Abstract
It is widely believed among professionals and laity that genius is born and not made. However, the early and still-influential statistical studies of Frances Galton on the inheritance of genius have neither been supported nor definitively refuted. This study empirically assesses the hereditary transmission hypothesis. We collected family background data on 50 Nobel Prize laureates in literature, 31 Booker Prize awardees, 135 Pulitzer Prize winners, and 20 National Book and National Book Critics Circle awardees. We compared these for incidence of occupational inheritance (that is, same parent-child occupations) with a matching group of 392 eminent persons in noncreative occupations; for predominant occupation type, we also compared subject data with data for 560 high-IQ nonprizewinners, as well as with general population occupational data. Incidence of one or both parents in the same occupation was only 1% for literary prizewinners but 16% for eminent noncreative persons (P < 0.0001). The predominant (76%) family background constellation for prizewinners consisted of parent-child sex congruency either in applied-equivalent occupations requiring language, persuasion, or artisan skills (P < 0.0001, compared with control subjects) or in unrelated occupations with unfulfilled wishes for creative expression. Outstanding literary prizewinners do not manifest direct inheritance of creativity from their parents; instead, parents and children of the same sex are predominantly in applied-equivalent or performance occupations and have unfulfilled creative wishes. We suggest that early developmental influences on child motivation involve identification and competition with the parent of the same sex.
Highlights
The results of Assessment I clearly show an absence of direct occupational inheritance among eminent literary prizewinners
Cattell’s inferences about inherited eminence tend to be contradicted, because the findings here are derived from subjects of different cultures and ethnicity and data were gathered over an extended time period
Creative achievement is facilitated by a family background constellation involving the work and aspirations of the congruent-sex parent and the creative orientation of both parents
Summary
We collected background occupational data from every published English-language biography to determine an assessment group of outstanding literary prize winners for the years 1900 through 2000. The group consisted of 236 subjects: 50 Nobel Prize laureates, 31 Booker Prize awardees, 135 Pulitzer Prize winners in Poetry, Fiction, or Drama, and 20 combined NBA and NBCCA winners. Many subjects had won more than one of the prizes, and overlapping data were excluded. Nobel laureates came from a broad distribution of ethnic and geographic backgrounds throughout Europe, the US, Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. Booker Prize winners were citizens of the British Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland. In the remaining categories all were US citizens, some were born elsewhere. Offspring data, which would not apply to all members of the subject group, were not collected
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