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The Genius Checklist: Nine Paradoxical Tips on How You Can Become a Creative Genius
What it takes to be a nine essential and contradictory ingredients. What does it take to be a genius? A high score on an IQ test? Brilliant physicist Richard Feynman's IQ was too low for membership in Mensa. Suffering from varying degrees of mental illness? Creativity is often considered a marker of mental health. Be a child prodigy like Mozart, or a later bloomer like Beethoven? Die tragically young, like Keats, or live to a ripe old age like Goethe? In The Genius Checklist , Dean Keith Simonton examines the key factors in creative genius and finds that they are more than a little contradictory. Simonton, who has studied creativity and genius for more than four decades, draws on both scientific research and stories from the lives of famous creative geniuses that range from Isaac Newton to Vincent van Gogh to Virginia Woolf. He explains the origin of IQ tests and the art of estimating the IQ of long-dead historical figures (John Stuart 200; Charles 160). He compares IQ scores with achieved eminence as measures of genius, and he draws a distinction between artistic and scientific genius. He rules out birth order as a determining factor (in the James family alone, three geniuses at three different birth-order William James, firs-tborn; Henry James, second born; Alice James, born fifth and last); considers Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hour rule; and describes how the “lone” genius gets enmeshed in social networks. Genius, Simonton explains, operates in ways so subtle that they seem contradictory. Genius is born and made, the domain of child prodigies and their elders. Simonton's checklist gives us a new, integrative way to understand geniuses—and perhaps even to nurture your own genius!
- GenresSelf HelpNonfiction
322 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2018
22 people are currently reading
179 people want to read
About the author
Dean Keith Simonton
26 books49 followersRenowned for his groundbreaking contributions to the study of genius, Dean Keith Simonton has provided his expertise to over 400 publications on the topic, including a dozen books entitled Genius, Creativity, and Leadership; Scientific Genius; Greatness; Genius and Creativity; Origins of Genius; Great Psychologists and Their Times; Creativity in Science; and Genius 101.
The recipient of several awards, Simonton’s work has been recognized by the William James Book Award, the Sir Francis Galton Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Study of Creativity, the Rudolf Arnheim Award for Outstanding Achievement in Psychology and the Arts, the Theoretical Innovation Prize in Personality and Social Psychology, the George A. Miller Outstanding Article Award, the E. Paul Torrance Award from the National Association for Gifted Children, and the Robert S. Daniel Award for Four-Year College/University Teaching.
A fellow of several professional organizations—including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Psychological Society, and nine divisions of the American Psychological Association (APA)—Simonton has served as president of the International Association of Empirical Aesthetics and the Society for the Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts (APA, Division 10). Currently, he is the president-elect of the Society for General Psychology (APA, Division 1) and a distinguished professor of psychology at the University of California. Dean Simonton obtained his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1975.
The recipient of several awards, Simonton’s work has been recognized by the William James Book Award, the Sir Francis Galton Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Study of Creativity, the Rudolf Arnheim Award for Outstanding Achievement in Psychology and the Arts, the Theoretical Innovation Prize in Personality and Social Psychology, the George A. Miller Outstanding Article Award, the E. Paul Torrance Award from the National Association for Gifted Children, and the Robert S. Daniel Award for Four-Year College/University Teaching.
A fellow of several professional organizations—including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Psychological Society, and nine divisions of the American Psychological Association (APA)—Simonton has served as president of the International Association of Empirical Aesthetics and the Society for the Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts (APA, Division 10). Currently, he is the president-elect of the Society for General Psychology (APA, Division 1) and a distinguished professor of psychology at the University of California. Dean Simonton obtained his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1975.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
October 7, 2018
There's something uncomfortable about the cover of this book. It's hard to read something that says 'Nine paradoxical tips on how YOU! can become a creative genius,' and not expect a self-help book, however scientifically based. However, this is not such a book, and you'd think a psychologist like Dean Keith Simonton would realise that promising something and then not delivering it is not a great way to win over your audience.
Instead what we have here is an interesting exploration of what we mean by 'genius' - a fuzzy enough concept that it covers many different abilities - and a set of nine contradictions (that's the 'paradoxical' bit) in listing possible causes for being a genius. So, for example, we are told it's good to score 140 or more on IQ test, but IQ doesn't really matter, or that it's all down to the genes, but home and school are what make it happen. The very nature of these paradoxical statements makes it clear that this book cannot tell you how YOU! can become a creative genius. The chances are that Simonton was being ironic in his use of that self-help language - but that doesn't really help the purchaser.
