even more
proflific in the generation of new forms than is biological evolution -
especially when it takes the form of creative genius. Yet evolutionary
theories have tended to overlook the factors that might select for outstanding
individual creativity. A recent duel-inheritance theory is outlined and
then integrated with the niche-construction theory of Laland et al.
217. Simonton, D. K. (2000j).
The music or the words? Or, how important is the libretto for an
opera’s aesthetic success? Empirical Studies of the Arts, 18,
105-118.
What are the comparative contributions
of composer and librettist to the aesthetic impact of great operas? This
question was empirically answered using a sample of 911 operas by fifty-nine
composers. The aesthetic success of each opera was gauged by a composite
measure that included performance and recording frequencies as well as
archival indicators. The predictor variables were both idiographic (e.g.,
the specific identities of the librettists and the literary sources) and
nomothetic (e.g., literary genre, language, librettist's age, and experience).
After introducing appropriate control variables, the multiple-regression
analyses demonstrated that coomposers play a much bigger role in determining
operatic impact than do librettists or their libretti. The identity of
the composer alone accounted for almost half of the variance in aesthetic
success. As far as opera is concerned, the music is aesthetically more
crucial than are the words.
221. Locher, P., & Simonton,
D. K. (2001). Report on the XVI Biannual Congress of IAEA, New York, U.S.A.,
2000. Empirical Studies of the Arts, 19, 135-136.
222. Simonton, D. K. (2000n).
Statistical correlations, nomothetic principles, and exceptions to the
rule. Politics and the Life Sciences,
19, 173-174.
223. Simonton, D. K. (2001a).
Creativity as a secondary Darwinian process. Bulletin of Psychology
and the Arts, 2, 33-39.
224. Simonton, D. K. (2001b).
Creativity as cognitive selection: The blind-variation and selective-retention
model. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 24, 554-556.
Campbell (1960) proposed a "blind-variation
and selective-retention" model of creative cognition. Subsequent researchers
have developed this BVSR model into a comprehensive theory of human creativity,
one that recognizes that human creativity operates by more than one cognitive
process. The question is then raised of how the BVSR model can be accommodated
within the Hull et al. selectionist system.
225. Simonton, D. K. (2001c).
Creativity, psychopathology, and positive psychology. Los Angeles Psychologist,
15,
11-12.
226. Simonton, D. K. (2001d).
Emotion and composition in classical music: Historiometric perspectives.
In P. Juslin & J. Sloboda (Eds.),
Music and emotion: Theory and
research (pp. 205-222). New York: Oxford University Press.
227. Simonton, D. K. (2001e).
Harvey C. Lehman’s Age and Achievement: Talent development across
the life span [Review of the book
Age
and achievement, H. C. Lehman]. Roeper Review: A Journal on Gifted
Education, 23, 166.
228. Simonton, D. K. (2001f).
Kings, queens, and sultans: Empirical studies of political leadership in
European hereditary monarchies. In O. Feldman & L. O. Valenty (Eds.),
Profiling
political leaders: Cross-cultural studies of personality and behavior
(pp. 97-110). Westport, CT: Praeger.
Analyzes similarities between modern
heads of state and historic hereditary monarchs by reviewing research from
the perspective of psychology, sociology, history, and political leadership.
The author finds evidence for strong variation in personality and leadership
style across hereditary monarchs and relates this variation to genetic
proclivity, role-modeling effects, and gender. This preliminary discussion
is then used to determine the relative influence of historical activity,
individual characteristics, and personality attributes upon political leadership
and perceptions of greatness, both for historic hereditary monarchs and
for modern heads of state. Findings are specifically compared to what has
been learned in research on presidents of the US. This chapter concludes
with a discussion of the essential similarity of predictive independent
variables in determining performance and eminence in monarch and modern
heads of state and an argument that this comparison may help to develop
a more comprehensive understanding of political leadership [from the introduction].
229. Simonton, D. K. (2001g).
Predicting presidential greatness: Equation replication on recent survey
results. Journal of Social Psychology,
141, 293-307.
For more than 2 decades, researchers
have tried to identify the variables that predict the overall performance
of US presidents. In 1986, there emerged a 6-variable prediction equation
(D. K. Simonton, 1986, 1987) that has been replicated repeatedly. The predictors
are years in office, war years, scandal, assassination, heroism in war,
and intellectual brilliance. The author again replicated the equation on
recent rankings of all presidents from George Washington through William
Jefferson Clinton according to a survey of 719 experts (W. R. Ridings,
Jr., & S. B. McIver, 1997). The original 6-variable equation successfully
predicted both the overall rankings as well as the 5 core components of
the rankings (leadership qualities, accomplishment, political skill, appointments,
character and integrity). The predictive value of the equation was illustrated
for the presidencies of Ronald W. Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and Clinton.
230. Simonton, D. K. (2001h).
[Review of the book
The things
we do: Using the lessons of Bernard and Darwin to understand the what,
how, and why of our behavior, G. Cziko]. Quarterly Review of Biology,
76,
268.
231. Simonton, D. K. (2001i).
Talent development as a multidimensional, multiplicative, and dynamic process.
Current
Directions in Psychological Science, 10, 39-43.
Recent empirical research has challenged
the common belief in the existence of talent, suggesting that exceptional
performance is entirely the product of nurture rather than nature. However,
this research has been based on a simple conception of what talent entails.
Rather than involving a unidimensional, additive, and static genetic process,
talent may instead emerge from a multidimensional, multiplicative, and
dynamic process. This latter possibility is described in a two-part model
that combines multidimensional and multiplicative inheritance with dynamic
development. The first part of the model handles domain specificity, profile
heterogeneity, the distribution of individual differences, familial heritability,
and domain complexity. The second part explicates early- vs late-bloomers,
early signs of talent, talent loss, and shifts in the domain of talent.
The resulting model has crucial implications for how best to gauge the
impact of nature in the development of talent.
232. Simonton, D. K. (2001j).
Totally made, not at all born [Review of the book
The
psychology of high abilities, M. J. A. Howe]. Contemporary Psychology,
46,
176-179.
The current volume is but one publication
among many in which M. Howe has argued that exceptional ability is entirely
a product of nurture, not nature. Moreover, among the several books that
take this position, this can be considered among the best. It is written
well and well organized. For its length, it reviews a large amount of scholarly
research and does so competently. The book is full of concrete examples,
and avoids getting distracted by technical details. Finally, the book covers
almost all of the central topics in the psychology of high abilities. In
particular, it treats the various influences on abilities (Chapter 1),
the family backgrounds of high achievers (Chapter 2), the question of whether
the acquisition of abilities can be accelerated (Chapter .3), the central
phenomena of child prodigies (Chapter 4) and geniuses (Chapter 5), the
relation between intelligence and high abilities (Chapter 6), and how to
help young children to acquire high abilities (Chapter 8). Not surprisingly,
a whole chapter is allotted to and titled "Innate Talents: Reality or Myth?"
(Chapter 7). Here Howe makes it very clear which stand he thinks is most
scientifically defensible. All in all, it is an excellent book and one
that I can heartily recommend to any psychologist intrigued by exceptional
abilities, whether they subscribe to the drudge theory or not.
233. Cassandro, V. J., &
Simonton, D. K. (2002). Creativity and genius. In C. L. M. Keyes
& J. Haidt (Ed.), Flourishing: Positive psychology and the life
well-lived (pp. 163-183). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
This chapter describes the nature
of both creativity and the creative genius, their relationship to the positive
psychology movement, as well as strategies that have been developed to
measure these phenomena at the individual and sociocultural levels. The
concept of creativity is said to entail three essential and product-focused
criteria: novelty, adaptiveness or appropriateness to the problem at hand,
and completeness. Genius is said to entail uniqueness, impact, and quality
of intellectual power. Creative products, eminence, intelligence, cognitive
style, and personality and biography are characteristics discussed in terms
of the study of creative genius at the level of the individual. And, briefly
discussed is the fact that creativity and genius can also be conceptualized
and measured at the sociocultural level as unique features of a cultural
or historical period [from the chapter].
234. Simonton, D. K. (2002a).
Collaborative aesthetics in the feature film: Cinematic components predicting
the differential impact of 2,323 Oscar-nominated movies. Empirical Studies
of the Arts, 20, 115-125.
Unlike most forms of artistic expression,
the feature film is the collaborative product of many individuals. The
comparative impact of these separate contributions was assessed in 2,323
movies nominated for Academy Awards in the major categories. The raw data
from the sampling procedure and variable measurement came from primarily
electronic sources. Two criteria of a film's impact were defined (best
picture honors and movie guide ratings) along with 16 potential predictor
variables (direction, male and female leads, male and female supporting
roles, screenplay, art direction, costume design, makeup, cinematography,
film editing, score, song, visual effects, sound effects editing, and sound)
and five control variables (release date and the genre of drama, comedy,
romance, and musical). Multiple regression analyses indicated that between
30% and 75% of the variance in impact could be explained using a subset
of these factors.
235. Simonton, D. K. (2002b).
Creativity. In D. J. Ekerdt (Ed.),
Encyclopedia of aging (pp. 290-293).
New York: Macmillan Reference.
236. Simonton, D. K. (2002c).
Creativity. In C. R. Snyder & S. J. Lopez (Eds.), The handbook of
positive psychology
(pp. 189-201). New York: Oxford University Press.
237. Simonton, D. K. (2002d).
Errors and inaccuracies. Contemporary Psychology, 47, 94.
238. Simonton, D. K. (2002e).
Great
psychologists and their times: Scientific insights into psychology's history.
Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
This book comprehensively compiles
research on the factors that contribute to a psychologist having a high
impact on the discipline. Simonton examines those individuals who have
contributed most tot he advancement of psychological science. Moreover,
these notables are examined from a scientific perspective--especially from
the standpoint of the psychology of science. The book integrates all of
the relevant research on the psychology of eminent psychologists, from
the pioneering work of Francis Galton to work published in the 21st century.
Chapters contain examples drawn from the lives and careers of notable psychologists,
examining such issues as birth order, intellectual precocity, mentoring,
psychopathology, worldview, and aging. Of particular interest are chapters
exploring what aspects of the sociocultural context are most conductive
to the emergence of illustrious psychologists and how these sociocultural
conditions--including political events, economic disturbances, or cultural
values--affect not only the magnitude of achievement but also the very
nature of that achievement. The findings reviewed lead to suggestions about
how best to educate and train both undergraduate psychology majors and
graduate students in psychology [from the jacket].
239. Simonton, D. K. (2002f).
In the beginning ... The alpha and omega of the mind [Review of the
book
The evolution of cognition,
C. Heyes & L. Huber (Eds.)]. Contemporary Psychology, 47,
386-388.
As Heyes emphasizes in her introductory
chapter, the goal is to treat evolutionary psychology "in the round." By
this she means a discipline that goes beyond an anthropocentric focus on
just the human species, and a discipline that encompasses the full range
of analytical perspectives, including the ecological, phylogenetic, comparative,
and selection theoretic. The volume's chapters were therefore selected
to demonstrate the full breadth and depth of this alternative evolutionary
psychology. The awesome diversity of issues and methods is augmented by
the tremendously diverse backgrounds of those who wrote the chapters. In
short, the chapters represent an international and interdisciplinary perspective
on the evolution of cognition. This book presents an evolutionary psychology
that is not just in the round, but global besides.
240. Simonton, D. K. (2002g).
Intelligence and presidential greatness: Equation replication using 56
estimates. Advances in Psychology
Research, 13, 163-174.
For more than 20 years researchers
have tried to identify the variables that predict the overall performance
of US presidents. Eventually a six-variable prediction equation emerged
that has undergone repeated replication in studies published between 1986
and 2001. The predictors are years in office, war years, scandal, assassination,
war hero, and intellectual brilliance. However, because previous investigations
were confined to presidents between Washington and Reagan, the current
study extended the test to all presidents between Washington and Clinton.
In addition, the test used the most recent ratings of presidential performance
and introduced updated intelligence estimates that were transformed into
IQ scores. According to a multiple regression analysis, all six predictors
were again statistically significant, together accounting for 77% of the
variance in presidential performance ratings.
241. Simonton, D. K. (2002h).
It’s absolutely impossible? A longitudinal study of one psychologist’s
response to conventional naysayers. In R. J. Sternberg (Ed.), Psychologists
defying the crowd: Stories of those who battled the establishment and won
(pp.
238-254). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
The author presents a professional
autobiography of his research into creativity. The relationship between
the author's research and mainstream psychology interests form the context
of the autobiography [from the chapter].
242. Simonton, D. K. (2002i).
Las personas que hacen historia. In R. Ardila (Ed.), La psicholgía
en el futuro: Los más destacados psicólogos del mundo reflexionan
sobre el futuro de su disciplina (pp. 271-275). Madrid: Ediciones Pirámide.
243. Simonton, D. K. (2002j).
On underrepresented populations in creativity research. Creativity Research
Journal, 14, 279-280.
Replies to a commentary by S. Benolken
(2002) regarding the author's previous article discussing creativity research.
Simonton argues that he does not want to be interpreted as implying that
creativity is completely different in anyone who is not a White male. Also,
he does not believe than other aspects of the phenomenon may operate somewhat
differently depending on gender and ethnicity. Simonton notes that he is
currently studying 294 eminent African Americans.
244. Simonton, D. K. (2002k).
Persistent myths, probabilities, and psychologists as human beings. Dialogue,
17,
24-25.
245. Simonton, D. K. (2002l).
[Review of the book
Genius
explained, M. J. I. Howe]. Isis: Journal of the History of Science
Society, 93,
475.
246. Simonton, D. K. (2002m).
When does giftedness become genius? And when not? In N. Colangelo &
G. A. Davis (Eds.), Handbook of gifted education (3rd ed., pp. 358-370).
Boston: Allyn & Bacon.
247. Simonton, D. K. (2003a).
Creative cultures, nations, and civilizations: Strategies and results.
In P. B. Paulus & B. A. Nijstad (Eds.), Group creativity: Innovation
through collaboration (pp. 304-328). New York: Oxford University Press.
This chapter focuses on the creativity
of nations, and offers an analysis of the factors that lead cultures, nations,
and civilizations to be creative. The author argues that the coming and
going of great creative genius in various times and places can be better
attributed to changes in the cultural, social, political and economic circumstances
that determine the extent to which the resulting milieu nurtures the development
of creative potential and the expression of that developed potential. The
chapter reviews previous research literature on the area of creativity,
and suggest that a comprehensive psychology of creativity must view it
as a complex phenomenon that occurs at multiple levels, from individuals,
interpersonal interactions, and problem-solving groups to cultures, nations,
and civilizations [from the chapter].
248. Simonton, D. K. (2003b).
Creativity assessment. In R. Fernández-Ballesteros (Ed.), Encyclopedia
of psychological assessment (Vol. 1, pp. 276-280). London: Sage Publications.
249. Simonton, D. K. (2003c).
Creativity as variation and selection: Some critical constraints. In M.
Runco (Ed.),
Critical creative processes (pp. 3-18). Cresskill,
NJ: Hampton Press.
Discusses evolutionary variation
and selection aspects of creativity. Selection processes are discussed
at the level of ideas, individual creators and groups or cultures. Factors
discussed include cognitive selection, interpersonal selection and sociocultural
selection. These factors represent restraints that operate at different
levels to restrict the ideational variations in the world. Critical constraints
that are imposed at the beginning of the processes are discussed in 2 broad
classes: limitations on problem identification implemented by creative
individuals, and constraints imposed on solution generation. The following
themes are emphasized in conclusion: (1) creativity is a precarious activity,
(2) creativity is at risk due to adjustment of tradeoffs, and (3) the necessity
of finding an equilibrium between opposites often results in curvilinear
relations between antecedent variables and creative behavior [from the
chapter].
250. Simonton, D. K. (2003d).
Exceptional creativity across the life span: The emergence and manifestation
of creative genius. In L. V. Shavinina (Ed.), International handbook
of innovation (pp. 293-308). Oxford, United Kingdom: Elsevier Science.
251. Simonton, D. K. (2003e).
Expertise, competence, and creative ability: The perplexing complexities.
In R. J. Sternberg & E. L. Grigorenko (Eds.), Perspectives on the
psychology of abilities, competencies, and expertise (pp. 213-239).
New York: Cambridge University Press.
Discusses expertise, competence,
and creative ability. This chapter addresses questions about the status
of creativity as a psychological capacity. The author believe that the
phenomenon of creativity highlights some critical issues about the nature
of abilities, expertise, and competencies. Whether other human capacities
operate in a manner similar to creativity is also discussed [from the chapter].
252. Simonton, D. K. (2003f).
The first six notes: Computer content analyses of classical themes. Bulletin
of Psychology and the Arts,
4, 13-15.
253. Simonton, D. K. (2003g).
Francis Galton’s Hereditary Genius: Its place in the history and psychology
of science. In R. J. Sternberg (Ed.), The anatomy of impact: What has
made the great works of psychology great (pp. 3-18). Washington,
DC: American Psychological Association.
This chapter discusses the historical
importance and impact of the work of F. Galton. Specifically, the author
places the work Hereditary Genius into its historical context and analyzes
the impact of this work on future theorists, such as C. Darwin. By comparing
Hereditary Genius with what psychologists have learned about the nature
of great scientists and their works, this chapter shows several attributes
that can be considered fairly representative of what and how influential
contributions have an impact on the world [from the chapter].
254. Simonton, D. K. (2003h).
Genius and g. In H. Nyborg (Ed.),
The scientific study of general
intelligence: Tribute to Arthur R. Jensen (pp. 229-245). Oxford, England:
Pergamon.
255. Simonton, D. K. (2003i).
Human creativity: Two Darwinian analyses. In S. M. Reader & K. N. Laland
(Eds.), Animal innovation (pp. 309-325). New York: Oxford University
Press.
256. Simonton, D. K. (2003j).
Journalists and geneticists – greatness and goodness [Review of the
book
Good work: When Excellence and
Ethics Meet, H. Gardner, M. Csikszentmihalyi, & W. Damon].
Contemporary
Psychology, 48, 188-190.
Provides a review of the book "Good
Work: When Excellence and Ethics Meet" by Howard Gardner, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi,
and William Damon (2001) which discusses the link between greatness and
psychoticism or other "unattractive human vices". This book has many attractive
features that render it "highly recommended" for all readers who share
the authors' concerns. It is full of provocative and insightful observations
by some of the leading geneticists and journalists in the world today.
These virtues notwithstanding, it must be stressed that the focal audience
for this book is clearly the general educated layperson rather than the
research psychologist.
257. Simonton, D. K. (2003k).
Kroeber’s cultural configurations, Sorokin’s culture mentalities, and generational
time-series analysis: A quantitative paradigm for the comparative study
of civilizations. Comparative Civilizations Review, 49, 96-108.
