Creative performance, expertise acquisition, individual differences, and developmental antecedents: An integrative research agenda

This article sketches an integrative research agenda for creative achievement that combines the expertise-acquisition framework with individual differences in cognitive abilities and dispositional traits as well as the genetic and environmental factors underlying the development of those same individual-difference variables. The treatment begins with a discussion of domain-specific creative expertise and performance, a discussion that indicates the added complexities in assessing both variables. The analysis then shifts to substantial individual variation in both expertise acquisition and creative performance, variation that does not sit easily with a simple single-cause conception, particularly when performance appears inversely related to the amount of time taken to attain the requisite expertise. This leads to the question of whether individual-difference variables can account for otherwise inexplicable “faster better” and “more bang for the buck” effects. If so, then the obvious last inquiry concerns the developmental antecedents of those variables, where these antecedents can be both genetic and environmental. The upshot of the suggested analysis should be complex structural equation models that fully accommodate both nature and nurture in explaining exceptional creative performance.