I did find the book interesting, partly for that exploration of what gets labelled genius, but mostly because it reveals so much about how poor the scientific credentials of much psychological research seem to be. It doesn't help that Simonton refers to the work of Freud as 'science'. But more worrying is the way that he seems to find it worth discussing an old study that claimed to work out IQs of long dead people from biographical details - doubly strange as this used childhood performance to deduce adult IQ, which Simonton's 'Turn yourself into a child prodigy/wait until you can become a late bloomer' section seems to suggest is pointless. Also Simonton tells out that the study's data was cherry picked, which should totally invalidate it. Not to mention that he doesn’t mention that the concept of IQ has been pretty much dismissed except as measure of the ability to pass IQ tests.
Over and over again, what we seem to get is correlation being confused with causality, yet the book makes little effort to explain this, nor does it bring in the relatively recent revelation of just how many of such soft science results have proved unreproducible. And some of the conclusions are themselves confusing. For example, in the nature/nurture section, Simonton concludes that roughly half of who you become depends on genes and half on 'choosing your home and school environments.' As it happens, the next book I started reading after this one was Robert Plomin's Blueprint, which makes it clear (in a lot more convincing fashion) that the 50:50 split is distinctly misleading.
All it really seems possible to come away from this book with, apart from a distinct concern about the scientific nature of this part of psychology, is that we really don't know a lot about genius. And that probably would have made a better article than a book.
Instead what we have here is an interesting exploration of what we mean by 'genius' - a fuzzy enough concept that it covers many different abilities - and a set of nine contradictions (that's the 'paradoxical' bit) in listing possible causes for being a genius. So, for example, we are told it's good to score 140 or more on IQ test, but IQ doesn't really matter, or that it's all down to the genes, but home and school are what make it happen. The very nature of these paradoxical statements makes it clear that this book cannot tell you how YOU! can become a creative genius. The chances are that Simonton was being ironic in his use of that self-help language - but that doesn't really help the purchaser.
I did find the book interesting, partly for that exploration of what gets labelled genius, but mostly because it reveals so much about how poor the scientific credentials of much psychological research seem to be. It doesn't help that Simonton refers to the work of Freud as 'science'. But more worrying is the way that he seems to find it worth discussing an old study that claimed to work out IQs of long dead people from biographical details - doubly strange as this used childhood performance to deduce adult IQ, which Simonton's 'Turn yourself into a child prodigy/wait until you can become a late bloomer' section seems to suggest is pointless. Also Simonton tells out that the study's data was cherry picked, which should totally invalidate it. Not to mention that he doesn’t mention that the concept of IQ has been pretty much dismissed except as measure of the ability to pass IQ tests.
Over and over again, what we seem to get is correlation being confused with causality, yet the book makes little effort to explain this, nor does it bring in the relatively recent revelation of just how many of such soft science results have proved unreproducible. And some of the conclusions are themselves confusing. For example, in the nature/nurture section, Simonton concludes that roughly half of who you become depends on genes and half on 'choosing your home and school environments.' As it happens, the next book I started reading after this one was Robert Plomin's Blueprint, which makes it clear (in a lot more convincing fashion) that the 50:50 split is distinctly misleading.
All it really seems possible to come away from this book with, apart from a distinct concern about the scientific nature of this part of psychology, is that we really don't know a lot about genius. And that probably would have made a better article than a book.
September 29, 2020
The Genius Checklist by Dean Keith Simonton is an MIT college prep title that gives nine stereotypical traits that many a well-known genius has had and debunks them without dismissing them. Some examples of these stereotypical traits and their debunking include genius’s having high IQ’s. Simonton debunks this by exposing the flaws in the IQ test such as the speculation and guessing involved with their point system. He also provides several studies that were involved with the creation of said test and show that many of none of the selected high IQ participants became a “genius”, but several rejects made revolutionary discoveries in their fields. One of which included William Shockley the inventor of the transistor revolutionizing modern technology. The genius checklist provides a view of the minds of several geniuses and helps us understand that we have control over where we go with our lives and how we can shape ourselves to achieve great things like geniuses of the past and present. This is a great book for young adults interested in what makes a genius a genius.
May 1, 2019
Wow - clickbait in book form. The title says "Nine paradoxical tips on how YOU can become a creative genius." Not even close. Basically a look at geniuses through the ages and the nine spectrums that might help explain them after the fact. But helping you get there yourself? Don't bother reading this one to get there.
September 21, 2020
A lot of content, well written and very well referenced, the nine 'tips' correspond to each chapter.
Outlines there are different ways of being a genius, although traditionally taking the IQ test scoring 140 or more is one way of being a genius. With perseverance and passion dedicated to one particular aspect of life such as art you can achieve the genius status without scoring highly on this test.
