Dean Keith Simonton is a Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Davis. He is particularly interested in the study of human intelligence, creativity, greatness, and the psychology of science.
Simonton was born on January 27, 1948, in Los Angeles (Glendale), California. He attended Occidental College, where he graduated in 1970 with a B.A. in psychology. He then attended Harvard University where he earned an M.A. (1973) and Ph.D. (1975), both in social psychology.[1]
He has over 340 publications, including 13 books. One of his books, The Origins of Genius, received the William James Book Award.
One of his findings was that the 10 years' experience of deliberate practice is not a rule, but an average with significant variation around the mean. He found that the people who achieved the greatest lifetime productivity and highest levels of eminence required the least amount of time to achieve expertise. He also found that while too much expertise can hurt one's chances of greatness, the downsides of overtraining in one domain can be ameliorated by the acquisition of expertise among numerous different domains.[2]
He also found that an association of creativity with psychopathic traits was more apparent in artists than in scientists, and that artists who operate in expressive, subjective, or romantic styles display more psychopathology than those who operate in classical or academic styles.[3]
In 2006, he published a paper that ranked the IQ, Openness, Intellectual Brilliance, and Leadership of all past 42 US presidents.[4]