258. Simonton, D. K. (2003l).
Qualitative and quantitative analyses of historical data. Annual Review
of Psychology, 54, 617-640.
Although the typical study in psychology
involves the quantitative analysis of contemporary research participants,
occasionally psychologists will study historical persons or events. Moreover,
these historical data may be analyzed using either qualitative or quantitative
techniques. After giving examples from the subdisciplines of cognitive,
developmental, differential, abnormal, and social psychology, the distinctive
methodological features of this approach are outlined. These include both
data collection (sampling, unit definition, etc.) and data analysis (both
qualitative and quantitative). The discussion then turns to the advantages
and disadvantages of this research method. The article closes by presenting
the reasons why (a) psychologists will probably continue to use historical
data and (b) quantitative analyses may eventually replace qualitative analyses
in such applications.
259. Simonton, D. K. (2003m). [Review of the book
King of
the mountain: The nature of political leadership, A. M. Ludwig]. JAMA:
Journal of the American Medical Association, 289, 2431-2432.
260. Simonton, D. K. (2003n). [Review of the book
The psychological
assessment of political leaders: With profiles of Saddam Hussein and Bill
Clinton, J. M. Post (Ed.)]. JAMA: Journal of the American Medical
Association, 290, 1386-1387.
261. Simonton, D. K. (2003o).
Scientific creativity as constrained stochastic behavior: The integration
of product, process, and person perspectives.
Psychological Bulletin,
129,
475-494.
Psychologists have primarily investigated
scientific creativity from 2 contrasting in vitro perspectives: correlational
studies of the creative person and experimental studies of the creative
process. Here the same phenomenon is scrutinized using a 3rd, in vivo perspective,
namely, the actual creative products that emerge from individual scientific
careers and communities of creative scientists. This behavioral analysis
supports the inference that scientific creativity constitutes a form of
constrained stochastic behavior. That is, it can be accurately modeled
as a quasi-random combinatorial process. Key findings from both correlational
and experimental research traditions corroborate this conclusion. The author
closes the article by arguing that all 3 perspectives - regarding the product,
person, and process - must be integrated into a unified view of scientific
creativity.
262. Simonton, D. K. (2003p).
Thar’s gold in them thar hills! [Review of the book
The
eureka effect: The art and logic of breakthrough thinking, D. Perkins].
Contemporary
Psychology, 48, 174-176.
Provides a review of the book "The
Eureka Effect: The Art and Logic of Breakthrough Thinking" by David Perkins
(2001). Although he does have criticisms, the reviewer concludes that the
book is clearly, even elegantly written. It is full of provocative ideas.
And it is rich in concrete examples. On some counts, "The Eureka Effect"
might even be considered a superior product. It is more accessible and
more concise, and yet somehow manages to cover considerable ground--a less
is more tour de force. In my mind, at least, it represents Perkins's own
best work.
263. Simonton, D. K. (2004a).
Adding developmental trajectories to the DMGT: Nonlinear and nonadditive
genetic inheritance and expertise acquisition. High Ability Studies:
A Journal on Gifted Education,
15, 155-156.
Comments on an article by Françoys
Gagné on the Differentiated Model of Giftedness and Talent (DMGT).
Gagné has offered a most impressive synthesis of the developmental
literature regarding the giftedness and talent. Given the comprehensiveness
of the treatment, it would seem difficult that any commentator would be
able to do anything more that tinker with some tangential feature of the
model. Nonetheless, I would like to suggest that in future, elaborations
of the model should be devoted to the specification of developmental trajectories-how
participating factors, components and processes change over time. Especially
crucial would be the explicit recognition that these trajectories may assume
a far more complex form than specified in unidimensional and monotonic
maturation models. Two examples are provided.
264. Simonton, D. K. (2004b).
The “Best Actress” paradox: Outstanding feature films versus exceptional
performances by women. Sex Roles, 50, 781-794.
On the basis of prior research on
acting careers, it was hypothesized that exceptional women's performances
are less likely to be associated with outstanding feature films than is
the case for men. This hypothesis was tested in 2 studies. In Study 1,
2,157 films that received Oscar nominations or awards between 1936 and
2000 were examined, whereas in Study 2, I scrutinized 1,367 films that
received awards or award nominations from 7 major professional, journalistic,
and critical associations from 1968 to 2000. In both studies, a significant
gender discrepancy was found, a differential that persisted after the introduction
of a large number of statistical controls and that showed no tendency to
diminish over time. The results are discussed in terms of possible explanations
and directions for future research.
265. Simonton, D. K. (2004c).
Creative clusters, political fragmentation, and cultural heterogeneity:
An investigative journey though civilizations East and West. In P. Bernholz
& R. Vaubel (Eds.), Political competition, innovation and growth
in the history of Asian civilizations (pp. 39-56). Cheltenham, United
Kingdom: Edward Elgar.
266. Simonton, D. K. (2004d).
Creativity [Originality, Ingenuity]. In M. E. P. Seligman & C. Peterson
(Eds.), Character strengths and virtues: A handbook and classification
(pp. 109-123). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association; New
York: Oxford University Press.
267. Simonton, D. K. (2004e).
Creativity as a constrained stochastic process. In R. J. Sternberg, E.
L. Grigorenko, & J. L. Singer (Eds.),
Creativity: From potential
to realization (pp. 83-101). Washington, DC: American Psychological
Association.
In this chapter the author argues
that creativity necessarily involves a heavy dose of chance. The probabilistic
nature of creativity is first illustrated in the two phenomena of multiple
discovery and creative productivity. He then explicates the stochastic
feature of creativity in terms of the creative process, person, and product.
Finally, he observes that constraints are usually imposed on this stochastic
behavior, constraints that are largely defined by the creative domain.
These contrasts in the relative importance of stochastic processes then
determine the optimal personal characteristics and backgrounds of creators
for various domains. The domain-specific nature of these profiles implies
that the identification of creative individuals cannot operate on a "one
size fits all" principle. Instead, identification must be carefully tailored
to the particular needs of each domain--especially the extent to which
creativity in a given domain is highly constrained. Yet in even the most
constrained creative discipline the need for stochastic creativity is not
totally obliterated. A domain in which achievement left nothing to chance
would not be considered a creative domain.
268. Simonton, D. K. (2004f).
Creativity
in science: Chance, logic, genius, and zeitgeist. Cambridge,
England: Cambridge University Press.
269. Simonton, D. K. (2004g).
Does character count in the Oval Office? [Review of the book
Personality,
Character, & Leadership in the White House: Psychologists Assess the
Presidents, S. J. Rubenzer & T. R. Faschingbauer]. PsycCRITIQUES,
49 (6).
In this text by Steven Rubenzer
and Thomas Faschingbauer (2004), a modified survey-questionnaire technique
was employed to determine traits of Presidents of the United States. In
particular, the authors sent experts on U.S. presidents a copy of the NEO
Personality Inventory. The respondents were asked to rate one or more presidents
for whom they had special expertise on the items making up each of the
five scales. The authors then incorporated data from other investigations.
As a result, they came up with some fascinating empirical findings about
how personality impacts on the presidency. The book itself consists of
two major parts. Part 1 is called "Personality and the Personality" and
contains chapters that outline the basic methodology and perhaps the most
important empirical results. Chapter 2 has the descriptive title of "Who
Are These Guys? Personality Traits of Presidents, Founding Fathers, Democrats,
and Republicans." After giving the typical profile of the U. S. presidents
on the five factors and character, the authors present the actual scores
that the presidents received on these assessments. The reviewer notes however,
that although the volume is full of interesting results and intriguing
facts, it is not without flaws, including presentation and missing information.
It is also reported that the investigation itself raises some serious methodological
issues. Overall however, the book still represents the most ambitious attempt
to divulge the personality.
270. Simonton, D. K. (2004h).
Exceptional creativity and chance: Creative thought as a stochastic combinatorial
process. In L. V. Shavinina & M. Ferrari (Eds.), Beyond knowledge:
Extracognitive facets in developing high ability (pp. 39-72). Mahwah,
NJ: Erlbaum.
In this chapter I wish to explore
the extent to which luck, both good and bad, participates in creative performance.
Following definitions of these, I can show that the concepts of luck, chance,
and randomness are highly descriptive of how discovery, invention, and
creativity function in renowned geniuses. I begin by discussing a phenomenon
that is largely confined to scientific and technological creativity--when
two or more scientists or inventors independently make the same discovery
or invention. I next turn to a more general phenomenon, that of creative
productivity across and within careers. Models that affirm that creativity
involves the ability to generate combinations of ideas through a quasi-random
process will explicate both phenomena. I conclude by discussing some of
the principal objectives that might be raised regarding what these models
imply about the creative process and person.
271. Simonton, D. K. (2004i).
Film awards as indicators of cinematic creativity and achievement: A quantitative
comparison of the Oscars and six alternatives. Creativity Research Journal,
16,
163-172.
Unlike most forms of artistic expression,
the feature film is the collaborative product of many individuals.
The comparative impact of these separate contributions was assessed in
2,323 movies nominated for Academy Awards in the major categories.
Two criteria of a film’s impact were defined (best picture honors and movie
guide ratings) along with 16 potential predictor variables (direction,
male and female leads, male and female supporting roles, screenplay, art
direction, costume design, makeup, cinematography, film editing, score,
song, visual effects, sound effects editing, and sound) and 5 control variables
(release date and the genre of drama, comedy, romance, and musical).
Multiple regression analyses indicated that between 30% and 75% of the
variance in impact could be explained using a subset of these factors.
272. Simonton, D. K. (2004j).
Group artistic creativity: Creative clusters and cinematic success in 1,327
feature films. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 34,
1494-1520.
Filmmaking represents a distinctive
form of group creativity in which many individuals contribute to a single
creative product. This exploratory investigation examines these contributions
in 1,327 English-language, narrative feature films. Besides control
variables, the measures included two criteria of impact (best picture honors
and movie guide ratings) and 16 assessments of outstanding cinematic contributions
(direction, male and female lead, male and female supporting, screenplay,
art direction, costume design, makeup, cinematography, film editing, score,
song, visual effects, sound effects editing, and sound). A factor
analysis showed that the contributions formed 4 creative clusters: dramatic,
visual, technical, and musical. Hierarchical regression analyses
indicated that a film’s impact was a positive additive function of the
dramatic and visual clusters, with the dramatic having the primary role.
273. Simonton, D. K. (2004k).
High-impact research programs in psychology: Quantitative and qualitative
aspects. In T. C. Dalton & R. B. Evans (Eds.), The life cycle of
psychological ideas: Understanding prominence and the dynamics of intellectual
change (pp. 83-103). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic.
274. Simonton, D. K. (2004l).
Of old-age styles, swan songs, and winter roses [Review of the book
Aging,
creativity, and art: A positive perspective on late-life development,
M. S. Lindauer].
PsycCRITIQUES,
49 (14).
The book consists of five parts,
or a total of 17 chapters. Part 1 contains two introductory chapters making
the case on behalf of late-life creativity in general and the creativity
of old artists in particular. The three chapters of Part 2 discuss the
two supposedly rival views of late-life creativity, namely, the decline
model versus the continuity model. Part 3 encompasses five chapters that
deal with the level of late-life creativity in both contemporary and historical
artists. In Part 4, rather than focus on the quantity of work produced
in various periods of an artist's career, the four chapters in this section
treat the qualitative features of the work produced late in life. Part
5 consists of three chapters, and the author's attention turns to the role
that the arts play in the elderly. The reviewer notes that one distinctive
feature of the volume is Lindauer's attention to humanistic perspectives
on late-life development, rather than confining the discussion to scientific
data and theories. However, this does not detract from a number of criticism
the reviewer has concerning the text. It is noted that the text contains
many factual errors, overlooks important research, and includes inappropriate
or misinterpreted statistical analyses.
275. Simonton, D. K. (2004m).
Psychology’s status as a scientific discipline: Its empirical placement
within an implicit hierarchy of the sciences. Review of General Psychology,
8,
59-67.
Psychology's standing within a hypothesized
hierarchy of the sciences was assessed in a 2-part analysis. First, an
internally consistent composite measure was constructed from 7 primary
indicators of scientific status (theories-to-laws ratio, consultation rate,
obsolescence rate, graph prominence, early impact rite, peer evaluation
consensus, and citation concentration). Second, this composite measure
was validated through 5 secondary indicators (lecture disfluency, citation
immediacy, anticipation frequency, age at receipt of Nobel Prize, and rated
disciplinary hardness). Analyses showed that the measures reflected a single
dimension on which 5 disciplines could be reliably ranked in the following
order: physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, and sociology. Significantly,
psychology placed much closer to biology than to sociology, forming a pair
of life sciences clearly separated from the other sciences.
276. Simonton, D. K. (2004n).
Representations and combinations: A challenge to contemporary cognitive
science [Review of the book
Creativity,
cognition, and knowledge: An interaction, T. Dartnall Ed.]. Contemporary
Psychology, 49, 489-491.
The majority of the chapters in
this book deal with the general cognitive processes that might account
for human creativity, at least in its more everyday forms. The chapters
vary greatly in their accessibility to those unfamiliar with the corresponding
research areas and also differ appreciably in what they mean by creativity.
Moreover, some chapters are highly philosophical and others are more empirical.
This book can either be treated as another edited volume containing many
fascinating essays on some important topics in cognitive psychology, or
it can be treated more holistically, as the editor intended. This is a
very provocative book, rich in ideas, and definitely worth a serious read.
However, until its alternative epistemology can be more fully developed,
it is doubtful that cognitive psychologists are going to give up representationism
or that creativity researchers are going to turn away from combinationalism.
In the final analysis, the core argument about human cognition must incorporate
more knowledge and display more creativity.
277. Simonton, D. K. (2004o).
[Review of the book
Human
accomplishment: The pursuit of excellence in the arts and sciences, 800
B.C. to 1950, C. Murray]. Journal of the History of the Behavioral
Sciences, 40, 435-438.
The author's most recent work can be considered part of this Galtonian
tradition. Earlier, he had coauthored the much-discussed book "The Bell
Curve," which dealt with the implications of intelligence--normally distributed
and influenced by genetic inheritance--for socioeconomic success. The present
book, in conrrast, is more interested in the uppermost tail of the distribution
where we find the geniuses responsible for the main accomplishmenls that
define civilization. At the same time, the author goes to considerable
effort to show that alternative ratings display an exceptional degree of
concordance, and, hence, these evaluations represent a secure consensus.
The author has some fairly forthright views on several issues that are
bound to stimulate debate. Three of these views are perhaps the most conspicuous.
First, on the decline of Western civilization, he concludes that creative
accomplishment in the Western world is already on the wane. This conclusion
is based on both quantitative data and qualitative judgments. In addition,
the book is crammed with fascinating information and provocative observations.
278. Simonton, D. K. (2004p).
Thematic content and political context in Shakespeare’s dramatic output,
with implications for authorship and chronology controversies. Empirical
Studies of the Arts, 22, 201-213.
Empirical studies of Shakespeare’s
plays have usually assumed that the traditional Stratfordian chronology
is basically correct. This assumption is cast in doubt by Oxfordians
who claim that the plays were authored by Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl
of Oxford. However, prior investigations have shown that Stratfordian
chronologies are more strongly supported by stylometric analyses than are
Oxfordian chronologies. In this study the two authorship positions
are evaluated by examining the correlation between the thematic content
of the plays and the political context in which the plays would be written
according to rival sets of dates. Stratfordian chronologies, when
lagged just 2 years, yield substantively meaningful associations between
thematic content and political context, whereas Oxfordian chronologies
yield no relationships, however lagged. Hence, only the Stratfordian
results are consistent with previous research indicating that artistic
creativity is responsive to conspicuous political events.
279. Simonton, D. K. (2005a).
Are developmental psychologists ready for this creative development? [Review
of the book
Creativity and
development, R. K. Sawyer, V. J. Steiner, S. Moran, R. J. Sternberg,
D. H. Feldman, J. Nakamura, & M. Csikszentmihalyi].
American Journal
of Psychology, 118, 645-649.
280. Simonton, D. K. (2005b, June 1). Are genius and madness
related? Contemporary answers to an ancient question. Psychiatric Times,
22
(7), 21-23.
Ever since antiquity, thinkers have associated creativity with psychopathology--the
classic idea of the "mad genius." By looking at historiometric, psychiatric
and psychometric research one can conclude that exceptional creativity
is often linked with certain symptoms of psychopathology. Nevertheless,
this relationship is not equivalent to the claim that creative individuals
necessarily suffer from psychopathology.
281. Simonton, D. K. (2005c).
Cinematic creativity and production budgets: Does money make the movie?
Journal
of Creative Behavior, 39, 1-15.
Although filmmaking requires substantial
capital investment, it is not known whether cinematic creativity is positively
correlated with the size of the film’s budget. Therefore, budgetary
impact was investigated in a sample of feature films released between 1997
and 2001. Although production costs were positively related to box
office success (as measured by both first weekend and gross), such expenditures
had no correlation with best picture awards and were negatively correlated
with critical acclaim (as gauged by both film reviews and movie guide ratings).
These divergent consequences could be partly interpreted in terms of how
the budget and success criteria differentially correlated with what have
been identified as the four creative clusters of filmmaking, namely, the
dramatic, visual, technical, and musical.
282. Simonton, D. K. (2005d).
Creativity (in the arts and sciences). In M. C. Horowitz (Ed.), New
dictionary of the history of ideas (Vol. 2, pp. 493-497). New York:
Charles Scribner’s Sons.
283. Simonton, D. K. (2005e).
Creativity in psychology: On becoming and being a great psychologist. In
J. C. Kaufman & J. Baer (Eds.),
Faces of the muse: How people think,
work, and act creatively in diverse domains
(pp. 139-151). Mahwah,
NJ: Erlbaum.
In this chapter, the author discusses how creativity in psychology
is both similar to and very unlike creativity in other domains, and suggests
that even among creative psychologists there is great diversity. He shows
that most great psychologists have personality traits that cluster at one
of two very distinct poles, with experimental psychologists tending to
be similar to creators in the natural sciences and correlational/humanistic
psychologists tending to have personality profiles that are similar to
creators in artistic fields.
284. Simonton, D. K. (2005f). Darwin as straw man: Dasgupta’s
(2004) evaluation of creativity as a Darwinian process. Creativity Research
Journal, 17, 299-208.
Dasgupta (2004) challenged Darwinian
theories of creativity by scrutinizing three historic episodes drawn from
the careers of James Watt, Jadadis Chandra Bose, and Pablo Picasso.
However, in the current article I present counterarguments based on a critical
consideration of scholarship, theory, logic, and data. By all four
standards, the anti-Darwinian argument is considerably undermined.