Contains interesting studies about previous geniuses and the association of mental health illness. Suggests that if you are in an art not a science discipline then, at times mental health issues can mean you're more likely to think outside the box and achieve a state of what's known as genius. If you have a high IQ and some mental health issues this can mean you'll be more likely to observe two different perspectives and obtain breakthroughs. Suggests that the popular conception that people who are crazy are geniuses is mainly because there's a few of them have been studied and reported extensively. There are many more geniuses who are not as well known because they're not as interesting to write about and don't have significant mental health issues.
Artistic creators and geniuses are more likely to have broken hope and diverse childhood experiences, where as scientific geniuses tend to come from or stable backgrounds.
An example to achieve the most is a concept called ‘satisfies’. Unlike perfectionism in which multiple revisions of one thing occur. Satisfies is doing things to a satisfactory standard but being prolific and putting out a lot of content out there. This means that one of your things may actually be very good, simply because you're putting out a lot so your chances are that one of your outputs will be good increases.
Mentions about how historically Galton’s 1874 survey of Royal Society Fellows asked how many siblings Fellows have if if they were older or younger. Not clear how to answer if had an older sibling you never met or half brothers however this found that lots of these fellows were firstborn males. This didn't really adjust statistically for the complexity of order of birth, if you're an only child you would automatically be first and last born but it did seem that firstborn males were more likely to be considered genius.
If you are a creative genius in the art quite often you're not a perfectionist and try to explore different aspects of art. This is unlike scientists who too often it is their perfectionism that stops them exploring different areas and becoming a genius.
There is a type of genius known as a polymath, this person is able to obtain genius level in more than one speciality. These specialities are completely different rather than sub specialities of something that's very similar. Generally this book supports the 10,000 hours of work to become a genius in a particular field but the polymaths go against this as there simply aren't enough hours they have been alive. Suggests that natural talent can shorten the length of time to acquire expertise.
Things such as chess, composers and mathematics are highly abstract domains with well-defined and relatively finite rules and goals. This means that expertise and major contributions to the fields can be provided earlier in the genius life, potentially as child prodigies. Suggests that literature and art acquiring expertise takes more life experience.
Mentions about Thomas Edison clear prolific inventor who kept trying and is well known from the light bulb invention. Outlines more about his other patents, for example he almost lost all of his light bulb monies on a patent about cement which attempted to build whole houses, including appliances out of cement. This cement idea failed so the rule certainly is not that every failure leads to success.
Eminence tends to occur for some geniuses when their significant works live on past their own life.
If you like my review please see my website www.chrisweatherburn.com for more!
Outlines there are different ways of being a genius, although traditionally taking the IQ test scoring 140 or more is one way of being a genius. With perseverance and passion dedicated to one particular aspect of life such as art you can achieve the genius status without scoring highly on this test.
Contains interesting studies about previous geniuses and the association of mental health illness. Suggests that if you are in an art not a science discipline then, at times mental health issues can mean you're more likely to think outside the box and achieve a state of what's known as genius. If you have a high IQ and some mental health issues this can mean you'll be more likely to observe two different perspectives and obtain breakthroughs. Suggests that the popular conception that people who are crazy are geniuses is mainly because there's a few of them have been studied and reported extensively. There are many more geniuses who are not as well known because they're not as interesting to write about and don't have significant mental health issues.
Artistic creators and geniuses are more likely to have broken hope and diverse childhood experiences, where as scientific geniuses tend to come from or stable backgrounds.
An example to achieve the most is a concept called ‘satisfies’. Unlike perfectionism in which multiple revisions of one thing occur. Satisfies is doing things to a satisfactory standard but being prolific and putting out a lot of content out there. This means that one of your things may actually be very good, simply because you're putting out a lot so your chances are that one of your outputs will be good increases.
Mentions about how historically Galton’s 1874 survey of Royal Society Fellows asked how many siblings Fellows have if if they were older or younger. Not clear how to answer if had an older sibling you never met or half brothers however this found that lots of these fellows were firstborn males. This didn't really adjust statistically for the complexity of order of birth, if you're an only child you would automatically be first and last born but it did seem that firstborn males were more likely to be considered genius.
If you are a creative genius in the art quite often you're not a perfectionist and try to explore different aspects of art. This is unlike scientists who too often it is their perfectionism that stops them exploring different areas and becoming a genius.
