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Creativity
Family Background, Creativity, and Genius
Behind the motivations of science Nobel laureates and literary prizewinners.
Posted November 16, 2015
“Geniuses are born not made." It is a time-honored and broadly held conviction. All so-called geniuses are included: persons of high accomplishment in the arts and sciences; those in a wide variety of social, political and commercial fields as well as those who seem destined for high achievement; others already manifesting skill and accomplishment but who are quiet and diligent and as yet unrecognized. As most clearly and lexically defined, however, genius is the manifestation of extremely high level capacity and intellectual accomplishment. With respect to creativity, therefore, use of the literal term "genius" is slightly confounding in that all products of genius, for example, the consistently outstanding performance of a standard surgical procedure or of constant good problem solving, are not necessarily creative i.e. the production of something both new and valuable. Contrariwise, all creative products such as a new and valuable computing program, are not necessarily the work of genius.
Nevertheless, genius and creativity frequently may meaningfully overlap. There is wide consensus that creativity and genius consisting of high skill and capacity may overlap in science and in literary, musical and artistic fields. Both types involve intense drive and motivation working on a single project both day and night and also over months and years. Therefore, in the assessments to follow, which are focused on creative individual prizewinners in both types of pursuits, science and art, it can be assumed that some features of true genius will also be revealed.
The scientific evidence for the conviction that geniuses are born, not made, or that creativity is inherited, is very meager, currently in fact it is virtually non-existent. The classical nineteenth century study of father-son inheritance of genius by Francis Galton, Hereditary Genius, was seriously marred statistically by the English practice of primogeniture, the prescribed inheritance of goods, opportunities, and occupations from father to oldest son. Beyond that, other studies done since then based on occupational inheritance and temporal and national distribution have yielded very variable and essentially negative results. (reference here to Galton and others and to my study of literary creators)
One factor, intelligence, has indirectly been shown to have definite genetic transmission. This factor, in various types of dimensions, has been important for outstanding accomplishments, creative and non-creative, especially in science.
To assess occupational transmission and inheritance in outstanding creative persons I have charted the patterns of designated parental occupations from the biographies of 435 out of all of the 488 Nobel laureates in the sciences (physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine) from the beginning year of the Nobel Award year 1901 through the year 2003. I have also charted the backgrounds of 216 outstanding literary persons: 50 Nobel laureates in literature, 135 Pulitzer Prize literature awardees, and 31 United Kingdom Man Booker prize winners. I found three significant family background characteristics: First, both the Nobel laureates in science and the literary prizewinners had little to no occupational inheritance from their same gendered parents, <2% and <1% respectively. Significantly contrasting was the last detailed U.S. Census measurement of parental occupations indicating that 21% of offspring were in the same occupations as their same gendered parent. Also, I measured a specially selected control group of 548 internationally eminent persons identified by Goertzel and Goertzel, Cradles of Eminence, and living during the same period as the Nobel laureates and literary prizewinners. The non-scientist portion had a statistically highly significant 20% of offspring in their same gendered parent’s occupations; the non-literary portion had an even more significant 61% in the same gendered parent’s occupation.
Second, both the creative groups instead had significantly high numbers of same gendered parents in occupations that were either applied technological or performance equivalents in science (Nobel scientists=53%) or else language focused performance equivalents in literature (literary prizewinners=47%). In the last detailed U.S. Census report only 12% were in such types of occupations. For the assessment of this applied/performance distribution, I also measured another type of control group consisting of 560 very high IQ non-prizewinning persons systematically studied by Terman et al, Genetic Studies of Genius. These had a significantly low 26% of same gendered parents in science and 17% in literature applied or performance occupations. Examples of the applied performance occupations among the fathers of Nobel laureates in science include mathematician/physicist Einstein’s father who was an electrical engineer, biochemist Linus Pauling's father was a pharmacist, atomic physicist Glenn Seaborg's father a machinist and other Nobel laureate fathers were in such occupations as radiologist and climatologist. For the prizewinning literary group, these types of same gendered parent occupations were those involving persuasion, language, or artisan skills. Eugene O’ Neill’s father, for instance, was an actor, John Hersey’s father and Pearl Buck’s mother were missionaries, and Thorton Wilder’s father was an editor/publisher.
Third, in addition to parental occupation, I was surprised to find life history indications that same gender parents of both the Nobel laureate scientists (24%) and the literary prizewinners (36%) had had unfulfilled wishes to have a career as scientist or else unfulfilled wishes and ambitions to write novels, poems, and plays. The father of novelist and poet Robert Penn Warren, for example, relinquished his lifelong ambition to be a poet in order to support his family.
Warren was gratified, he personally confessed to me, to fulfill his father’s ambition and go beyond it. Physicist Richard Feynman's father had attended medical school, wished instead to be a research scientist, and later manifestly taught his son how to think scientifically Children are frequently strongly influenced by parental inclinations and unfulfilled wishes. The relatively high incidence in this parental population (very likely much underestimated from written biographies) suggests positive identifications with the parents and living out of their wishes and dreams.
Another facet of positive parental identification by prizewinning offspring is suggested by the large number of same-gendered parents in the related performance/applied equivalent fields. And along with such positive identifications, it is likely that an individuating competition with the same-gendered parent would have occurred. The developing scientist or writer competed to go qualitatively further. Both the loving component of interest and sharing of those parents’ applied scientific or language focused type of work as well as the aggressive wish to supercede in a related field with far greater social recognition were likely to be present. The three motivating factors together, vocation related identification, competition, and living out the parent's unfulfilled wishes, would serve as powerful incentives to achieve, and very likely accounts in good measure for the intense motivation for scientific and literary achievement at the highest level possible.
Family influences, therefore, seem to play a role in the development of different types of creative persons, including creative geniuses. The operation of the dual forces of identification and competition together serves particularly in persons with some degree of the endowed genetic skills involved in parents’ related applied/performance occupations, together with special types of intelligence, to produce strong motivation for creative achievement that lasts throughout life. Extreme persistence, extraordinary motivation to work and explore, willingness to take risks—all of which are characteristic of creative persons in diverse fields—are very likely fueled by the developmental influences. Living out the explicit or implicit parental wishes to become scientists or, in a parallel way, creative writers, may be a particularly potent incentive, whether or not the offspring is explicitly aware of it. When the living-out variable is implicit it may, in fact, have an even stronger psychological influence than explicit directives on choices and behavior.
Specially-developed skills, inherited or taught, may also be derived from parents’ applied/performance occupations. Other upbringing practices also cultivate creative modes of thinking (that I have described elsewhere, Flight from Wonder) and devotion to learning. I also discovered that, despite in many cases being quite poor, uneducated or displaced themselves, parents of Nobel laureates and several prizewinners encouraged and provided large amounts of preliminary as well as high level training and education. Overall, the main truth seems to be: geniuses and creative thinkers are made, not born.