In particular, (a) Dasgupta’s presentation did not reflect the most recent
Darwinian scholarship and therefore (b) the theory evaluated is one not
advocated by any modern proponent. Moreover, the supposed test (c)
requires the application of an inappropriate falsifiability criterion and
(d) depends on a questionable interpretation of data – data that may not
even be the most germane to the theory’s empirical evaluation. I
end by discussing the broader problems faced by anyone advocating Darwinist
theories of creativity.
285. Simonton, D. K. (2005g).
Film as art versus film as business: Differential correlates of screenplay
characteristics. Empirical Studies of the Arts, 23, 93-117.
This investigation determined whether
certain screenplay features can differentiate films directed toward artistic
expression from those aimed at financial gain. The sample consisted
of 1436 English-language, narrative films released between 1968 and 2002.
The variables included 4 economic indicators, 5 movie award assessments,
2 composite critical evaluations, and 24 screenplay characteristics.
A subset of those characteristics distinguished film as art from film as
business. In particular, the two types could be distinguished according
to the impact of sequels, adaptations (e.g., from plays), writer-directors
(or “Auteurs”), genre (viz. dramas), and MPAA ratings (especially Restricted).
These contrasts help explain why budget and box office variables fail to
correlate with the most important movie awards and are even negatively
correlated with critical acclaim.
286. Simonton, D. K. (2005h).
Genetics of giftedness: The implications of an emergenic-epigenetic model.
In R. J. Sternberg & J. Davidson (Eds.), Conceptions of giftedness
(2nd ed., pp. 312-326). New York: Cambridge University Press.
287. Simonton, D. K. (2005i). Giftedness and genetics: The emergenic-epigenetic
model and its implications. Journal for the Education of the Gifted,
28,
270-286.
The genetic endowment underlying
giftedness may operate in a far more complex manner than often expressed
in most theoretical accounts of the phenomenon. First, endowment
may be emergenic. That is, a gift may consist of multiple traits
(multidimensional) that are inherited in a multiplicative (configurational)
rather than an additive (simple) fashion. Second, endowment may not
appear all at once but rather will more likely unfold via an epigenetic
process. These two complications have consequences regarding such
aspects of giftedness as the likelihood of early signs, the appearance
of early- versus late-bloomers, the distribution of giftedness in the general
population, and the stability and continuity of gifts over the course of
childhood and adolescence. These complexities lead to a fourfold
typology of giftedness that has important practical implications.
288. Simonton, D. K. (2005j). The manifest destiny of the hypomanic
immigrant [Review of the book
The hypomanic edge: The link between (a
little) craziness and (a lot of) success in America, J. D. Gartner].
PsycCRITIQUES,
50
(22).
One of the oldest issues in intellectual history is the relation between
genius and madness. In Gartner's book, high achievement is ascribed to
an affective disorder. The author proposes a threefold thesis for this
tendency. First, the key disorder is hypomania, a subclinical form of mania.
Hypomania can be a tremendous asset insofar as it supports the ideational
fluency, optimism, energy, and sometimes irrational determination necessary
for extraordinary achievement. Second, this "hypomanic edge" is not the
exclusive property of artistic creators but rather has also been a prominent
attribute of the major leaders of history. Third, the United States of
America has become a great power largely because it attracts hypomanic
immigrants to its shores--newcomers who have what it takes to achieve supreme
success. The reviewer offers, in an effort to make the reader able to appreciate
Gartner's contribution, an overview of the book's contents and a critique
of its thesis.
289. Simonton, D. K. (2005k). Putting the gift back into giftedness:
The genetics of talent development. Gifted and Talented International,
21
(1), 15-18.
Although giftedness and talent are semantically linked to genetic endowment,
some psychologists have questioned whether innate gifts really exist.
Instead, these researchers argue that so-called giftedness or talent merely
involves the acquisition of domain-specific expertise by means of deliberate
practice. However, these arguments are deficient because they (a)
exaggerate the empirical support for the extreme nurture position and (b)
overlook the empirical evidence on behalf of a moderate nature position.
Hence, a comprehensive understanding of giftedness and talent - upon which
gifted education must be based - requires a more finely nuanced appreciation
of the relative contributions of genes and the environment. This
appreciation necessarily includes recognition that giftedness and talent
do include genetic gifts.
290. Simonton, D. K. (2005l). Rejoinder to Response of Steven
J. Rubenzer and Thomas R. Faschingbauer to “Does Character Count in the
Oval Office?” PsycCRITIQUES, 50 (32).
Replies to the comments of S. J. Rubenzer and T. R. Faschingbauer on
D. K. Simonton's review of their book Personality, Character, and Leadership
in the White House: Psychologists Assess the Presidents. Simonton asserts
that while the NEO personality ratings were not the only data, that scores
on the Big Five dominate the presentation and analysis and that Rubenzer
and Faschingbauer did not respond to his concern about overlooked research.
Simonton's concern regarding different raters for different Presidents
is more than possible ideological bias but whether the biographers gravitate
to particular subjects for reasons other than political affiliation. Finally,
from a scientific perspective, we should desire a more complete understanding
of the causal processes involved, such as a careful distinction between
direct and indirect effects.
291. Simonton, D. K. (2005m, October 1). Response to Dr. Krizek.
Psychiatric
Times, 22 (11), 9.
292. Simonton, D. K., &
Baumeister, R. F. (2005). Positive psychology at the summit. Review
of General Psychology, 9, 99-102.
Psychology has traditionally placed
more emphasis on the negative than positive aspects of human behavior.
The Positive Psychology movement, since its beginnings in 1999, has made
major advances toward correcting this imbalance. Research inspired
by the movement now spans an impressive range of topics, including many
that are absolutely essential to a comprehensive psychological understanding
of human nature. The present special issue provides a sampling of
some of the best work in the area. All but the first and last articles
come from presentations at the Second International Positive Psychology
Summit held in 2003 in Washington DC. This sample can be supplemented
by the chapters that have appeared in several recent anthologies of contemporary
research.
293. Simonton, D. K. (2006a). Beauty and the beast [Review of
the book
Neuropsychology of art: Neurological, cognitive and evolutionary
perspectives, D. W. Zaidel]. PsycCRITIQUES, 51 (10).
The book begins with a brief and perfunctory series preface, followed
by a far more substantial preface by the author. It contains an overview
of the topic and a specification of what she will and will not discuss
in the book. On the neuropsychology side, she will pay special attention
to the effects of brain damage on artistic creativity, with some subsidiary
attention to autistic savants and dementia patients. Of particular interest
is the localization of brain function, including hemispheric differentiation.
On the art side, she makes it clear that the focus will be on the visual
and musical arts, with an emphasis on the first. This book is crammed with
useful facts and insightful speculations. The reviewer personally learned
a lot about neuropsychology--especially about the adverse effects of particular
brain injuries and dysfunctions. Moreover, the author has done a reasonable
job of organizing the material and communicating that material in a fashion
accessible to a broad audience. As a result, the reviewer can recommend
this volume to anyone who is interested in the interface between neuropsychology
and art.
294. Simonton, D. K. (2006b). Cinematic artifice sans psyche
[Review of the motion picture The Da Vinci Code, R. Howard, Director.].
PsycCRITIQUES,
51
(34).
Because The Da Vinci Code is directly adapted from Dan Brown's
popular book by the same name, many readers of this review will already
know that this film is not really about Leonardo da Vinci, the artistic
genius of the Italian Renaissance. Instead, Leonardo posthumously provides
a set of props for a murder mystery. The reviewer states he can much more
easily review this film as a critic than as a psychologist. That is because
anything of psychological interest is not very interesting psychologically.
For instance, although Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) is claustrophobic, the
film does not examine this condition with any sophistication or insight.
Rather, the origins and manifestations of claustrophobia are treated with
just enough superficiality to justify certain lines of dialogue. Another
example is the representation of problem-solving behavior. In two crucial
spots in the plot, Langdon is called on to perform major acts of decipherment.
The first time is with respect to the anagrams left by the curator, and
the second is with respect to the cryptex. In both cases he supposedly
takes advantage of his unusual eidetic memory. The main psychological experience
in this film is déjà vu: These episodes are strikingly
similar to the scenes in A Beautiful Mind (Howard, 2001) in which
mathematician John Nash comes up with his creative (and crazy) ideas. This
similarity is no accident. Not only did Ron Howard direct both movies,
but Akiva Goldsman wrote both screenplays. Any psychologist would also
experience disappointment regarding the motives of the main characters.
They all seem to possess cardboard personalities designed to fill particular
slots in the plot development. But an even more fundamental problem involves
the premise behind the whole film--and here the reviewer may be guilty
of inserting a spoiler. This is the supposed top secret that all members
of the Priory of Sion must protect and that all members of Opus Dei must
destroy forever. The secret is the "fact" that Jesus was married to Mary
Magdalene and that they had a child together. Perhaps the book provides
more justification for why this information would be so earthshaking, but
the film certainly does not succeed. Biblical prophecies did not require
that the Messiah be celibate (and can most likely be construed to foretell
that he would found a new Davidian line of kings). Nor would the divinity
of Jesus have been seriously compromised had he fathered a child, especially
not in the context of Greco-Roman and Middle Eastern civilizations. Even
the great Zeus impregnated more than his proper share of mortal women.
More important, religion and procreation are not psychological misfits.
Many faiths, such as certain sects in Hinduism and Buddhism, argue for
an intimate relation between the two aspects of the human psyche. The Prophet
Mohammed, the founder of the Islamic religion, had several wives and numerous
children. Although Martin Luther was originally a monk, shortly after launching
the Protestant movement, he married an ex-nun. Spirituality and sexuality
are not inherently antithetical, psychologically or historically. Accordingly,
the reviewer failed to understand why the postulated mystery should motivate
murder. The reviewer concludes that in a nutshell, whatever its cinematic
merits or demerits, The Da Vinci Code will never provide provocative
film clips for use in psychology lectures or discussion sections. It is,
quite literally, mindless entertainment.
295. Simonton, D. K. (2006c).
Cinematic creativity and aesthetics: Empirical analyses of movie awards.
In P. Locher, C. Martindale, & L. Dorfman (Eds.), New directions
in aesthetics, creativity, and the arts (pp. 123-136). Amityville,
NY: Baywood Publishing.
In this chapter I plan to illustrate an analytical strategy that enables
the investigator to examine hundreds, even thousands of films. Besides
studying feature-length films in their entirety, the approach permits the
simultaneous examination of all the major contributions to a film's cinematic
success. To be specific, the methodological approach takes advantage of
the rich amount of raw data already available in archival sources, whether
paper or electronic. The illustrations will entail four published investigations:
(a) film awards and critical acclaim, (b) creative clusters in cinematic
art, (c) budget, box office, and aesthetic success, and (d) gender differences
in acting contributions. Because these four studies do not answer all of
the questions that might be entertained regarding cinematic creativity
and aesthetics, I end this chapter with a brief discussion of other questions
that can be addressed using the suggested research strategy.
296. Simonton, D. K. (2006d). Creative genius, knowledge, and
reason: The lives and works of eminent creators. In J. C. Kaufman &
J. Baer (Eds), Creativity and reason in cognitive development (pp.
43-59). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
297. Simonton, D. K. (2006e).
Creativity around the world in 80 ways ... but with one destination. In
J. C. Kaufman & R. J. Sternberg (Eds.), International handbook of
creativity research (pp. 490-496). New York: Cambridge University Press.
298. Simonton, D. K. (2006f). Creativity in Creating Minds:
A retrospective evaluation. In J. A. Schaler (Ed.), Howard Gardner under
fire: A rebel psychologist faces his critics (pp. 143-168). Chicago:
Open Court.
299. Simonton, D. K. (2006g). Creativity in the cortex [Review
of the book
The creating brain: The neuroscience of genius, N. C.
Andreasen]. PsycCRITIQUES,
51
(38).
This book has many positive features. It is replete with clear black-and-white
photographs of geniuses and their creations. It also is graced with many
direct quotations from great poems-indeed, a poem opens every chapter.
At the same time, the book contains numerous instructive figures, tables,
and brain scans (albeit none of the geniuses). Hence, a reader casually
flipping through the pages would certainly feel that the volume is about
the neuroscience of genius. Better yet, the text is extremely well written.
Andreasen probably writes better than most psychiatrists, and even better
than most former professors of Renaissance literature. She seems to have
a very sharp intellect and an attractive personality that makes her writing
a pleasure to read from beginning to end. All that said, I felt somewhat
disappointed after my reading was complete. And the more I reflected on
what I read, the greater that disappointment became. Some of my discontentment
came from what some might consider relatively trivial matters. For instance,
the book does not use any of the expected paraphernalia of scholarship,
whether citations, footnotes, or endnotes. As a consequence, the origins
of many of her assertions cannot be determined. Accordingly, the reader
has no way of going to the original articles or books to find additional
information about the reported findings. My biggest disappointment, however,
was where I least expected trouble: Andreasen's treatment of neuroscience.
For the most part, the book consists of two disconnected discussions: creativity
on the one hand and the brain on the other. With the exception of the research
on psychopathology, the two topics are seldom interlinked even when potential
linkages are available in the literature. So my final assessment is this:
Although the book is a delight to read, we still must wait for a comprehensive
treatment of the neuroscience of creative genius. Perhaps Andreasen should
consider writing a second edition.
300. Simonton, D. K. (2006h).
Historiometric methods. In A. Ericsson, N. Charness, P. J. Feltovich, &
R. R. Hoffman (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of expertise and expert
performance (pp. 319-335). New York: Cambridge University Press.
301. Simonton, D. K. (2006i). Origins of genius [Review of the
book
From such simple a beginning: The four great books of Charles Darwin,
E. O. Wilson Ed.]. PsycCRITIQUES, 51 (15).
This book should catch the eye of any scientific psychologist. The
volume contains Darwin's four most pathbreaking contributions: On the
Origin of Species, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation
to Sex, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, and
The
Voyage of the Beagle. Besides Darwin's own words, the volume contains
the thoughts of Edward O. Wilson, certainly one of the greatest living
evolutionary thinkers. Wilson begins with a general introduction, then
adds a specific introduction at the beginning of each of the four books,
and then concludes the whole anthology with an afterword that devotes some
thought to the relation between evolution and religion. Wilson clearly
aimed the introductions and afterword at a general audience. For those
who are already familiar with Darwin and evolutionary theory, the editor
offers no novel insights. However, the book is attractively produced and
priced. Hence, I strongly recommend the volume for anyone who does not
already have the four works on his or her bookshelf. Few volumes published
today contain so many great ideas in so little space and with such minimal
cost.
302. Simonton, D. K. (2006j). Nothing more than a university
professor engaged in teaching, research, and service: Nor less. In
J. G. Irons, B. C. Beins, C. Burke, B. Buskist, V. Hevern, & J. E.
Williams (Eds.), The teaching of psychology in autobiography: Perspectives
from psychology’s exemplary teachers (Vol. 2, pp. 85-91). Washington,
DC: Society for the Teaching of Psychology, American Psychological Association.
303. Simonton, D. K. (2006k). Presidential IQ, Openness, Intellectual
Brilliance, and leadership: Estimates and correlations for 42 US chief
executives. Political Psychology, 27, 511-639.
Individual differences in intelligence are consistently associated
with leader performance, including the assessed performance of presidents
of the United States. Given this empirical significance, IQ scores
were estimated for all 42 chief executives from Washington to G. W. Bush.
The scores were obtained by applying missing-values estimation methods
(expectation-maximization) to published assessments of (a) IQ (Cox, 1926;
n
= 8), (b) Intellectual Brilliance (Simonton, 1986c; n = 39), and
(c) Openness to Experience (Rubenzer & Faschingbauer, 2004;
n
= 32). The resulting scores were then shown to correlate with evaluations
of presidential leadership performance. The implications for George
W. Bush and his presidency were then discussed.
304. Simonton, D. K. (2006l). [Review of the book
Investigative
pathways: Patterns and stages in the careers of experimental scientists,
F. L. Holmes]. Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences,
61,
109-111.
305. Simonton, D. K. (2006m). Scientific status of disciplines,
individuals, and ideas: Empirical analyses of the potential impact of theory.
Review
of General Psychology, 10, 98-112.
The place of theory in scientific research can be subjected to empirical
investigation. This possibility is illustrated by examining three
issues. First, what determines a scientific discipline’s placement in a
hypothesized hierarchy of the sciences? This was addressed in an
analysis of the characteristics that distinguish various disciplines, including
attributes bearing an explicit connection to the role of theory.
Second, what individual research programs are most likely to have a long-term
impact on a scientific discipline? This was examined by looking at
how thematic organization and theoretical orientation influence a scientist’s
disciplinary visibility. Third, what are the features of scientific
publications that render some more successful in terms of long-term influence?
This question was addressed by examining how theoretical content determines
the impact of journal articles.
306. Simonton, D. K. (2006n). The Tower of Babel undone. [Review
of the book
Empires of the word: A language history of the world,
N. Ostler].
PsycCRITIQUES, 51 (21).
This book is not a psycholinguistic analysis but rather a historical
survey of the factors that are responsible for some languages becoming
widely spoken. Part 1 consists of two chapters that discuss the nature
of language history. Here the author introduces some of the processes--such
as population growth, diffusion, conquest, and migration--that figure prominently
throughout the remainder of the book. Part 2 then devotes six chapters
to languages that had spread "by land." This presentation is followed by
Part 3, which discusses a more recent development--languages that spread
"by sea" and thus formed noncontiguous communities. Part 4 has two chapters
on the present and future of the world languages, with special attention
to the "current top 20." The text is also illustrated throughout with 66
maps, 2 tables, and 12 figures. In addition, the book features an index
in which the world's major languages are put in boldface to make it easier
for the curious reader to seek them out. The reviewer notes that the maps
are sometimes confusing, and the author sometimes overlooks empirical research
that might have shed light on certain topics. Nonetheless, the reviewer
states that the author does an excellent job of presenting various theories
and disproving them one by one. He is also willing to put forth his own
hypotheses about the factors that determine the differential success of
languages on the world stage.
307. Simonton, D. K. (2007a). Achievement. In J. E. Birren (Ed.),
Encyclopedia
of gerontology (2nd ed., Vol. 1, pp. 20-29). San Diego, CA: Academic
Press.