There is a type of genius known as a polymath, this person is able to obtain genius level in more than one speciality. These specialities are completely different rather than sub specialities of something that's very similar. Generally this book supports the 10,000 hours of work to become a genius in a particular field but the polymaths go against this as there simply aren't enough hours they have been alive. Suggests that natural talent can shorten the length of time to acquire expertise.
Things such as chess, composers and mathematics are highly abstract domains with well-defined and relatively finite rules and goals. This means that expertise and major contributions to the fields can be provided earlier in the genius life, potentially as child prodigies. Suggests that literature and art acquiring expertise takes more life experience.
Mentions about Thomas Edison clear prolific inventor who kept trying and is well known from the light bulb invention. Outlines more about his other patents, for example he almost lost all of his light bulb monies on a patent about cement which attempted to build whole houses, including appliances out of cement. This cement idea failed so the rule certainly is not that every failure leads to success.
Eminence tends to occur for some geniuses when their significant works live on past their own life.
If you like my review please see my website www.chrisweatherburn.com for more!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 15, 2018
A well thought and written book on the subject no doubt. There is all that is needed to be captured with the awareness that almost all what he says is based on solid science and not just on his mere opinion. Irony, logic, anedoct, very well interconnected chapters and minimum necessary quantity and quality maintained in the most simple yet efficacious way. Defintely my creativity is going to have a jump on the long term path. Hopefully not on the side of the real mad debelitated potential genius.
There are some things that maybe should be rectified such as the Feynman IQ test that resulted not that high because probably, as proposed by one of his ex student now a physicist, the math component score was smoothed by the verbal component. Anyway the concept remain valid thanks to other examples in history books and personal life of people with high IQ but not even the ambition to be an innovator in a field of knowledge.
Lastly and more important to me is that maybe, maybe, there may be a very little bias to the individualistic genius (better to say the lone genius discussed in Tip 9) because he himself declared, in a youtube recorded lecture, that he prefer to work alone and indeed most of his publications are indeed of one author. Furthermore what about brainstorming and other collective methods to let ideas emerge? What about collective original products and processes? I would have loved to know his point of view!Hopefully I will find them in some other of his works.
Anyway, the book is written so very close to objectivity and so far away from mere non articulated opinions that these 2 little very unlikely faults (I think I found) can very well rest in peace.
Chapeu.
There are some things that maybe should be rectified such as the Feynman IQ test that resulted not that high because probably, as proposed by one of his ex student now a physicist, the math component score was smoothed by the verbal component. Anyway the concept remain valid thanks to other examples in history books and personal life of people with high IQ but not even the ambition to be an innovator in a field of knowledge.
Lastly and more important to me is that maybe, maybe, there may be a very little bias to the individualistic genius (better to say the lone genius discussed in Tip 9) because he himself declared, in a youtube recorded lecture, that he prefer to work alone and indeed most of his publications are indeed of one author. Furthermore what about brainstorming and other collective methods to let ideas emerge? What about collective original products and processes? I would have loved to know his point of view!Hopefully I will find them in some other of his works.
Anyway, the book is written so very close to objectivity and so far away from mere non articulated opinions that these 2 little very unlikely faults (I think I found) can very well rest in peace.
Chapeu.
September 30, 2022
I am interested in the genius phenomenon- child prodigies, savants, polymaths, late bloomers and all such people who create revolutions in the field, they work on, by their talents and mental capabilities. My interest is to understand these people- whether it is influenced by genetics, birth order, personality traits and so on. This book offers some interesting explanations in that line and I like that.
But, If the readers like to read about the tips on becoming a genius as the title suggests, Then This book does not offer such tips in the explicit manner. The tips are like the ones with fun intended - Be a child prodigy, for example. However, By knowing the things this book discusses, We can understand the genius phenomenon to some extent and of course learn a few tips on the way.
But, If the readers like to read about the tips on becoming a genius as the title suggests, Then This book does not offer such tips in the explicit manner. The tips are like the ones with fun intended - Be a child prodigy, for example. However, By knowing the things this book discusses, We can understand the genius phenomenon to some extent and of course learn a few tips on the way.
November 12, 2018
Reading about genius is often fascinating: how can a human being achieve such extraordinary things?
However I didn't read anything interesting in skimming this book.
However I didn't read anything interesting in skimming this book.
October 30, 2023
It feels I just read a book on statistics.
January 25, 2021
This book was interesting, but doesn’t give much direction on extracting better ideas from one’s self or others.
The upside, compared to a lot of books about ideation and creativity, is that it is documented with scientific evidence and not just anecdotes.
The upside, compared to a lot of books about ideation and creativity, is that it is documented with scientific evidence and not just anecdotes.
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November 30, 2019I wanted to read the book now
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews