Do we all have the potential to become the next Albert Einstein, or are some people born with greater brain power than the rest of us? The debate rages on, fueled by strong emotions and fomented by cherished ideologies. Many who subscribe to an egalitarian ideology argue that, except for the mentally challenged, we all have roughly the same intelligence. They claim that those who demonstrate prowess in academics, athletics or creative invention are no more capable than anyone else–such “over-achievers” merely work harder and longer. In 1993, psychologist Anders Ericsson challenged the concept of innate talent, asserting:
Individual differences, even among elite performers, are closely related to assessed amounts of deliberate practice. Many characteristics once believed to reflect innate talent are actually the result of intense practice extended for a minimum of 10 years. Analysis of expert performance provides unique evidence on the potential and limits of extreme environmental adaptation and learning.
Six years later, psychologist Michael Howe in his book, Genius Explained, asserted that Mozart had no special talent and that his “genius” was really little more than hard work over a prolonged period. In 2008, journalist Malcolm Gladwell, in his bestselling book Outliers: The Story of Success, , popularized Ericssons’ research, asserting that talent is a myth and exceptional performance is merely the result of about 10,000 hours of deliberate practice–a conversion of Ericsson’s 10-year criterion with the assertion “Ten thousand hours is the magic number of greatness.”
However, other researchers point to child prodigies as examples of those who rise to the top of their domain before they were old enough to log 10,000 hours of practice. Drawing upon research from MRI scans, Elizabeth Winner, psychologist at Boston College states:
Indirect evidence indicates that gifted children and savants have atypical brain organization (whether as a result of genetics, the in utero environment, or after-birth trauma). First, giftedness in mathematics, visual arts, and music is associated with superior visual-spatial abilities, and children with mathematical gifts show enhanced brain activity in their right hemisphere when asked to recognize faces, a task known to involve the right hemisphere.
Francis Galton, who conceptualized the idea of intelligence, asserted that genius could not be attributed to intelligence alone. He attributed genius to “the concrete triple event, of ability combined with zeal and with capacity for hard labour.” In 1978, Joseph Renzulli, building on this idea, introduced what is known as his “three-ring” definition of giftedness. He argued that gifted behavior is manifest when 3 components: above average ability, extraordinary task commitment, and exceptional creativity are in play. Gifted behavior, as the intersection of the three components, is displayed in the Venn diagram below.
The Renzulli model suggests that giftedness requires an innate ability significantly above average, along with a high level of creativity and task commitment. The first of these has a significant genetic component. We don’t know the extent to which creativity depends upon genetics, although it may be positively correlated to intelligence. Task commitment, on the other hand is something over which a person has significant control, so bringing intense commitment to a task can probably result in significantly above average performance in most fields. However, becoming a top-level theoretical physicist, pure mathematician or cutting-edge biologist is probably out of reach for people whose IQ is less than 125.
