 20. Creativity and Genius  435
tion (Damian & Simonton, 2015a; Ludwig, 
1995; Post, 1994; Simonton, 2014d).
I should point out that the foregoing dif -
ferentiations represents only the first cut in 
laying out some typology of creative person -
ality. Although scientists are broadly differ -
ent from artists, neither scientific nor artistic 
creators form homogeneous groups (Taylor, 
McKay, & Kaufman, 2017). In the sciences, 
for instance, some personality differences 
separate contributors to the mathematical, 
physical, biological, and behavioral or social 
sciences (Cattell, 1963; Chambers, 1964; 
Roe, 1953; Terman, 1954). Thus, social 
scientists, as a group, are more extroverted 
than are most natural scientists. Even within 
a particular scientific discipline, revolution -
ary scientists tend to be much more “artis -
tic” in their disposition than are practitio -
ners of what Kuhn (1970) styled “normal 
science” (Simonton, 2004). Indeed, scientific 
revolutionaries exhibit higher tendencies to -
ward psychopathology than hold for normal 
scientists (Ko & Kim, 2008). In the arts, the 
variability in empirical profiles is even more 
remarkable (Cox, 1926; Ludwig, 1992). 
This diversity is perhaps most apparent in 
Ludwig’s (1995) study of psychopathology 
in eminent moderns. The incidence rates for 
various disorders depend very much on the 
prevalent form of artistic expression. Poets 
tend to suffer from extremely high rates, for 
example, whereas architects are more simi -
lar to the scientists in their susceptibility to 
psychopathology (also see Post, 1994).
It should now be evident that there are 
many types of creative personalities, not just 
one. This is reflected not just in their dis -
positions but in their backgrounds as well. 
For instance, scientific creators, in contrast 
to artistic creators, hail from backgrounds 
that tend to favor more conformity, conven -
tionality, and stability (Simonton, 2009). 
But this fact brings us naturally to the next 
substantive issue.
Nature versus  Nurture in  Creative  Development
One of the oldest controversies in psychology 
is the relative importance of nature and nur -
ture in human development. Interestingly, 
this issue was first raised—  and christened— 
with respect to the study of genius. The de -
bate began with Galton’s 1869 Hereditary Genius,  in which he attempted to show that 
genius of all kinds clustered into family ped -
igrees. Galton explicitly argued that genius 
is born rather than made. It was the immedi -
ate consequence of the genetic inheritance of 
extraordinary intelligence, energy, and de -
termination. This extreme stance was soon 
challenged, most notably by de Candolle 
(1873), who endeavored to show how the 
appearance of outstanding scientific creativ -
ity was contingent on a diverse array of cli -
matological, political, and sociocultural fac -
tors. As a result, Galton conceded that both 
genetics and environment may play a role in 
the emergence of creative genius. This con -
cession was ably made in his 1874 English 
Men of Science: Their Nature and Nurture . 
The subtitle is significant, for it represents 
the first formal use of the terms nature  and 
nurture  to label the debate.
Unfortunately, later research on genius 
and creativity moved even further away from 
the position that development is a function 
of both biological endowment and environ -
mental influences. This movement toward 
nurture accounts can be partly ascribed to 
the increased dominance of psychology in 
the United States, which had tended to have 
a strong emphasis on learning as the central 
factor in personality development. In ad -
dition, the eugenics movement founded by 
Galton seemed discredited by the genocidal 
programs of the Nazi regime during World 
War II. But perhaps most importantly, a 
great deal of accumulated research seemed 
to show that the development of creativity 
was contingent on a host of environmental 
factors (Damian & Simonton, 2014; Simon -
ton, 2019c). These variables include birth 
order and family size, and early traumatic 
experiences; the home intellectual environ -
ment, formal education, and special train -
ing; geographic, ethnic, religious, or profes -
sional marginality; and the larger political, 
social, cultural, and economic milieu. This 
large inventory of developmental variables 
seemed to prove that nurture was supreme 
over nature in the appearance of creative tal -
ent and genius.
However, recently, the tide has turned 
against this extreme environmentalist view, 
a turnaround due to the advent of modern 
behavioral genetics, including the sophis -
ticated analysis of monozygotic and dizy -