308. Simonton, D. K. (2007b). But is truth beautiful, or beauty
symmetric? [Review of the book Why beauty is truth: A history of symmetry,
I. Stewart]. PsycCRITIQUES, 52 (52).
The book is organized as a series of historical narratives; each chapter
is devoted to a particular big name in the history of symmetry. The book's
historical narrative spans a tremendous range of topics: quadratic, cubic,
quartic, and quintic equations; regular polygons; Fermat's Last Theorem;
non-Euclidean geometry; imaginary and complex numbers; quaternions and
octonions; transcendental numbers; group theory; the Fano plane; topology;
Maxwell's equations; quantum mechanics; antimatter; the special and general
theories of relativity; cosmology; string theory and superstring theory,
and loop quantum gravity. The reviewer greatly enjoyed the book but criticized
the author's attempt to combine the history of ideas with the intimate
biographies of those who have contributed those ideas, believing that this
was too much of a distraction. Another, more serious problem, was that
the reviewer lost the overall thread in the author's thesis, with large
sections of the book lacking any explicit reference to the core theme.
Finally, the reviewer laments that the author never truly grapples with
the various forms that beauty may take, and that symmetry is only one form.
309. Simonton, D. K. (2007c). Chance. In N. J. Salkind (Ed.),
Encyclopedia
of measurement and statistics (Vol. 1, pp. 129-133). Thousand Oaks,
CA: Sage Publications.
310. Simonton, D. K. (2007d). Cinema composers: Career trajectories
for creative productivity in film music. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity,
and the Arts, 1, 160-169.
It was hypothesized that film composers, like classical composers,
have career trajectories that are endogenously rather than exogenously
driven (i.e., contingent on internal processes rather than external influences).
Study 1 examined 153 composers who composed original film music or music
adapted later for film. The correlations among the number of total hits
and the ages at first hit, best hit, and last hit followed the same pattern
as found for classical composers. Study 2 concentrated on a subset of 78
composers who were nominees or awardees for best score or song from the
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The analyses indicated the
same predicted configuration of correlations among the number of total
nominations and the ages at first nomination, first award, last award,
and last nomination. Furthermore, the longitudinal placement of the career
landmarks corresponded closely across the two studies: first hit with first
nomination, best hit with first award, and last hit with last award. The
endogenous determination of the career course helps explain the poor association
between exceptional film music and the corresponding film’s cinematic success.
311. Simonton, D. K. (2007e). The creative process in Picasso’s
Guernica sketches: Monotonic improvements or nonmonotonic variants? Creativity
Research Journal, 19, 329-344.
A controversy has emerged over whether Picasso’s sketches for Guernica
illustrate a Darwinian process of blind-variation and selective-retention
(i.e., nonmonotonic variants) rather than a more systematic, expertise-driven
process (i.e., monotonic improvements). This issue is objectively
addressed by having judges (1 pro-Darwinian, 2 anti-Darwinian, and 2 neutral)
rank the figural components according to their perceived progress toward
the final version of the painting. Besides strongly agreeing on the
perceived order (composite progress score alpha = .85), the independent
judges concurred that this order was conspicuously nonmonotonic, with minimal
tendency to converge on the end result. These conclusions held not
only for the sketches as a whole, but also for the sequence of sketches
for the separate figural elements of the painting. Hence, Picasso’s
creative process is best described as producing blind nonmonotonic variants
rather than expert monotonic improvements. The general method used
in this study can be extended to other documentary evidence – such as musical
sketches, literary drafts, and laboratory notebooks – to determine the
extent to which creativity operates in a Darwinian manner.
312. Simonton, D. K. (2007f). Creative life cycles in literature:
Poets versus novelists or conceptualists versus experimentalists? Psychology
of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 1, 133-139.
The economist Galenson (2005) proposed a theory of creative life cycles
that distinguishes between early-peaking conceptual creators (finders)
and late-peaking experimental creators (seekers). This contrast is claimed
to invalidate previous research findings that poets tend to peak earlier
than novelists. However, a multiple regression analysis of his published
data on 23 creative writers shows that the poetry-novel genre contrast
makes a contribution to the prediction of the career trajectory that is
orthogonal to the conceptual-experimental contrast. The result is a fourfold
typology of creative life cycles: conceptual poets, conceptual novelists,
experimental poets, and experimental novelists who do their best work at
ages 28, 34, 38, and 44, respectively. The article closes with a discussion
of additional empirical and theoretical issues.
313. Simonton, D. K. (2007g). Creativity. In R. F. Baumeister
& K. D. Vohs (Eds.), Encyclopedia of social psychology (pp.
200-202). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
314. Simonton, D. K. (2007h). Creativity. In J. E. Birren (Ed.),
Encyclopedia
of gerontology (2nd ed., Vol. 1, pp. 316-325). San Diego, CA: Academic
Press.
315. Simonton, D. K. (2007i). Creativity: Specialized expertise
or general cognitive processes? In M. J. Roberts (Ed.), Integrating
the mind: Domain general versus domain specific processes in higher cognition
(pp. 351-367). Hove, UK: Psychology Press.
316. Simonton, D. K. (2007j). Don’t worry, be high in subjective
well being! [Review of the documentary short How Happy Can You Be?,
L. Hatland, Director.]. PsycCRITIQUES, 52 (18).
Researchers associated with the positive psychology movement study
not just special virtues and talents but also the psychological quality
of our everyday lives. Perhaps the most important of these qualities is
happiness, or what researchers are more likely to refer to as subjective
well-being, a more scientific-sounding term. Hence, many positive psychologists
have tried to tease out the causes of human happiness. Why are some people
seemingly happier than others? Why do some nations seem to be filled with
happy people whereas other nations appear to be populated by far more discontented
folk? Does money buy happiness? Is there anything we can do to enhance
our own subjective well-being? Should we really want to do so? Does happiness
live up to all the hype? Might not mere contentment have its advantages?
Is there a downside to never being down? These are the kinds of questions
addressed by Line Hatland in her fascinating documentary How happy can
you be?. Given the nature of the topic, this product might be considered
as falling under the genre of an educational video designed for classroom
use. Yet this documentary also has the attributes of a standard film designed
for broader distribution.
317. Simonton, D. K. (2007k). Film music: Are award-winning
scores and songs heard in successful motion pictures? Psychology of
Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 1, 53-60.
Using a sample of 401 feature-length narrative films released between
1998 and 2003, the current study examines whether award-winning film music
is more likely to appear in successful films. Film success was measured
using two measures of critical evaluations, a composite measure of best
picture awards and nominations, and box office gross, whereas the success
of the film music was gauged by the number of awards and award nominations
received. In addition, control variables were defined for production
costs, release date, release season, runtime, MPAA rating, and genre (drama,
comedy, romance, musical, animation, and foreign-language). Although music
awards and nominations were positively correlated with film success, the
score rather than song was primarily responsible for the relationship.
Moreover, after introducing the control variables, song awards had no relation
whatsoever, whereas score awards were still positively associated with
the film success as measured by best-picture nominations and awards.
318. Simonton, D. K. (2007l). The forward march of psychological
science and practice. [Review of the book
Portraits of pioneers of psychology,
D. A. Dewsbury, L. T. Benjamin, & M. Wertheimer (Eds.)]. PsycCRITIQUES,
52
(5).
This book is the sixth in a series that began in 1991. Wertheimer was
involved in editing all six volumes, and Kimble, on the first five. As
is noted in the book's preface, the goal of the series is to "provide a
set of chapters about both the scholarly and personal lives of psychologists
who have made significant contributions to the development of the field"
(p. ix). The earlier volumes contain chapters devoted to the lives and
works of some of the greatest names in the history of psychology. As the
editors note, "This volume is a bit of a departure from previous ones in
that we have concentrated more on authors who have made substantial contributions
to the field of the history of psychology" (p. x). Moreover, despite the
greater historical expertise of the solicited writers, every chapter is
extremely readable. All of the chapters - but especially those about the
less well-known figures - should be of interest to historians of psychology,
including those who teach the subject at the undergraduate and graduate
levels.
319. Simonton, D. K. (2007m). Historiometrics. In N. J. Salkind
(Ed.), Encyclopedia of measurement and statistics (Vol. 2, p. 441).
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
320. Simonton, D. K. (2007n). Is bad art the opposite of good
art? Positive versus negative cinematic assessments of 877 feature films.
Empirical
Studies of the Arts, 25, 121-143.
Although some research suggests that negative judgments might be more
complex and more potent than positive judgments, cinematic assessments
may offer an instance of a genuine bipolar evaluative dimension.
This is shown in an analysis of 877 feature films that received positive
(Oscars) or negative (Razzie) recognition in the categories of best/worst
picture, director, male and female lead, male and female supporting actor,
screenplay, and original song (whether nomination or actual award).
These assessments were compared with film critic evaluations, financial
and box office data, and several relevant cinematic attributes (e.g., literary
adaptations, writer-directors, biopics, sequels, remakes, film genres,
runtime, and MPAA ratings). Analyses indicated that negative assessments
were largely the inverse of positive assessments, with similar weights
being assigned to most cinematic attributes. However, the negative
judgments were somewhat less consequential regarding those same attributes.
321. Simonton, D. K. (2007o). Picasso’s Guernica creativity
as a Darwinian process: Definitions, clarifications, misconceptions, and
applications. Creativity Research Journal, 19, 381-384.
The author responds to four commentaries on Simonton (2007e). The response
deals with two sets of issues. First are criticisms of the Darwinian theory
of creativity, especially as applied to Picasso’s sketches for the Guernica.
These criticisms range from the presumed role of associative processes
to the essential nature of any Darwinian model. The second set of issues
pertains to diverse methodological objections with respect to measurement
and data analysis. The author responds to each and every point. The author
concludes not only that Picasso’s creative process is best described as
Darwinian, but also that the Darwinian theory of creativity has been notably
strengthened by the current exchange.
322. Simonton, D. K. (2007p). The psychology of creativity.
In M. J. Epstein, T. Davila, & R. D. Shelton (Eds.), The creative
enterprise: Vol. 2. Culture (pp. 85-97). Westport, CT: Praeger.
323. Simonton, D. K. (2007q). Psychology’s limits as a scientific
discipline: A personal view. Applied & Preventive Psychology: Current
Scientific Perspectives, 12, 35-36.
I provided a more personal view of Wachtel’s (1980) article. I began
by discussing the extent to which my own research program complied with
his distinctive recommendations. After offering a different take on the
impact of high productivity, I focused on (a) the negative effects of the
quest for extramural funding and (b) the positive effects of a better balance
between theoretical and empirical contributions. I then turn to some of
my own theoretical and empirical studies of the place that theory has in
successful science. This research suggests that theory only has a beneficial
effect when it is integrative in function and when it is closely constrained
by available data. I end with a speculation regarding the value of having
theories that are maximally formal, even mathematical.
324. Simonton, D. K. (2007r). [Review of the book Creativity:
Theories and themes: Research, development, and practice, Mark A. Runco].
Psychology
of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 1, 251-252.
Reviews the book, Creativity: Theories and themes: Research, development,
and practice by Mark A. Runco. This book consists of 11 chapters with
the following titles: "Cognition and Creativity," "Developmental Trends
and Influences on Creativity," "Biological Perspectives on Creativity,"
"Health and Clinical Perspectives," "Social, Attributional, and Organizational
Perspectives," "Educational Perspectives," "History and Historiometry,"
"Culture and Creativity," "Personality and Motivation," "Enhancement and
the Fulfillment of Potential," and "Conclusion: What Creativity Is and
What It Is Not." Beyond this all-encompassing content, the volume is crammed
with illustrations and with all those "boxes" that are so characteristic
of introductory textbooks in psychology. Each chapter also begins with
appropriate quotations and a didactic "Advanced Organizer." Finally, Runco
closes with 63 pages of references and a 15-page subject index. The reviewer
has one major complaint: Runco seems to have adopted an "open the floodgates"
approach that sometimes results in the almost willy nilly insertion of
ideas and material. One consequence of this tendency is that the illustrations
and boxes are at times less useful than they ought to be. Another repercussion
of Runco's leave-nothing-out approach is that it occasionally leads to
the presentation of ideas with minimal if any discussion or commentary.
The reviewer does assert though, that for someone in the market for a text
for use in an introductory creativity course, a book that is wide-ranging
and most current, Runco's Creativity is a good choice.
325. Simonton, D. K. (2007s). The social context of innovation.
In M. J. Epstein, T. Davila, & R. D. Shelton (Eds.), The creative
enterprise: Vol. 2. Culture (pp. 155-170). Westport, CT: Praeger.
326. Simonton, D. K. (2007t). Talent and expertise: The empirical
evidence for genetic endowment. High Ability Studies, 18,
83-84.
327. Simonton, D. K. (2007u). Why get your undergraduate education
at a major research university? Explorations: The UC Davis Undergraduate
Research Journal, 10, iii-v.
328. Song, A. V., & Simonton, D. K. (2007). Personality
assessment at a distance: Quantitative methods. In R. W. Robins, R. C.
Fraley, & R. F. Krueger (Eds.), Handbook of research methods in
personality psychology (pp. 308-321). New York: Guilford Press.
329. Nielsen, B. D., Pickett, C. L., & Simonton, D. K. (2008).
Conceptual versus experimental creativity: Which works best on convergent
and divergent thinking tasks? Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity,
and the Arts, 2, 131-138.
Galenson’s research on creativity has identified two unique creative
methods: conceptual and experimental. These methods have different processes,
goals, purposes and strategies for innovation. In order to determine (a)
if college students use one method more than the other, and (b) if one
method is superior to the other, 115 college students were randomly assigned
to utilize the conceptual creative method, the experimental creative method,
or their own creative method (i.e., how they would solve a creative problem
without instruction) while completing two types of convergent and divergent
thinking tasks. Participants using the experimental creative method performed
better on both types of convergent thinking tasks and most participants
using the experimental creative method were unaware of this increase in
performance.
330. Pardoe, I., & Simonton, D. K. (2008). Applying discrete
choice models to predict Academy Award winners. Journal of the Royal
Statistical Society: Series A (Statistics in Society), 171,
375-394.
Every year since 1928, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
has recognized outstanding achievement in film with their prestigious Academy
Award, or Oscar. Before the winners in various categories are announced,
there is intense media and public interest in predicting who will come
away from the awards ceremony with an Oscar statuette. There are no end
of theories about which nominees are most likely to win, yet despite this,
there continue to be major surprises when the winners are announced. This
article frames the question of predicting the four major awards - picture,
director, actor in a leading role, actress in a leading role - as a discrete
choice problem. It is then possible to predict the winners in these four
categories with a reasonable degree of success. The analysis also reveals
which past results might be considered truly surprising - nominees with
low estimated probability of winning who have overcome nominees who were
strongly favored to win.
331. Simonton, D. K. (2008a). Bilingualism and creativity. In
J. Altarriba & R. R. Heredia (Eds.), An introduction to bilingualism:
Principles and practices (pp. 147-166). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
332. Simonton, D. K. (2008b). Childhood giftedness and adulthood
genius: A historiometric analysis of 291 eminent African Americans. Gifted
Child Quarterly, 52, 243-255.
Although the association between giftedness and genius has been the
subject of several retrospective, longitudinal, and historiometric studies,
this research concentrated on majority-culture samples. Hence, in the current
study Cox’s (1926) findings regarding 301 geniuses were replicated on a
sample of 291 eminent African Americans. Relative genius was measured by
two archival eminence measures (majority White and minority Black culture)
and by scores on the Creative Achievement Scale (Ludwig, 1992). Giftedness
was assessed by raters who were blind to the identity of the individuals
being evaluated. Control variables were defined for gender, year of birth,
status as a living contemporary, and 18 domains of achievement. Multiple
regression analyses indicated that adulthood eminence and creative achievement
are positively correlated with early giftedness, with an effect size comparable
to that found in the Cox study. Furthermore, this association was not moderated
by gender, birth year, and most of the remaining variables.
333. Simonton, D. K. (2008c). Cliometrics. In W. A. Darity,
Jr. (Ed.), International encyclopedia of the social sciences (2nd
ed., Vol. 1, pp. 581-583). Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA.
334. Simonton, D. K. (2008d). Creative wisdom: Similarities,
contrasts, integration, and application. In A. Craft, H. Gardner, &
G. Claxton (Eds.), Creativity, wisdom, and trusteeship: Exploring the
role of education (pp. 68-76). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
335. Simonton, D. K. (2008e). Distribution, normal. In W. A.
Darity, Jr. (Ed.), International encyclopedia of the social sciences
(2nd ed., Vol. 2, 415-417). Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA.
336. Simonton, D. K. (2008f). Gender differences in birth order
and family size among 186 eminent psychologists. Journal of Psychology
of Science and Technology, 1, 15-22.
Ever since Galton (1874) research has indicated that earlier born children
are overrepresented among distinguished scientists, even after controlling
for family size. Other studies imply that the developmental asset of an
early ordinal position could be even stronger for eminent women. This hypothesis
was tested using a sample of illustrious psychologists born between 1802
and 1952 (112 women and 74 men). Not only did women tend to have earlier
birth orders, but also the relation between family size and birth order
was far weaker for women than for men. In fact, where for men birth order
was a positive monotonic function of family size, for women it was a nonmonotonic
single-peaked function. These gender differences were stable across historical
time and survived control for differences in eminence and year of birth.
337. Simonton, D. K. (2008g). Creativity and genius. In O. P.
John, R. W. Robins, & L. A. Pervin (Eds.), Handbook of personality:
Theory and research (3rd ed., pp. 679-698). New York: Guilford Press.
338. Simonton, D. K. (2008h). Going on living when you’re buried
alive. [Review of the motion picture The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,
Julian Schnabel, Director.]. PsycCRITIQUES, 53 (12).
Imagine you wake up and life is a blur. You realize that you're almost
totally paralyzed from head to foot and can see only the limited world
around you from a single eye. People talk to you, but you cannot respond.
Your ability to enter into the social exchanges that are part of everyday
human life is cruelly truncated. You learn from the physician that you
had a massive stroke and that you are now suffering from what is known
as "locked-in syndrome." Your intellectual and emotional capacities are
untouched, but you have become pure mind sans body--with one crucial exception.
You can move one eyelid. A therapist informs you that she has a system
by which you can again communicate with the world. She'll just read through
a list of letters ordered according to frequency of use, and you blink
when she gets to the right letter. Almost immediately you use this new-found
power to tell the therapist, "I want to die." Yet you're encouraged to
"hang on to the human who is inside you," and you decide on a more creative
and adaptive response. You'll write a book about your new life. It is called
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. This is the life of Schnabel. His book
was later turned into the film. As for the film, the reviewer will not
say that the motion picture is perfect. he would give it only four stars
out of five. One problem is that the filmmakers did not shy away from revealing
the fact that the protagonist was not a particularly sympathetic human
being prior to his stroke. At the same time, the filmmakers had no qualms
about casting rather attractive women as his caretakers. So at times his
empathetic feelings were attenuated by the fleeting thought that this guy
was a womanizing jerk.
339. Simonton, D. K. (2008i). Napoleon complex. In W. A. Darity,
Jr. (Ed.), International encyclopedia of the social sciences (2nd
ed., Vol. 5, pp. 366-367). Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA.
340. Simonton, D. K. (2008j). Practicing essential cinematic
sex. [Review of the motion picture Lust, Caution, A. Lee, Director.].
PsycCRITIQUES.
Practicing essential cinematic sex. PsycCRITIQUES, 53 (50).
Lee is willing to take advantage of his reputation to expand the boundaries
of mainstream cinema. This willingness became strikingly apparent in Brokeback
Mountain, a love story about two cowboys. Although the story Lust, Caution
centers on a heterosexual love affair, Lee pushes the limit in a different
direction: Where Brokeback stayed within the bounds of an R-rated film,
Lee thrusts this film quite emphatically into NC-17 territory. The reviewer
states we have to be grateful that the director had sufficient artistic
freedom to have the final word on the film's Motion Picture Association
of America rating. In my opinion, Ang Lee practiced essential cinematic
sex.
341. Simonton, D. K. (2008k). Presidential greatness and its
socio-psychological significance: Individual or situation? Performance
or attribution? In C. Hoyt, G. R. Goethals, & D. Forsyth (Eds.), Leadership
at the crossroads: Vol. 1. Psychology and leadership (pp. 132-148).
Westport, CT: Praeger.
342. Simonton, D. K. (2008l). Scientific talent, training, and
performance: Intellect, personality, and genetic endowment. Review of
General Psychology,
12, 28-46.
Despite over a century of research, psychologists have still not established
scientific talent as an empirically demonstrable phenomenon. To help solve
this problem, a talent definition was first proposed that provided the
basis for three quantitative estimators of criterion heritability that
can be applied to meta-analytic and behavior genetic research concerning
the intellectual and personality predictors of scientific training and
performance. After specifying the ideal data requirements for the application
of the three estimators, the procedures were applied to previously published
results. Personality traits were illustrated using the California Psychological
Inventory and the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire with respect to two
criteria (scientists versus nonscientists and creative scientists versus
less creative scientists) and intellectual traits using the Miller Analogies
Test with respect to seven criteria (graduate grade point average, faculty
ratings, comprehensive examination scores, degree attainment, and research
productivity, etc.). The outcome provides approximate, lower-bound estimates
of the genetic contribution to scientific training and performance. Subsequent
discussion concerns what future research is necessary for a more complete
understanding of scientific talent as an empirical phenomenon.
343. Simonton, D. K. (2008m). Self-actualization. In W. A. Darity,
Jr. (Ed.), International encyclopedia of the social sciences (2nd
ed., Vol. 7, pp. 394-396). Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA.
344. Simonton, D. K. (2008n). Willing creation. In J. Baer,
J. C. Kaufman, & R. F. Baumeister (Eds.), Are we free? Psychology
and free will (pp. 296-303). New York: Oxford University Press.
The chapter discusses the place of volition in the act of creation.
Discussion of this issue raises something of a paradox. The human will
has both a major role in creativity and a very minor role in creativity.
In a sense, creative thought is a function of both active and passive processes
- of yang and yin. This conclusion is apparent from research on the creative
process and its relation to incubation, serendipity, chance, regression
behavior genetics, psychoticism, expertise development, and multiples.
The safest conclusion is simply that creativity is a complex consequence
of the interaction between willful independence and will-free contingency.
345. Simonton, D. K., Moore, T. L., & Shaughnessy, M. F.
(2008). A reflective conversation with Dean Keith Simonton. North American
Journal of Psychology, 10, 595-602.
Presents a reflective conversation with Dean Keith Simonton. Topics
of discussion in the conversation include writing, researching, historiometric
inquiry, socio-cultural context of the psychology of science, personality
and individual differences, and motivation.
346. Cerridwen, A., & Simonton, D. K. (2009). Sex doesn’t
sell – nor impress: Content, box office, critics, and awards in mainstream
cinema. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 3,
200-210.
Although it is commonly assumed that “sex sells” in mainstream cinema,
recent research indicates a far more ambiguous relation between strong
sexual content and financial performance. Moreover, such content may not
be justified by either critical evaluations or movie awards. The literature
even suggests that cinematic sex may reflect long-term gender biases in
the film industry. The current study investigates these issues by addressing
two questions. First, what is the impact of sex and other graphic content
on the central criteria of cinematic success? Second, to what extent is
such content contingent on the proportion of women engaged in filmmaking,
whether as producers, directors, writers, or actors? Analyses of 914 films
released between 2001 and 2005 indicated that sex and nudity do not, on
the average, boost box office, earn critical acclaim, or win major awards.
Although female involvement does influence a film’s content, the only impact
on the presence of sex and nudity is the proportion of women who make up
the cast. Notwithstanding statistical complications, the best conclusion
is that graphic sex neither sells nor impresses.
347. Simonton, D. K. (2009a). Applying the psychology of science
to the science of psychology: Can psychologists use psychological science
to enhance psychology as a science? Perspectives on Psychological Science,
4, 2-4.
Added to the already tremendous diversity of subdisciplines of psychological
science is the psychology of science. Although research on the psychology
of science began in 1874, the field has seen a substantial expansion of
activity in recent years. One particular subset of this research literature
has special importance, namely inquiries into the psychology of doing great
science. These investigations may be assigned into four groups: cognitive,
differential, developmental, and social. Each of these deal with critical
questions that can, if answered, contribute directly to the improvement
of psychology as a science. Potential applications include (a) the identification
of scientific talent in psychology, (b) the education of future investigators
in psychological science, and (c) the evaluation of psychology’s progress
as a scientific endeavor.
348. Simonton, D. K. (2009b). Archival methods. In H. Reis &
S. Sprecher (Eds.), Encyclopedia of human relationships (Vol. 1,
pp. 104-105). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
349. Simonton, D. K. (2009c). Cinema talent: Individual and
collective. In L. Shavinina (Ed.), International handbook of giftedness
(Part One, pp. 699-712). New York: Springer.
Cinema is an unusual form of achievement in that it involves both (a)
extensive collaborative effort and (b) considerable financial resources.
A series of investigations examines the operation of both these characteristics
in large samples of award-winning films. These empirical studies reveal
the multidimensional complexity of cinematic products and indicate the
dimensions that are most critical for understanding individual contributions
to the collective products. Especially crucial are those who contribute
to the dramatic qualities of film, especially the screenplay and direction.
Hence, future research should focus on the factors that underlie giftedness
and talent in screenwriters and directors.
350. Simonton, D. K. (2009d). Cinematic success, aesthetics,
and economics: An exploratory recursive model. Psychology of Creativity,
Aesthetics, and the Arts, 3, 128-138.
Although the reputation of creative artists is based largely on the
merit of their work, the latter can sometimes be assessed in several different
ways that may not necessarily agree. This lack of evaluative consensus
is perhaps most apparent in cinematic success; this can be judged by film
critics (initial and final), movie awards (picture, dramatic, visual, technical,
and music), and box office performance (including both first weekend and
later gross). Previous research not only shows that these success criteria
may not always agree, but also that the criteria may have distinct aesthetic
and economic antecedents. However, because the success criteria emerge
at distinct points across time, a recursive model can be developed that
describes the relationships among the criteria as well as their differential
dependence on the predictive factors most frequently identified in the
literature. The model was constructed using a sample of 1006 English-language,
live-action, feature-length narrative films released between 2000 and 2006.
The resulting equations indicate the complexity of cinematic success. Nonetheless,
overriding this complexity is the fundamental contrast between film as
art and film as entertainment.
351. Simonton, D. K. (2009e). Cinematic success criteria and
their predictors: The art and business of the film industry. Psychology
and Marketing, 26, 400-420.
The author reviewed the empirical research on the factors underlying
the success of feature-length narrative films. After specifying some methodological
caveats, the review examined the three main criteria by which a film’s
success can be evaluated: critical evaluations (both early and post theatrical
run), financial performance (including first weekend and gross), and movie
awards (including dramatic, visual, technical, and music categories). To
what extent do these criteria represent distinct aesthetic and economic
assessments? The review then turned to the various predictors of these
success criteria. How is success connected with the film’s production and
distribution characteristics? To what extent do the predictors converge
and diverge across alternative criteria? The article then closed with a
discussion of some psychological issues raised by the reviewed findings.
352. Simonton, D. K. (2009f). Controversial and volatile flicks:
Contemporary consensus and temporal stability in film critic assessments.
Creativity
Research Journal, 21, 311-318.
Prior research has shown that the aesthetic assessments by film critics
display a high level of concurrent consensus and temporal stability. However,
neither the consensus nor the stability is so great as to preclude evaluative
disagreements and reassessments (e.g., sleepers and faders). The present
investigation was designed to identify the predictors of these concurrent
and temporal departures from critical congruence. The potential predictors
were variables that emerged in previous research on the determinants of
cinematic creativity: (a) financial data, such as production budget and
box office performance; (b) movie awards and nominations in the major categories
(viz. picture and the dramatic, visual, technical, and music clusters of
honors); and (c) film attributes, such as the MPAA rating, running time,
and screenplay characteristics like sequels, remakes, and adaptations (from
plays, novels, nonfiction, etc.). Both simultaneous and stepwise regression
analyses indicated that the cinematic exceptions to critical consensus
and stability were predictable. However, because the predictors only accounted
for between 10 and 15% of the variance and were not the same for dissent
and instability, the departures cannot be said to contaminate the critics’
evaluations in any systematic manner.
353. Simonton, D. K. (2009g). Creative genius in classical music:
Biographical influences on composition and eminence. The Psychologist,
22,
1076-1079.
354. Simonton, D. K. (2009h). Creativity. In C. R. Snyder &
S. J. Lopez (Eds.), The handbook of positive psychology (2nd ed.,
pp. 261-269). New York: Oxford University Press.
Because creativity is often viewed as a highly positive human capacity
both at the individual and societal levels, the chapter provides an overview
of what psychologists have learned about this phenomenon. After beginning
with the definition of creativity in terms of adaptive originality, the
review turns to how
measurement depends on whether creativity is to be treated as a process,
a person, or a product. The next section of the review concentrates on
the principal empirical results, with special focus on the two findings
that would seem to be especially germane for positive psychology, namely
(a) the impact of early trauma on creative development and (b) the relation
between creativity and psychopathology. This section is followed by a discussion
of the two key theoretical issues that pervade research on creativity:
the nature–nurture question and the small-c versus big-C creativity question.
Once these empirical and theoretical matters have been discussed, the article
can progress to a treatment of some practical applications. These applications
concern creativity-improving techniques that can be implemented during
childhood, adolescence, or adulthood. The chapter closes with a brief discussion
of the most fruitful directions for future research on creativity. Despite
the tremendous accumulation of knowledge about the phenomenon, a lot of
unanswered questions remain.
355. Simonton, D. K. (2009i). Creativity as a Darwinian phenomenon:
The blind-variation and selective-retention model. In M. Krausz, D. Dutton,
& K. Bardsley (Eds.), The idea of creativity (2nd ed., pp. 63-81).
Leiden, Netherlands: Brill.
Charles Darwin's theory of biological evolution has often served as
a model for human creativity. The most influential application is Donald
T. Campbell's (1960) blind-variation and selective-retention model. The
BVSR model has undergone recent development into a full-fledged theoretical
framework. Moreover, substantial empirical research on the creative process,
the creative personality, and creative development provide support for
the theory's key claims. One special feature of the theory is that it provides
a basis for ordering domains according to the degree to which creativity
in those domains is dependent on BVSR processes (e.g, science < art;
paradigmatic science < nonparadigmatic science; formal/classical art
< expressive/romantic art). Corresponding to this placement would be
expected differences in the disposition and development of the domain's
creators.
356. Simonton, D. K. (2009j). The decline and fall of musical
art: What happened to classical composers? Empirical Studies of the
Arts, 27, 209-216.
Martindale (2009) asserted that a dialectic conflict between novelty
and intelligibility causes serious art to go into a death spiral. This
assertion is examined with respect to classical music. More specifically,
three questions are addressed. First, did classical music truly decline
and die? Second, why did it do so? Third, where did would-be classical
composers end up in the absence of classical music? It seems that the decadence
is real, and that Martindale’s explanation has some merit. Even so, classical
composers still exist. We just call them cinema composers. And they jumped
off a sinking ship to board a luxury liner.
357. Simonton, D. K. (2009k). Emotion and composition in classical
music: Historiometric perspectives. In P. Juslin & J. Sloboda (Eds.),
Oxford
handbook of music and emotion: Theory, research, applications (pp.
347-366). New York: Oxford University Press.
358. Simonton, D. K. (2009l). Genetic Studies of Genius. In
B. Kerr (Ed.), Encyclopedia of giftedness, creativity, and talent
(Vol. 1, pp. 373-375). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
359. Simonton, D. K. (2009m). Genius, creativity, and leadership.
In T. Rickards, M. Runco, & S. Moger (Eds.), Routledge companion
to creativity (pp. 26-31). London: Taylor & Francis.
360. Simonton, D. K. (2009n). Genius 101.
New York: Springer.
361. Simonton, D. K. (2009o). Giftedness: The gift that keeps
on giving. In T. Balchin, B. Hymer, & D. Matthews (Eds.), The Routledge
international companion to gifted education (pp. 26-31). London: Routledge.
362. Simonton, D. K. (2009p). Gifts, talents, and their societal
repercussions. In L. Shavinina (Ed.), International handbook of giftedness
(Part Two, pp. 905-912). New York: Springer.
There are a number of ways of justifying special programs for the gifted
and talented, but certainly among the most practically important concerns
the societal benefits of adulthood achievements. This justification is
elaborated by considering the cross-sectional distribution of impact in
various domains of achievement. Because this distribution is highly skewed,
with an extremely long upper tail, a large proportion of the contributions
to any domain come from a small number of contributors. This means that
any failure to promote the actualization of potential of this productive
elite can have consequences out of proportion to the number of individuals
involved.
363. Simonton, D. K. (2009q). Historiometry. In B. Kerr (Ed.),
Encyclopedia
of giftedness, creativity, and talent (Vol. 1, pp. 422-424). Thousand
Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
364. Simonton, D. K. (2009r). Historiometry in personality and
social psychology. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 3,
49-63.
Historiometry is one of the oldest methods in personality and social
psychology. In fact, the first professional publication in experimental
social psychology also incorporated a historiometric study. The present
review article begins by describing the nature of the technique with respect
to unit definition and sampling, the several approaches to measuring variables,
and the correlational nature of the statistical analyses. This description
also pinpoints some of the unique characteristics of the approach. These
attributes and other attributes are then illustrated using the historiometric
research on assessed leadership of United States presidents. This research
has converged on a single predictive equation that has been successfully
replicated and extended over a quarter century of research. The article
closes with a brief evaluation of historiometry’s future prospects in the
field.
365. Simonton, D. K. (2009s). How thin is the partition? Where
does it reside? [Review of the documentaries Hidden Gifts, Nick
Higgins, Director, and Between Madness and Art, Christian Beetz,
Director]. PsycCRITIQUES, 54 (26).
The first film, Between madness and art, is a 75-min documentary
devoted to the Prinzhorn Collection of drawings, paintings, and sculptures
by schizophrenic patients. Dr. Hans Prinzhorn had begun collecting these
works in the 1920s while he was director of the Heidelberg Psychiatric
Clinic. Besides ample images taken from the collection, the documentary
includes interviews with psychotherapists, artists, the current collection
director, and two contemporary outpatient artists. The second film, Hidden
gifts, is a concise, 25-min documentary focused on a single Scotsman
named Angus MacPhee. Having been diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1946,
he was sent to a psychiatric hospital, where he stayed for a half century.
As a kind of protest, he adopted elective mutism, refusing to speak to
any of the staff. Yet MacPhee seemed to express himself in a strikingly
different way: He would go out to the nearby fields and use grass to weave
various articles of clothing, such as boots, coats, and gloves. These ephemeral
products of his imagination were destroyed each year by the hospital staff
without his registering any complaint. Taken together, the two films raise
many fascinating issues.
366. Simonton, D. K. (2009t). The literary genius of William
Shakespeare: Empirical lessons drawn from his dramatic and poetic creativity.
In S. B. Kaufman & J. C. Kaufman (Eds), The psychology of creative
writing (pp. 131-145). New York: Cambridge University Press.
367. Simonton, D. K. (2009u). The “other IQ”: Historiometric
assessments of intelligence and related constructs. Review of General
Psychology, 13, 315-326.
Running parallel to mainstream research on the psychometric assessment
of intelligence is another tradition of research on the historiometric
assessment of intelligence and closely affiliated variables. Historiometric
assessment is based on four data sources: (a) personality sketches (e.g.,
Intellectual Brilliance), (b) developmental histories (e.g., IQ), (c) content
analyses (e.g., integrative complexity), and (d) expert surveys (e.g.,
Openness to Experience). The first two represent major lines of intelligence
research that involved key figures in the development of corresponding
psychometric methods (e.g., Galton, Terman, and Thorndike), whereas the
last two constitute independent research paradigms that later intersected
with the first two. The literature on US presidents then provides an integrated
illustration of the four historiometric approaches and how they converge
on the same broad conclusions. Significantly, historiometric investigations
on the relation between broadly-defined intelligence and adulthood achievement
obtain about the same effect size as found in psychometric research (i.e.,
rs
or betas = .25 ± .10). Because historiometric and psychometric studies
have rather distinctive methodological advantages and disadvantages, this
consistent outcome provides corroborative support for both sets of empirical
findings.
368. Simonton, D. K. (2009v). Political leaders. In B. Kerr
(Ed.), Encyclopedia of giftedness, creativity, and talent (Vol.
2, 683-684). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
369. Simonton, D. K. (2009w). Presidential leadership styles:
How do they map onto charismatic, ideological, and pragmatic leadership?
In F. J. Yammarino & F. Dansereau (Eds.), Research in Multi-Level
Issues: Vol. 8. Multi-level issues in organizational behavior and leadership
(pp. 123-133). Bingley, UK: Emerald.
Mumford, Hunter, Friedrich, and Caughron (2009) discuss at length three
generic types of extraordinary leadership: charismatic, ideological, and
pragmatic. I raise the question of whether this general framework applies
to more focused domains of leadership. More specifically, I discuss my
own research on leadership styles in the US presidency – interpersonal,
charismatic, deliberative, creative, and neurotic – and then examine whether
these five styles have some correspondence to the three broad types.
370. Simonton, D. K. (2009x). Scientific creativity as a combinatorial
process: The chance baseline. In P. Meusburger, J. Funke, & E. Wunder
(Eds.). Milieus of creativity (pp. 39-51). Dordrecht: Springer.
The chapter puts forward the thesis that the key features of scientific
creativity can be explicated in terms of combinatorial models. Such models
can explain the most aspects of the phenomenon with the fewest possible
assumptions, and thus satisfies the law of parsimony or Ockham’s razor.
At the very minimum the models provide a baseline for comparing explanations
that try to explain the same phenomena using more assumptions. The argument
begins with six core assumptions that specify how combinatorial creativity
operates in the context of the individual scientist, the concepts and ideas
that constitute the domain, and the colleagues and associates who define
the field. These six assumptions then lead to several implications with
respect to (a) scientific careers (individual variation and longitudinal
change in output) and (b) scientific communities (namely the central attributes
of multiple discovery and invention). The theory then undergoes elaboration
in terms of a more complex mathematical model that makes highly precise
and empirically distinctive predictions. The chapter ends with a discussion
of how the combinatorial models connect with other empirical findings regarding
scientific creativity.
371. Simonton, D. K. (2009y). Shakespeare’s “small Latin and
less Greek”? Scientific perspectives on education, achieved eminence, and
the authorship controversy. Mensa Research Journal, 40, 22-26.
Although William Shakespeare is widely seen as one of the greatest
writers in world literature, a serious debate rages about the author’s
true identity. On the one hand, the traditional Stratfordians maintain
that a man baptized as Shakspere wrote the plays and poems. On the other
hand, the anti-Stratfordians have advocated alternative candidates such
as Oxford, Marlowe, Bacon, and Neville. One of the central issues in this
debate concerns the relation between education and genius. Is genius ingrained
or must it be trained? To address this issue, I present a review of the
most germane scientific inquiries. Even though genius in literature does
not have to be associated with high levels of formal education, such achievement
is correlated with extensive self education, that is, extensive reading
in childhood and adolescence. These empirical results are then used to
discuss the plausibility of the Stratfordian candidate. This issue needs
to be resolved if we ever wish to understand other features of the author,
such as this genius’s most probable IQ.
372. Simonton, D. K. (2009z). Varieties of perspectives on creativity.
Perspectives
on Psychological Science, 4, 466-467.
The author of the target article concentrates on two broad issues raised
by the four commentaries: the hierarchical model of domains and individual
differences in creativity. In the first case, additional research is cited
to address (a) the contrast between “hard” and “soft” domains and (b) the
application of this contrast to children, adolescents, and non-eminent
adults. In the second case, two recent studies are shown to confirm the
model’s predictions regarding personal creative achievement. It is hoped
that the target article, the commentaries, and this reply will inspire
future inquiries into creativity in all its disciplinary varieties.
373. Simonton, D. K. (2009aa).Varieties of (scientific) creativity:
A hierarchical model of disposition, development, and achievement. Perspectives
on Psychological Science, 4, 441-452.
Prior research supports the inference that scientific disciplines can
be ordered into a hierarchy from the “hard” natural sciences to the “soft”
social sciences. This ordering corresponds with such objective criteria
as disciplinary consensus, knowledge obsolescence rate, anticipation frequency,
theories-to-laws ratio, lecture disfluency, and age at recognition. It
is then argued that this hierarchy can be (a) extrapolated to encompass
the humanities and arts and (b) interpolated within specific domains to
accommodate contrasts in subdomains (e.g., revolutionary versus normal
science). This expanded and more finely differentiated hierarchy is then
shown to have a partial psychological basis in terms of dispositional traits
(e.g., psychopathology) and developmental experiences (e.g., family background).
This demonstration then leads to three hypotheses about how a creator’s
domain-specific impact depends on his or her disposition and development:
the domain-progressive, domain-typical, and domain-regressive creator hypotheses.
Studies published thus far lend the most support to the domain-regressive
creator hypothesis. In particular, major contributors to a domain are more
likely to have dispositional traits and developmental experiences most
similar to those that prevail in a domain lower in the disciplinary hierarchy.
However, some complications to this generalization suggest the need for
more research on the proposed hierarchical model.
374. Simonton, D. K., & Song, A. V. (2009). Eminence, IQ,
physical and mental health, and achievement domain: Cox’s 282 geniuses
revisited. Psychological Science, 20, 429-434.
Catharine Cox published two studies of highly eminent creators and
leaders, the first in 1926 as volume two of Terman’s (1925-1959) landmark
Genetic Studies of Genius and the second in 1936 as a co-authored article.
The former publication concentrated on the relation between IQ and achieved
eminence whereas the latter focused on early physical and mental health.
Taking advantage of unpublished data from the second study, the present
authors examine for the first time the relationships among achieved eminence,
IQ, early physical and mental health, and achievement domain. The correlation
and regression analyses showed that for these 282 individuals (a) eminence
is a positive function of IQ and (b) IQ is a positive function of mental
health and a negative function of physical health, implying an indirect
effect of physical and mental health upon eminence. Furthermore, levels
of early physical and mental health vary across 10 specific domains of
achievement.
375. Cassandro, V. J., & Simonton, D. K. (2010). Versatility,
openness to experience, and topical diversity in creative products: An
exploratory historiometric analysis of scientists, philosophers, and writers.
Journal
of Creative Behavior, 44, 1-18.
Creative individuals are considered versatile when their achievements
extend beyond their most commonly cited domain, thus indicating remarkable
and varied interests and abilities. The present study examined the association
between versatility and (a) the personalities of eminent creators and (b)
the topical diversity of their creative products. The main sample consisted
of 67 eminent scientists, creative writers, philosophers, and scholars
drawn from the history of Western Civilization, with a subsample of 38
creators obtaining observer-based scores on openness to experience. Versatile
creators were found to have produced works with greater topical diversity
than did their non-versatile counterparts. In addition, topical diversity
was positively associated with openness. These relationships varied according
to the domain of creative achievement.
376. Simonton, D.K. (2010a, May/June). Are mad and genius peas
in the same pod?
The National Psychologist, 19 (3), 12.
377. Simonton, D. K. (2010b). Creativity as blind-variation
and selective-retention: Combinatorial models of exceptional creativity.
Physics
of Life Reviews, 7, 156-179.
Campbell (1960) proposed that creative thought should be conceived
as a blind-variation and selective-retention process (BVSR). This article
reviews the developments that have taken place in the half century that
has elapsed since his proposal, with special focus on the use of combinatorial
models as formal representations of the general theory. After defining
the key concepts of blind variants, creative thought, and disciplinary
context, the combinatorial models are specified in terms of individual
domain samples, variable field size, ideational combination, and disciplinary
communication. Empirical implications are then derived with respect to
individual, domain, and field systems. These abstract combinatorial models
are next provided substantive reinforcement with respect to findings concerning
the cognitive processes, personality traits, developmental factors, and
social contexts that contribute to creativity. The review concludes with
some suggestions regarding future efforts to explicate creativity according
to BVSR theory.
378. Simonton, D. K. (2010c). Creativity in highly eminent individuals.
In J. C. Kaufman & R. J. Sternberg (Eds.), Cambridge handbook of
creativity (pp. 174-188). New York: Cambridge University Press.
379. Simonton, D. K. (2010d). The curious case of Catharine
Cox: The 1926 dissertation and her Miles-Wolfe 1936 follow-up. History
of Psychology, 13, 205-206.
380. Simonton, D. K. (2010e). Doctrine of Chances (de
Moivre). In N. J. Salkind (Ed.), Encyclopedia of research design
(Vol. 1, pp. 383-386). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
381. Simonton, D. K. (2010f). Heisenberg effect. In N. J. Salkind
(Ed.), Encyclopedia of research design (Vol. 2, pp. 563-567). Thousand
Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
382. Simonton, D. K. (2010g, Fall). Introducing our president-elect
for Division 1: Dean Keith Simonton. The General Psychologist, 45
(2), 49.
383. Simonton, D. K. (2010h). Little science to big science:
Big scientists to little scientists. Gifted and Talented International,
25
(1), 27-28.
384. Simonton, D. K. (2010i). Personal tastes and stylistic
change in music: How do they fit with an evolutionary interpretation? Physics
of Life Reviews, 7, 33-34.
385. Simonton, D. K. (2010j). Personality and leadership. In
R. A. Couto (Ed.), Political and civic leadership (Vol. 2, 631-639).
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
386. Simonton, D. K. (2010k). Reply to comments. Physics
of Life Reviews, 7, 190-194.
Both positive and negative comments are discussed with the aim of stimulating
future theoretical and empirical research on BVSR models of creativity,
including combinatorial models.
387. Simonton, D. K. (2010l). So you want to become a creative
genius? You must be crazy! In D. Cropley, J. Kaufmann, A. Cropley, &
M. Runco (Eds.), The dark side of creativity (pp. 218-234). New
York: Cambridge University Press.
388. Simonton, D. K., & Damian, R. I. (2010). In the beginning
was the word ... [Review of the motion picture Police, Adjective,
Corneliu Porumboiu, Director]. PsycCRITIQUES, 55 (38).
This is a small-budget film, coming out of the Romanian New Wave, about
an undercover police officer tailing a teenage boy who is suspected of
dealing drugs. The audience is placed in the voyeuristic role of following
him through the painstaking routine of his job. There is no proof to incriminate
the 16-year-old, other than the fact that he has smoked a few joints with
his friends, and the police officer would rather continue the investigation
in order to find the real drug dealer. His boss, however, wants to close
the case and arrest the boy for drug use, but the police officer is reluctant
to condemn the boy to seven years in prison for a joint. For the viewer,
the focus is not on the facts collected by the police officer but on his
interactions with other people, which accentuate the absurdity of his position.
Various scenes in the movie make a very artful use of humor, providing
comic relief but also subtly reaffirming the ludicrousness of the police
officer’s situation. The officer's predicament is touching, as is the accurate
portrayal of the psychological aftermath ensuing from the fall of the Iron
Curtain. This film has captured the crux of the problem faced by transition
countries: societies whose mind-set has not yet adapted to the newfound
freedom and can evolve only with time and through generational change.
From a historical perspective, this seems natural and easy, but the cost
is paid with every individual’s psychological health. Fight the system
or be the system. Many avoid this difficult choice by simply leaving the
country—only to find out that this choice has to be made anywhere in the
world. Although Western societies offer more individual freedom and more
opportunities for self-actualization, the police officer’s conflict really
is a universal one.
389. Simonton, D. K., & Ting, S.-S. (2010). Creativity in
Eastern and Western civilizations: The lessons of historiometry. Management
and Organization Review, 6, 329-350.
What are the fundamental factors that promote highly influential creativity?
How do these factors differ in Western and Far Eastern civilizations? Many
researchers have addressed these questions using historiometrics, a method
that tests nomothetic hypotheses about human behavior by subjecting historical
and biographical data to objective and quantitative analyses. These investigations
may entail either aggregate-level analyses (e.g., generational time series
of creative activity) or individual-level analyses (e.g., cross-sectional
studies of creative achievement). Moreover, the empirical findings in each
of these two approaches fall into two categories of East-West comparisons:
(a) shared variables and convergent results versus (b) shared variables
and divergent results. After reviewing representative findings in each
of these categories, we discuss what the results imply about the nature
of high-impact creativity in the East and West and also explore areas of
potential future historiometric research.
390. Damian, R. I., & Simonton, D. K. (2011). From past
to future art: The creative impact of Picasso’s 1935 Minotauromachy
on
his 1937 Guernica. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and
the Arts, 5, 360-369.
This paper reports a quantitative analysis of how Picasso’s 1935 etching
Minotauromachy
influenced the creative process observed in the sketches for his 1937 painting
Guernica.
The experimental stimuli consisted of 39 images obtained from the original
set of Guernica sketches. We included only the four figural elements
that appear in both the etching and throughout the
Guernica sketches
(the bull/minotaur head, the horse, the woman holding a lamp, and the ladder
climb). Seven independent raters judged the similarity of the sketches
to the images extracted from the 1935 etching. The average similarity rating
gave us the progress score for each sketch when compared to the etching.
Using the data from Simonton (2007a), we also included in our discussion
the sketch progress scores towards Guernica. We found evidence for
the nonmonotonicity of the creative process (characterized by numerous
backtrackings), as opposed to monotonic improvement. This suggests that
although Picasso used some of the figural elements found in his earlier
work, he did not merely improve them through a monotonic “honing” process,
but rather explored a variety of possibilities, as is characteristic of
a blind-variation process.
391. Jennings, K. E., Simonton, D. K., & Palmer, S. E. (2011,
November). Understanding exploratory creativity in a visual domain. Proceedings
of the 8th ACM conference on Creativity, Atlanta.
This paper describes a computerized aesthetic composition task that
is based on a “creativity as search” metaphor. The technique collects detailed,
moment-to-moment data about people’s search behavior, which can help open
the “black box” that separates independent variables that influence creativity
from their outcomes. We first describe the technique and provide a detailed
theoretical framework. Then, we discuss how the technique is typically
applied, describe several in-progress studies, and present some preliminary
results. Finally, we discuss relations to other work, limitations, and
future directions. We argue that this technique and the research that it
enables will facilitate a deeper understanding of the creative process,
become a valued tool for creativity researchers, and contribute to methodological
and theoretical advances in how creativity is studied and understood.
392. Simonton, D. K. (2011a). Awards. In M. A. Runco & S.
Pritzker (Eds.), Encyclopedia of creativity (2nd ed., vol. 1, pp.
107-113). Oxford: Elsevier.
Awards, prizes, and honors are offered for a wide variety of creative
achievements in the arts and sciences. Such honors also assume many different
forms, such awards for single products versus entire careers. Because such
recognition has face validity, they have been often used to solve the criterion
problem in creativity research. Two illustrations are discussed at length:
Nobel Prizes given to great scientists and Academy Awards (Oscars) bestowed
on great cinematic accomplishments. Because use of awards has disadvantages
as well as advantages, comparisons are made with alternative indicators
of exceptional creativity, such as productivity and eminence. Finally,
the Creative Achievement Questionnaire is used to show how awards might
be integrated with lower levels of creativity to produce a scale that covers
the full range of the phenomenon.
393. Simonton, D. K. (2011b). Big-C creativity in the Big City:
Definitions, speculations, and complications. In D. E. Andersson, Å.
E. Andersson, & C. Mellander (Eds.), Handbook of creative cities
(pp. 72-84). Cheltenham Glos, UK: Edward Elgar.
394. Simonton, D. K. (2011c). Creativity and discovery as blind
variation and selective retention: Multiple-variant definitions and blind-sighted
integration. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts,
5, 222-228.
In 1960, Donald Campbell proposed that creativity and discovery involve
blind variation and selective retention (BVSR). Over the past half century,
his proposal has continued to provoke controversy. The principal focus
of this debate has been on whether ideational variations are blind or sighted.
Although some progress has been made in providing a more formal definition
of what constitutes a blind variation, these recent developments have assumed
just two variants. In this article, both blindness and sightedness are
defined for any number of hypothetical variants. This definition provides
the metric for a blind-sighted continuum applicable to any set of variants
for a given problem. The definition also yields a six-fold typology of
ideational variants that differ in blindness and vary in their likelihoods
of being selected for retention. With only minor modification, this definition
is demonstrated to apply to sequential as well as simultaneous variation-selection.
These formal definitions provide the means to integrate both blindness
and sightedness into a single conception, thereby undermining the present
tendency toward an exclusive, either-or debate. Even so, if creativity
and discovery are defined as the generation of ideas that are novel, useful,
and surprising, then all three criteria are more likely to be met when
the generated ideational variations fall toward the blind end of the blind-sighted
spectrum.
395. Simonton, D. K. (2011d). Creativity and discovery as blind
variation: Campbell’s (1960) BVSR model after the half-century mark. Review
of General Psychology, 15, 158-174.
This article assesses and extends Campbell’s (1960) classic theory
that creativity and discovery depend on blind variation and selective retention
(BVSR), with special attention given to blind variations (BV). The treatment
begins by defining creativity and discovery, variant blindness versus sightedness,
variant utility and selection, and ideational variants versus creative
products. These definitions lead to BV identification criteria: (a) intended
BV, which entails both systematic and stochastic combinatorial procedures,
and (b) implied BV, which involves both variations with properties of blindness
(variation superfluity and backtracking) and processes that should yield
variant blindness (associative richness, defocused attention, behavioral
tinkering, and heuristic search). These conceptual definitions and identification
criteria then have implications for four persistent issues, namely, domain
expertise, ideational randomness, analogical equivalence, and personal
volition. Once BV is suitably conceptualized, Campbell’s theory continues
to provide a fruitful approach to the understanding of both creativity
and discovery.
396. Simonton, D. K. (2011e). Debating the BVSR theory of creativity:
Comments on Dasgupta (2011) and Gabora (2011). Creativity Research Journal,
23, 381-387.
Donald Campbell’s blind variation and selective retention (BVSR) theory
of creativity is now more than a half-century old, but it continues to
provoke debate, both in his original version and in the later versions
of subsequent researchers, especially Simonton (e.g., 2010a). Gabora (2011)
and Dasgupta (2011) have provided useful and detailed critiques. The present
response begins with an overview of the debate’s history, and then turns
to the two sets of criticisms. This reply then closes with a suggested
integrative reconciliation in which variation-selection episodes can be
evaluated along a blind-sighted continuum.
397. Simonton, D. K. (2011f). Do scientific geniuses also have
blind spots? Clio’s Psyche, 18, 175-176.
398. Simonton, D. K. (2011g). Eminence. In M. A. Runco &
S. Pritzker (Eds.), Encyclopedia of creativity (2nd ed., vol. 1,
pp. 441-448). Oxford: Elsevier.
Creativity researchers sometimes use eminence as a manner of identifying
highly creative individuals as well as an approach to assessing the magnitude
of their creativity. After discussing various assessment techniques, the
article treats the psychometric features of the resulting measures. The
article next provides an overview of some of the central empirical findings
regarding achieved eminence as a creator. The article then closes with
a discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of using eminence measures
to study creativity.
399. Simonton, D. K. (2011h). Exceptional talent and genius.
In T. Chamorro-Premuzic, A. Furnham, & S. Stumm (Eds.), Handbook
of individual differences (pp. 635-655). New York: Wiley-Blackwell.
400. Simonton, D. K. (2011i). Film. In M. A. Runco & S.
Pritzker (Eds.), Encyclopedia of creativity (2nd ed., vol. 1, pp.
509-515). Oxford: Elsevier.
Although film first emerged as a form of entertainment, it later evolved
into a major medium of artistic creativity. Even so, the entertainment
aspect persisted so that the medium has largely bifurcated into film as
artistic expression and film as entertainment business. This split is first
illustrated by examining the three principal criteria of a film’s impact:
critical evaluations, financial performance, and movie awards. The correlations
among measures in each of these three categories indicate that financial
performance is largely independent of critical evaluations and movie awards
in the major categories. This segregated pattern is further demonstrated
by the variables that predict the three criteria of cinematic impact. These
predictors include production costs, screenplay characteristics, personnel,
and distribution and exhibition. These findings then lead to a discussion
of the methodological and substantive issues that must be resolved to obtain
a better understanding of film as art and as business.
401. Simonton, D. K. (2011j, Fall). General psychology’s wonderful
new benefactor. The General Psychologist, 46 (2), 17.
402. Simonton, D. K. (2011k). Genius and greatness. In M. A.
Runco & S. Pritzker (Eds.), Encyclopedia of creativity (2nd
ed., vol. 1, pp. 564-570). Oxford: Elsevier.
The terms genius and greatness are often used interchangeably in reference
to historic achievers, but what is the actual correspondence between these
two concepts? The answer begins by examining the two alternative definitions
of genius, namely, historiometric genius and psychometric genius. Next,
the analysis turns to greatness, focusing on its three main manifestations:
exceptional creativity, outstanding leadership, and prodigious performance.
Kant’s definition of genius is used to indicate the circumstances in which
genius and greatness converge into a single phenomenon. However, it is
also shown when both historiometric and psychometric genius diverge from
true greatness.
403. Simonton, D. K. (2011l). Great flicks: Scientific
studies of cinematic creativity and aesthetics. New York: Oxford
University Press.
404. Simonton, D. K. (2011m). Historiometry. In M. A. Runco
& S. Pritzker (Eds.), Encyclopedia of creativity (2nd ed., vol. 1,
pp. 617-622). Oxford: Elsevier.
Historiometry is the application of quantitative methods to archival
data about historic personalities and events to test nomothetic hypotheses
about human thought, feeling, and action. It has a long history of successful
application to the scientific study of both the creative individual and
the creative product. After reviewing some the central findings, the article
closes with an evaluation the method’s advantages and disadvantages.
405. Simonton, D. K. (2011n). Positive psychology in historical
and philosophical perspective: Predicting its future from the discipline’s
past. In K. Sheldon, T. Kashdan, & M. Steger (Eds.), Designing the
future of positive psychology: Taking stock and moving forward (pp.
447-454). New York: Oxford University Press.
406. Simonton, D. K. (2011o). War. In M. A. Runco & S. Pritzker
(Eds.), Encyclopedia of creativity (2nd ed., vol. 2, pp. 509-514).
Oxford: Elsevier.
The relation between war and creativity has been the subject of a large
number of historiometric investigations. These inquiries adopt several
distinct forms. First, where some concentrate on creativity in entire nations
or civilizations, others focus on individual creators. Second, where some
studies look at quantitative effects (e.g., number of products generated),
others examine war’s qualitative effects (e.g., the types of products generated).
Third, although a majority of researchers investigate how war affects creativity,
a small number of studies indicate how creativity may influence war.
407. Simonton, D. K. (2011p). When the high-wire act takes place
on the piano’s keyboard. [Review of the book The improvising mind: Cognition
and creativity in the musical moment, A. L. Berkowitz]. PsycCRITIQUES,
56
(5).
Aaron Berkowitz’s The improvising mind starts with an introductory
chapter that defines improvisation and outlines its connections with basic
cognitive processes. The next several chapters are then grouped into two
parts. Part I concerns “Cognition in the Pedagogy and Learning of Improvisation.”
It consists of four chapters. Part II turns to “Cognition in Improvised
Performance.” It also consists of four chapters. The reviewer provides
a short bio of the author, including his qualifications in music, which
he uses as examples of improvisation throughout the book. The reviewer
liked that the book has a wealth and diversity of information on the topic:
classic pedagogical treatises; cognitive research on learning, memory,
and language; brain-imaging studies; recordings; lectures and master classes;
and interviews with performers. Because the emphasis is on music production,
the author ignores some areas of research that might bear some connection
with improvisation. Examples include music perception, aesthetics, and
emotion. This book is recommended for those interested in music and musical
improvisation, especially using the piano.
408. Simonton, D. K. (2011q). Zeitgeist. In M. A. Runco &
S. Pritzker (Eds.), Encyclopedia of creativity (2nd ed., vol. 2,
pp. 533-538). Oxford: Elsevier.
The Zeitgeist represents the political, cultural, economic, social,
and disciplinary circumstances that affect the quantity and quality of
creativity in a particular time and place. In its extreme form, Zeitgeist
theory becomes sociocultural determinism in which psychological variables
become irrelevant in explaining creativity. The Zeitgeist can assume two
forms: internal and external. The internal Zeitgeist concerns the conditions
that hold within a given domain of creative achievement. Examples include
the influence of disciplinary role models, the impact of scientific paradigms,
and the repercussions of stylistic conventions in the arts. The external
Zeitgeist regards the circumstances outside a particular domain. These
circumstances include political events and economic conditions that can
influence both the quantity and quality of creativity displayed in a particular
time and place. Most if not all forms of creativity are the partial function
of both internal and external
409. Simonton, D. K., & Damian, R. I. (2011a). Picasso.
In M. A. Runco & S. Pritzker (Eds.), Encyclopedia of creativity
(2nd ed., vol. 2, pp. 231-238). Oxford: Elsevier.
Pablo Picasso is well known as one of the most eminent artists in the
history of Western civilization, and certainly the most famous artistic
creator of the 20th century. This entry begins by narrating his life and
works in order to give an overview of his personal and artistic development.
The article then turns to empirical studies, which may be divided into
those that deal with his life and those that deal with his work. In the
former case, Picasso has been a subject of psychobiographical, comparative,
and historiometric research, albeit in the latter case this usage is more
covert. In the case of works, a number of researchers have examined specific
paintings, with the vast bulk of the studies concentrated on the extensive
sketches that Picasso drew for his 1937 Guernica. These studies
provide insight into Picasso’s creative process.
410. Simonton, D. K., & Damian, R. I. (2011b). Sometimes
old wine in new bottles can taste better—and more bitter. [Review of the
motion picture Tuesday, After Christmas, Radu Muntean, Director].
PsycCRITIQUES,
56 (21).
Reviews the film, Tuesday, after Christmas directed by Radu
Muntean (2010) This film is yet another one coming out of the Romanian
New Wave. The story line concerns a man’s extramarital affair and how the
man must choose between his mistress and his wife and mother of his young
daughter. For one and a half hours, we follow closely the unfaithful husband,
the banker Paul Hanganu (Mimi Branescu), and we are given the (shocking)
role of filling his shoes. We see through his eyes, hear through his ears,
feel his emotions, and feel the emotions of others in reaction to him.
Throughout the movie, we are placed in a voyeuristic position, feeling
like we are watching Paul’s life through a peephole. The print is a reproduction
of Matisse’s Fall of Icarus. Like Paul, Icarus wanted too much and
so ended up with much less.
411. Simonton, D. K., & Flora, C. (2011, Winter). Spark
of genius [Introduction, Genius Special Issue]. Discover Magazine,
2-3.
412. Overskeid, G., Grønnerød, C., & Simonton,
D. K. (2012). The personality of a nonperson: Gauging the inner Skinner.
Perspectives
on Psychological Science, 7, 187-197.
B. F. Skinner is consistently rated as one of the most important figures
in the history of psychology. Much has been said about his character, some
of it strongly negative. Yet little is known about what kind of man he
really was. Based on information from published sources, archival material,
and people who knew him, we used “blind” raters to assess Skinner’s score
on the Big Five personality factors. We found that Skinner was a highly
conscientious man, and highly open to experience. He was also somewhat
neurotic and somewhat extraverted, but neither agreeable nor disagreeable.
The resulting personality profile was directly compared to meta-analytic
results concerning scientists versus nonscientists, creative scientists
versus non-creative scientists, and artists versus non-artists. In general,
Skinner’s personality was consistent with findings regarding other notable
scientists.
413. Ritter, S. M., Damian, R. I., Simonton, D. K., van Baaren,
R. B., Strick, M., Derks, J. & Dijksterhuis, A. (2012). Diversifying
experiences enhance cognitive flexibility.
Journal of Experimental Social
Psychology, 48, 961-964.
Past research has linked creativity to unusual and unexpected experiences,
such as early parental loss or living abroad. However, few studies have
investigated the underlying cognitive processes. We propose that some experiences
have in common a "diversifying" aspect and an active involvement, which
together enhance cognitive flexibility (i.e., creative cognitive processing).
In the first experiment, participants experienced complex unusual and unexpected
events happening in a virtual reality. In the second experiment, participants
were confronted with schema-violations. In both experiments, comparisons
with various control groups showed that a diversifying experience—defined
as the active (but not vicarious) involvement in an unusual event—increased
cognitive flexibility more than active (or vicarious) involvement in normal
experiences. Our findings bridge several lines of research and shed light
on a basic cognitive mechanism responsible for creativity.
414. Russo, N. F., & Simonton, D. K. (2012). Looking back
and looking forward: The Society for General Psychology highlights from
2011. The General Psychologist, 47 (1), 4-9.
415. Simonton, D. K. (2012a). Citation measures as criterion
variables in predicting scientific eminence. Measurement: Interdisciplinary
Research and Perspectives, 10, 170-171.
416. Simonton, D. K. (2012b). Combinatorial creativity and sightedness:
Monte Carlo simulations using three-criterion definitions.
International
Journal of Creativity & Problem Solving, 22(2), 5-17.
Monte Carlo simulations are used to examine the relation between creativity
and sightedness in combinatorial models. After defining combination creativity
as the joint product of originality, utility, and surprise, random numbers
were generated that represented the three defining attributes. When the
three attributes were subjected to multiplicative integration, creativity
was shown to have an extremely skewed distribution, making creative combinations
very rare. Then sightedness was defined as the multiplicative function
of probability, utility, and prior knowledge. Consistent with expectation,
the joint distribution of creativity as a function of sightedness was found
to be triangular: When sightedness is high, creativity must be low, but
when sightedness is low, creativity can vary continuously between high
and low. The increased variance in creativity under low sightedness thus
requires the application of blind-variation and selective-retention to
identify the most creative combinations. These conclusions hold under both
uniform and skewed distributions for the three combination attributes.
Moreover, the inferences are only slightly modified if creativity and sightedness
definitions are truncated to include only their first two factors.
417. Simonton, D. K. (2012c). Creative genius as a personality
phenomenon: Definitions, methods, findings, and issues. Social and Personality
Psychology Compass, 6, 691-706.
Genius first became the subject of scientific inquiry in the early
19th century, and it has continued to attract research interest to the
present day. Although genius can be defined as either superlative intelligence
or achieved eminence, this review is restricted to the latter definition,
and is further confined to creative achievement. The article then describes
the main methods for studying creative genius as a personality phenomenon.
These methods entail three central dichotomous methodological decisions:
single-case versus multiple-case samples, qualitative versus quantitative
analyses, and direct versus indirect assessments. Next, the main empirical
findings are presented with respect to both generic traits and domain-contingent
traits. There follows a brief discussion of three major issues: genetic
and environmental influences, additive and multiplicative effects, and
individual and situational factors. Given the intrinsic importance of the
phenomenon and the many questions still unanswered, creative genius certainly
deserves future treatment in personality psychology.
418. Simonton, D. K. (2012d). Creative productivity and aging:
An age decrement – or not? In S. K. Whitbourne & M. Sliwinski (Eds.),
The
Wiley-Blackwell handbook of adult development and aging (pp. 477-496).
New York: Wiley-Blackwell.
419. Simonton, D. K. (2012e). Creativity, problem solving, and
solution set sightedness: Radically reformulating BVSR. Journal of Creative
Behavior, 46, 48–65.
Too often psychological debates become polarized into dichotomous positions.
Such polarization may have occurred with respect to Campbell’s (1960) BVSR
theory of creativity. To resolve this unnecessary controversy, BVSR was
radically reformulated with respect to creative problem solving. The reformulation
began by defining (a) potential solution sets consisting of k possible
solutions each described by their respective probability and utility values;
(b) a set sightedness metric that gauges the extent to which the probabilities
correspond to the utilities; and (c) a solution creativity index based
on the joint improbability and utility of each solution. These definitions
are then applied to representative cases in which simultaneous or sequential
generate-and-test procedures scrutinize solution sets of variable size
and with representative patterns of probabilities and utilities. The principal
features of BVSR theory were then derived, including the implications of
superfluity and backtracking. Critically, it was formally demonstrated
that the most creative solutions must emerge from solution sets that score
extremely low in sightedness. Although this preliminary revision has ample
room for further development, the demonstration proves that BVSR’s explanatory
value does not depend on any specious association with Darwin’s theory
of evolution.
420. Simonton, D. K. (2012f, Fall/Winter). Fabrication, plagiarism,
embellishment, and/or dumb mistakes in science journalism: Observations
from my 2010 interview with Jonah Lehrer. The Amplifier, 8-9.
421. Simonton, D. K. (2012g). Fields, domains, and individuals.
In M. D. Mumford (Ed.), Handbook of organizational creativity (pp.
67-86). Oxford, UK: Elsevier Science.
Although creativity is often viewed in an individualistic manner, most
creativity takes place in a disciplinary context. The systems perspective
is used to relate the individual creator with two major features of that
context: the domain and the field. This basic three-system perspective
is then illustrated by its application to two separate topics, namely,
combinatorial models and disciplinary hierarchies. The first illustration
uses the systems perspective as the explicit foundation for combinatorial
models that explicate phenomena that cannot be understood from the standpoint
of the individual alone. Perhaps the most notable explication concerns
the occurrence of multiple discoveries in science. The second illustration
concerns disciplinary hierarchies, an idea that originated with speculations
about whether the sciences can be ordered into a hierarchy. Not only is
this ordinal placement justified according to characteristics of the scientific
domain and field, but also many of the same criteria can be applied to
(a) extrapolate beyond the sciences (e.g., the humanities and arts) and
(b) interpolate within single disciplines (e.g., normal versus revolutionary
science). Corresponding to this extended and elaborated disciplinary hierarchy
is a set of dispositional traits and developmental experiences most descriptive
of the individual creators working within the same domain and field. This
correspondence then has consequences for the magnitude of creativity an
individual displays. In particular, the more eminent creators tend to have
traits and experiences proximate to those creators in disciplines lower
in the hierarchy. Given these two illustrations, it should be apparent
that individual creativity cannot be understood without reference to the
domain and field in which that creativity takes place. This conclusion
has implications well beyond the two examples discussed in this chapter.
422. Simonton, D. K. (2012h). Foresight, insight, oversight,
and hindsight in scientific discovery: How sighted were Galileo's telescopic
sightings? Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 6,
243-254.
Galileo Galilei’s celebrated contributions to astronomy are used as
case studies in the psychology of scientific discovery. Particular attention
was devoted to the involvement of foresight, insight, oversight, and hindsight.
These four mental acts concern, in divergent ways, the relative degree
of “sightedness” in Galileo’s discovery process and accordingly have implications
for evaluating the blind-variation and selective-retention (BVSR) theory
of creativity and discovery. Scrutiny of the biographical and historical
details indicates that Galileo’s mental processes were far less sighted
than often depicted in retrospective accounts. Clearly, hindsight biases
tend to underline his insights and foresights while ignoring his very frequent
and substantial oversights. Of special importance was how Galileo was able
to create a domain-specific expertise where no such expertise previously
existed—in part by exploiting his extensive knowledge and skill in the
visual arts. Galileo’s success as an astronomer was founded partly and
“blindly” on his artistic avocations. The investigation closes by briefly
discussing Antonie van Leeuwenhoek’s similar creation of microscopic biology.
This parallel case indicates that Galileo’s telescopic astronomy was probably
not unique as an illustration of how scientific discovery works in practice.
423. Simonton, D. K. (2012i). Genius. In K. J. Holyoak &
R. G. Morrison (Eds.), Oxford handbook of thinking and reasoning (pp.
492-509. New York: Oxford University Press.
Scientific research on genius began in the early 19th century, and
increased in popularity throughout the end of the century and the beginning
of the 20th century. Although the first investigations used mainly historiometric
methods, later psychologists introduced psychometric and experimental techniques.
Definitions of genius fall into two categories: superlative intellect and
phenomenal achievement, where the latter can be subdivided into extraordinary
creativity, exceptional leadership, and prodigious performance. However
defined, genius has been studied from four main psychological perspectives:
general intelligence, domain expertise, heuristic search, and blind variation.
Each of these perspectives has distinct advantages and disadvantages as
explanatory accounts. As a consequence, a comprehensive understanding of
how geniuses think and reason will require an integration of all four perspectives.
The chapter closes with a discussion of future directions for research.
424. Simonton, D. K. (2012j). One creator’s meat is another
creator’s poison: Field and domain restrictions on individual creativity.
In D. Ambrose & R. J. Sternberg (Eds.), How dogmatic beliefs harm
creativity and higher-level thinking (pp. 125-134). New York: Routledge.
425. Simonton, D. K. (2012k). The Orlando program: The psychology
of science and psychology as science. The General Psychologist,
47
(1),
2-3.
426. Simonton, D. K. (2012l). Quantifying creativity: Can measures
span the spectrum? Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience, 14 (1), 100-104.
Because the cognitive neuroscientists have become increasingly interested
in the phenomenon of creativity, the issue arises about how creativity
is to be optimally measured. Unlike intelligence, which can be assessed
across the full range of intellectual ability, creativity measures tend
to concentrate on different sections of the overall spectrum. After first
defining creativity in terms of the three criteria of novelty, usefulness,
and surprise, the article provides an overview of the available measures.
Not only do these instruments vary according to whether they focus on the
creative process, person, or product, but differ regarding whether they
tap into “little-c” versus “Big-C” creativity, only productivity and eminence
measures reaching into genius-level manifestations of the phenomenon. The
article closes by discussing whether various alternative assessment techniques
can be integrated into a single measure that quantifies creativity across
spans the full spectrum.
427. Simonton, D. K. (2012m). Reconnecting with Fechner? [Review
of the book Aesthetic science: Connecting minds, brains, and experience,
A. P Shimamura & S. E. Palmer (Eds.)]. PsycCRITIQUES, 57
(32).
Reviews the book, Aesthetic Science: Connecting Minds, Brains, and
Experience edited by Arthur P. Shimamura and Stephen E. Palmer. Fechner’s
law must count as one of the most important eponyms in the annals of psychology’s
history, yet his pioneering work on experimental aesthetics is too often
forgotten. Fechner would also have been very happy to see the edited volume
under review. As its subtitle hints, Aesthetic Science is actually three
books in one. Part I, Philosophical Perspectives, corresponds to minds;
this section contains chapters treating various issues connecting experimental
aesthetics with the much older and comprehensive field of philosophical
aesthetics. Part II deals with experience; titled Psychological Perspectives,
it features chapters by psychologists actively engaged in research on aesthetics
and the arts. Part III, which concerns brains, is titled Neuroscience Perspectives;
here the full panoply of neuroscientific techniques is brought to bear
on aesthetic questions—yielding the new discipline of neuroaesthetics.
