Genius: Present-day status of the concept and its implications for the study of creativity and giftedness.

Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking as Predictors of Personal and Public Achievement: A Fifty-Year Follow-Up

“…Significantly, the personality predictors from 1950 accounted for nearly 20% of the variability in the creativity criteria at follow-up, and this is after the contributions of intelligence were statistically controlled. Albert (1969Albert ( , 1978Albert ( , 1980aAlbert ( , 1980bRunco & Albert, 1989, 2005 conducted a longitudinal study of exceptionally gifted boys. He found quite a bit of evidence that (a) talent is dependent on family background and (b) different domains of talent differ in family background and personality.…”

Do honors students have more potential for excellence in their professional lives?

“…For scientific excellence for example, research productivity, citation ratings, and peer ratings, or combinations of these methods, are commonly used. One major focus of interest in studies of excellence in the last century has been on the conditions and characteristics related or contributing to excellence (Albert 1969;Friedman-Nimz and Skyba 2009). In a review of the research on characteristics that predict excellence in adult life, Trost concluded that a combination of characteristics is necessary for outstanding accomplishments in later life; however, no combination of predictors could explain more than 50% of the variance in adult achievement (Trost 2000: 332).…”

Alternate Reality Conceptualization: Venturing Along the Fine Line Between Genius and Madness

“…Fundamental to the context of this model is an understanding of the concepts of genius, madness, and alternate reality conceptualization. As previously acknowledged, the presumptive link between genius and madness dates back more than 2,000 years and persists to the present (Albert, 1969(Albert, , 1975Andreasen, 2005;Jamison, 1993;Ludwig, 1995;Rothenberg, 1990;Schlesinger, 2009). But, as concepts, genius and madness seem to have evolved very little.…”

“…As psychiatry and psychology began to emerge as scientific disciplines in their own right with Emil Kraepelin's pioneering work in the differentiation and classification of types of mental illness in the late 1800s and early 1900s (International Mental Health Research Organization, 2009), madness became increasingly extraneous as a scientific concept. According to Albert (1969), interest in genius as a concept waned around 1945 when the emphasis-at least in psychological research-shifted from genius to creativity and giftedness. Albert observed that, with genius, the change in emphasis became particularly evident after 1954, when the identification of giftedness and gifted children became a Cold War imperative.…”

“…Albert observed that, with genius, the change in emphasis became particularly evident after 1954, when the identification of giftedness and gifted children became a Cold War imperative. The intent of this imperative was to provide advanced, specialized educational opportunities for those children identified as gifted in order to direct them into scientific and technical fields where it was thought the now-defunct Soviet Union already had or was about to establish preeminence (Albert, 1969).…”