 20. Creativity and Genius  439
to lie in the fact that grit most strongly correlates 
not with Big Five openness but rather with con -
scientiousness, which has a minimal, if not nega -
tive, relation with creativity (Duckworth & Quinn, 
2009). No wonder, then, that grit exhibits the most 
predictive power with respect to well-  defined goals 
(and means to attain those goals), such as winning 
the National Spelling Bee (Duckworth, Kirby, Tsu -
kayama, Berstein, & Ericsson, 2010; but see Credé, 
Tynan, & Harms, 2016). Creative geniuses do not 
operate in a world where means and ends can be so 
precisely defined.
2. With the advent of the positive psychology 
movement, a strong tendency has emerged to asso -
ciate creativity with positive traits (Bacon, 2005). 
In that context, the concept of the “mad genius” 
has attracted considerable controversy (Kaufman, 
2014). Unfortunately, research in this area is rid -
dled with theoretical and methodological problems. 
For example, researchers too often conflate what 
are logically orthogonal hypotheses, incorrectly 
concluding that creative geniuses cannot be more 
prone to mental illness if creative people as a whole 
are more mentally healthy than noncreative people 
(Simonton, 2014c). Yet these two propositions are 
not inconsistent at all. In fact, with little effort, it 
is perfectly possible to frame the mad genius asso -
ciation in terms of at least eight utterly orthogonal 
hypotheses (Simonton, 2019b).
3. I have spent many years trying to develop a 
comprehensive explanatory and predictive theory 
(e.g., Simonton, 2003, 2010). But I would also be 
the first to admit that the achievement so far re -
mains distant from the goal. The creative person -
ality, particularly at genius levels, is just extremely 
complex, perhaps even prohibitively so!
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