428. Simonton, D. K. (2012n). Ringing a bell. [Review of the
book The idea factory: Bell Labs and the great age of American innovation,
J. Gertner]. PsycCRITIQUES, 57 (48).
429. Simonton, D. K. (2012o, November/December). The science
of genius. Scientific American Mind, 23 (5), 34-41.
430. Simonton, D. K. (2012p). Scientific creativity as blind
variation: Explicit and implicit procedures, mechanisms, and processes.
In R. Proctor & E. J. Capaldi (Eds.), Psychology of science: Implicit
and explicit processes (pp. 363-388). New York: Oxford University Press.
431. Simonton, D. K. (2012q). Taking the US Patent Office creativity
criteria seriously: A quantitative three-criterion definition and its implications.
Creativity
Research Journal, 24, 97-106.
Although creativity has recently attracted considerable theoretical
and empirical research, researchers have yet to reach a consensus on how
best to define the phenomenon. To help establish a consensus, a definition
is proposed that is based on the three criteria used by the United States
Patent Office to evaluate applications for patent protection. The modified
version uses the criteria of novelty, utility, and surprise. Moreover,
creativity assessments based on these three criteria are quantitative and
multiplicative rather than qualitative or additive. This three-criterion
definition then leads to four implications regarding (a) the limitations
to domain-specific expertise, (b) the varieties of comparable creativities,
(c) the contrast between subjective and objective evaluations, and (d)
the place of blind variation and selective retention in the creative process.
These implications prove that adding the third criterion has critical consequences
for understanding the phenomenon. Creativity is not only treated with superior
sophistication, but also paradoxes that appear using the most common two-criterion
definition readily disappear when the third criterion is included in the
analysis. Hence, the conceptual differences between two- and three-criterion
definitions are not trivial.
432. Simonton, D. K. (2012r). Teaching creativity: Current findings,
trends, and controversies in the psychology of creativity. Teaching
of Psychology, 39, 203-208.
In the past decade, the psychological study of creativity has accelerated
greatly. To facilitate the teaching of creativity, I provide an overview
of the recent literature. The overview begins by discussing recent empirical
results and research trends. This discussion specifically treats creativity’s
cognitive, differential, developmental, and social aspects. Then I outline
the central controversies. These debates concern the nature of creative
thought (domain-specific versus generic processes), creative development
(nature versus nurture), and creative persons (psychopathology versus mental
health). The article closes by asking not just how to teach creativity,
but also how to teach creativity creatively.
433. Simonton, D. K., Graham, J., & Kaufman, J. C. (2012).
Consensus and contrasts in consumers’ cinematic assessments: Gender, age,
and nationality in rating the top-250 films. Psychology of Popular Media
Culture, 1, 87-96.
Motion pictures provide among the most conspicuous manifestations of
worldwide popular culture. One specific manifestation of this universal
presence appears in the cinematic assessments compiled and updated on internet
websites. This empirical inquiry investigated the consumer ratings that
the Internet Movie Database used to determine the “Top-250” all-time great
movies. Of particular interest was how these ratings were contingent on
the gender (male versus female), age (under 18, 18-29, 30-44, and 45 or
over), and nationality (US vs. non-US voters). In addition, the investigation
explored how any evaluation discrepancies in these three demographic categories
might be attributed to year of release (e.g., classic versus contemporary
films), movie honors (viz. Oscar versus non-Oscar nominations and awards),
and the MPAA rating (R, PG-13, PG, and G). Correlational, principal components,
and multiple regression analyses indicate the following core conclusions.
First, a very broad and impressive consensus permeates all evaluations
no matter what the gender, age, or nationality contrasts. Second, although
gender and nationality both exhibit contrasting assessments, age provides
the main contrast that supports departures from the consensus: Those under
30 have strikingly different assessments than those 30 and over. Third
and last, although movie awards and MPAA ratings clearly have a role to
play in these differences, the year of release was by far the most critical
predicator. Older consumers prefer older movies while younger consumers
prefer movies that are more recent. After some conjectures regarding the
reasons for this pronounced contrast, the discussion closes by mentioning
the dynamic nature of these popular ratings.
434. Simonton, D. K., Skidmore, L. E. & Kaufman, J. C. (2012).
Mature cinematic content for immature minds: “Pushing the envelope” versus
“toning it down” in family films. Empirical Studies of the Arts,
30,
143-166.
How does a film’s content influence its reception by moviegoers and
critics? What movie qualities result in better reviews, a higher box office,
and more awards? This study investigates these questions in the specific
genre of family films. One strategy is to “push the envelope” by intensifying
adult themes and hints of sex and violence. An alternative strategy is
to “tone it down,” and keep any adult content to a minimum. The sample
of 220 family films was assessed on (a) 15 measures of mature content,
(b) multiple measures of film evaluations (3), box office performance (4),
and movie honors (3, including children and teenager awards), and (c) 5
control variables. Broadly, this study supports the “pushing the envelope”
strategy, especially regarding violence, topics to talk about, jump scenes,
blood/gore, and inappropriate music. The optimal mature content for a family
film differs markedly from that needed for films in general.
435. Simonton, D. K. (2013a, January 31). After Einstein: Scientific
genius is extinct. Nature, 493, 602.
436. Simonton, D. K. (2013b). Blind-variation and selective-retention
theory of creativity. Physics of Life Reviews, 10, 158-159.
437. Simonton, D. K. (2013c). BVSR theory of human creativity.
In E. H. Kessler (Ed.), Encyclopedia of management theory (Vol.
1, pp. 102-103). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
438. Simonton, D. K. (2013d). Creative genius in science. In
G. J. Feist & M. E. Gorman (Eds.), Handbook of the psychology of
science (pp. 251-272). New York: Springer Publishing.
439. Simonton, D. K. (2013e). Creative problem solving as sequential
BVSR: Exploration (total ignorance) versus elimination (informed guess).
Thinking
Skills and Creativity, 8, 1-10.
Although the theory that creativity requires blind variation and selective
retention (BVSR) is now more than a half-century old, only recently has
BVSR theory undergone appreciable conceptual development, including formal
three-parameter definitions of both creativity and sightedness. In this
article, these new developments are for the first time extended to encompass
sequential BVSR, that is, when ideas are generated and tested consecutively
rather than simultaneously. Formulated in terms of creative problem solving,
sequential BVSR is shown to have two forms: (a) exploratory in which
the person decreases total ignorance and (b) eliminatory in which
the person vets informed guesses. Only in the latter case does sightedness
for both single potential solutions and the set of potential solutions
necessarily increase with each generation-and-test trial. Exploratory BVSR
is illustrated by Edison’s search for a practical incandescent filament,
whereas eliminatory BVSR is exemplified by Watson’s discovery of the DNA
base code. Hence, although epistemologically and psychologically distinct,
both represent important forms of creative problem solving.
440. Simonton, D. K. (2013f). Creative teaching of creativity:
A potential user's personal perspective. In M. Gregerson, J. C. Kaufman,
& H. Snyder (Eds.), Teaching creatively and teaching creativity
(pp. 185-191). New York: Springer.
Having published on both the teaching of creativity and creative teaching,
the author had special interest in the chapters that make up this volume.
This concluding chapter begins with what he learned about teaching creatively,
providing his own examples of certain useful techniques. He next turns
to the chapters concerning teaching for creativity, again providing some
new illustrations of approaches. Along the way, he also addresses the important
problem of whether creativity is domain-specific, a question that has obvious
consequences for any attempt to teach creativity. The author concludes
his conclusion with a brief treatment of the far more difficult question
of how to teach creatively for creativity.
441. Simonton, D. K. (2013g). The genetics of giftedness: What
does it mean to have creative talent? In K. H. Kim, J. C. Kaufman, J. Baer,
& B. Sriramen (Eds.), Creatively gifted students are not like other
gifted students: Research, theory, and practice (pp. 167-179). Rotterdam:
Sense Publishers.
442. Simonton, D. K. (2013h). If innate talent doesn’t exist,
where do the data disappear? In S. B. Kaufman (Ed.), The complexity
of greatness: Beyond talent or practice (pp. 17-26). New York: Oxford
University Press.
Is greatness born or made? In this chapter, I outline an answer consisting
of three parts. First, I treat why greatness must be nurtured by environmental
factors, including deliberate practice. Second, I discuss why greatness
must depend on nature, that is, on genetic endowment. Third, I examine
the intricate interplay of nature and nurture in the emergence of greatness.
Certainly many so-called “environmental effects” are partially the outward
manifestation of underlying genetic effects. This conflation is apparent
in the development of greatness, where talent must be defined in terms
of expertise acquisition, yielding the “better faster” and “more bang for
the buck” effects. This nature-nurture integration helps us incorporate
empirical findings that would otherwise make no sense—such as the fact
that most individual-differences variables that predict greatness also
feature substantial heritability coefficients. These data will not just
go away simply because they are inconvenient for an extreme-nurture purist.
443. Simonton, D. K. (2013i). Presidential leadership. In M.
G. Rumsey (Ed.), Oxford handbook of leadership (pp. 327-342). New
York: Oxford University Press.
A considerable empirical literature has accumulated on the leadership
displayed by the person occupying the office of the President of the United
States. This research has attempted to identify the predictors of presidential
leadership as assessed by both subjective expert evaluations of presidential
performance and objective researcher measurements of specific leader behaviors.
Moreover, investigators have tested hundreds of potential predictors drawn
from (a) the administration’s political and economic milieu, (b) the president’s
political, occupational, and educational résumé, and (c)
the incumbent’s personal traits and family experiences. Although many early
researchers merely scrutinized bivariate associations between criteria
and predictors, a growing number of investigators have used analytical
strategies that allow the discrimination of mediated, spurious, suppression,
and moderated effects. Although progress has been made in identifying the
predictors of various performance criteria, the chapter closes by discussing
six key questions that should guide future research on presidential leadership.
444. Simonton, D. K. (2013j). Wheeling around the world in 102
minutes. [Review of the documentary Samsara, Ron Fricke, Director].
PsycCRITIQUES,
58
(18).
445. Simonton, D. K., & Damian, R. I. (2013). Creativity.
In D. Reisberg (Ed.), Oxford handbook of cognitive psychology (pp.
795-807). New York: Oxford University Press.
An idea’s creativity is most often defined as the joint function of
its originality or novelty and its adaptiveness or utility. Creativity
is a quantitative property that can range from “little-c” to “Big-C” creativity.
Given this definition, creativity can be studied from three different perspectives:
the product, the person, and the process. Research adopting the product
perspective may examine either the final product or the notebooks or sketchbooks
that led to that product. Inquiries into the creative person have tended
to pursue two alternative viewpoints, one concentrating on domain-specific
expertise and the other on a generic cognitive style. Naturally, cognitive
psychologists tend to favor the third perspective, namely that concentrating
on the creative process. After discussing the three main theoretical views
of this process, the discussion turns to the three principal empirical
approaches. The chapter closes with four sets of questions that should
guide future research on creativity.
446. Kaufman, J. C., & Simonton, D. K. (Eds.). (in press-a).
The
social science of cinema. New York: Oxford University Press.
447. Kaufman, J. C., & Simonton, D. K. (in press-b). The
social science of cinema: Fade in. In J. C. Kaufman & D. K. Simonton
(Eds.), The social science of cinema. New York: Oxford University
Press.
448. Pardoe, I., & Simonton, D. K. (in press). Analyzing
the Academy Awards: Factors associated with winning and when surprises
occur. In J. C. Kaufman & D. K. Simonton (Eds.), The social science
of cinema. New York: Oxford University Press.
Ever since 1928, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences have
bestowed its “Oscars” for major cinematic achievements. Well before the
awards are announced at a gala ceremony now broadcast worldwide, the public
and the media begin to speculate about which nominees will take home a
golden statuette. Although there is no shortage of speculative theories
about who is most likely to win, the announcements often include some major
surprises. In this chapter, the prediction is framed as a discrete choice
problem. Not only do these predictions enable us to calculate the probabilities
of winning for each nominee, but they also provide a direct measure of
surprise when an apparent frontrunner is eclipsed by a dark horse. These
predictions are calculated up to the 2010 award season.
449. Richardson, A., & Simonton, D. K. (in press). Catharine
Morris Cox Miles and the lives of others (1890-1984). In A. Richardson
& J. Jolly (Eds.), Key figures in gifted education. London:
Routledge.
450. Simonton, D. K. (in press-a). Age and creative productivity.
In E. G. Carayannis (Editor-in-chief), Encyclopedia of creativity, invention,
innovation, and entrepreneurship. New York: Springer.
451. Simonton, D. K. (in press-b). Creative genius in literature,
music, and the visual arts. In V. Ginsburgh & D. Throsby (Eds.), Handbook
of the economics of art and culture (Vol. 2). Amsterdam: Elsevier/North
Holland.
452. Simonton, D. K. (in press-c). Creative performance, expertise
acquisition, individual-differences, and developmental antecedents: An
integrative research agenda. Intelligence.
This article sketches an integrative research agenda for creative achievement
that combines the expertise-acquisition framework with individual differences
in cognitive abilities and dispositional traits as well as the genetic
and environmental factors underlying the development of those same individual-differences
variables. The treatment begins with a discussion of domain-specific creative
expertise and performance, a discussion that indicates the added complexities
in assessing both variables. The analysis then shifts to substantial individual
variation in both expertise acquisition and creative performance, variation
that does not sit easily with a simple single-cause conception, particularly
when performance appears inversely related to the amount of time taken
to attain the requisite expertise. This leads to the question of whether
individual-difference variables can account for otherwise inexplicable
“faster better” and “more bang for the buck” effects. If so, then the obvious
last inquiry concerns the developmental antecedents of those variables,
where these antecedents can be both genetic and environmental. The upshot
of the suggested analysis should be complex structural equation models
that fully accommodate both nature and nurture in explaining exceptional
creative performance.
453. Simonton, D. K. (in press-d). Creative thought as blind
variation and selective retention: Why sightedness is inversely related
to creativity. Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology.
Campbell (1960) proposed the theory that creativity required blind
variation and selective retention (BVSR). More than a half century has
transpired without any resolution of the controversy over the theory’s
validity. This inability to reach consensus may reflect a fundamental failure
on both sides to define the critical terms of the debate, namely, creativity
and blindness. Hence, to help resolve the issue, the ideas making up a
variant set are first described via three parameters: (a) the idea’s initial
probability of generation, (b) its final utility, and (c) any prior knowledge
of its utility value. These three subjective parameters are then used to
derive a creativity index applicable to each idea in the set. The
same parameters are also deployed to produce a sightedness metric
that describes the sightedness of the variant set as well as each idea
in that set. It is then logically demonstrated, first, that an idea’s creativity
is inversely related to its sightedness, and, second, that an idea’s creativity
is inversely related to the sightedness of the variant set that contains
that idea. Furthermore, the same general conclusions hold when the third
parameter is omitted from the two definitions or when the two definitions
are not functions of identical parameters (e.g., novelty in one but originality
in the other). Because blindness is just the inverse of sightedness, it
automatically follows that creativity has an essential positive connection
with blind variation. The article closes with a discussion of BVSR implications
regarding the joint distribution of creativity and sightedness.
454. Simonton, D. K. (in press-e). Creative thoughts as acts
of free will: A two-stage formal integration. Review of General Psychology.
This article integrates two topics usually considered disciplines apart,
namely, creativity and free will. In particular, creative thoughts are
conceived as acts of free will. This integration begins by reviewing recent
advances in a specific two-stage theory of creative problem solving, namely
blind variation and selective retention (BVSR). After discussing the parallel
two-stage theory of free will (chance then choice), both two-stage theories
are then integrated into a single formal representation entailing choice
initial probabilities, final utilities, and prior knowledge values. These
three parameters are used to define the creativity of any given solution
and the “sightedness” of any generated thought or choice. Both creativity
and free will vanish as sightedness increases, but their relation to blindness
is more complex, yielding a triangular joint distribution that mandates
a second-stage selection or decision process. In addition, to accommodate
the need to create choices actively rather than just decide among given
choices, the treatment expands to encompass both thoughts and choices as
combinatorial products. This extension connects the discussion of free
will with both combinatorial models of creativity and the research on the
factors that enable a person to engage in free combinatorial processes.
The article closes with suggestions of future empirical and theoretical
research with respect to psychology, philosophy, and potential future exchanges
between the two disciplines.
455. Simonton, D. K. (in press-f). Creativity. In E. Diener
& R. Biswas-Diener (Eds), Noba textbook series: Psychology.
Champaign, IL: DEF Publishers. DOI: www.nobaproject.com
456. Simonton, D. K. (in press-g). The evolution of the music-emotion
relation. Physics of Life Reviews.
457. Simonton, D. K. (in press-h). Hierarchies of creative domains:
Disciplinary constraints on blind-variation and selective-retention. In
E. S. Paul & S. B. Kaufman (Eds.), Philosophy of creativity.
New York: Oxford University Press.
458. Simonton, D. K. (in press-i). The mad (creative) genius:
What do we know after a century of historiometric research? In J. C. Kaufman
(Ed.), Creativity and mental illness. New York: Cambridge University
Press.
459. Simonton, D. K. (in press-j). Scientific creativity as
combinatorial process. In E. G. Carayannis (Editor-in-chief), Encyclopedia
of creativity, invention, innovation, and entrepreneurship. New
York: Springer.
460. Simonton, D. K (in press-k). What is a creative idea? Little-c
versus Big-C creativity. In K. Thomas & J. Chan (Eds.), Handbook
of research on creativity. Cheltenham, UK, and Northampton, USA: Edward
Elgar Publishing.
461. Simonton, D. K. (in press-l). Writing for success: Screenplays
and cinematic impact. In J. C. Kaufman & D. K. Simonton (Eds.), The
social science of cinema. New York: Oxford University Press.
Although screenwriters are often far less conspicuous than the actors
and directors, the screenplay has a critical role in the success of any
film. This chapter reviews the empirical research on the most obvious distinguishing
characteristics of the script: (a) the running time, (b) the genre or broad
story type, (c) the rating received from the Motion Picture Association
of America (MPAA), (d) the type and intensity of “mature content” shown,
(e) whether the movie is a sequel to or remake of a prior movie, (f) whether
the movie is based on a true story about a person or event, and (g) whether
the movie is based on an original script or an adaptation, and in the latter
case the source of the adaptation. Where appropriate, these attributes
are defined with respect to the final theatrical release rather than either
the pre-production script or the later video/DVD version. Each of these
script attributes are examined with respect to three criteria of cinematic
success: box office impact, movie awards, and critical acclaim. When appropriate,
production costs or budget is introduced to put the main criteria in perspective.
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