Age and outstanding achievement: What do we know after a century of research?

Abstract

This article examines, in four sections, the substantial literature on the longitudinal connection between personal age and outstanding achievement in domains of creativity and leadership. First, the key empirical findings are surveyed, with special focus on the typical age curve and its variations across disciplines, the association between precocity, longevity, and production rate, and the linkage between quantity and quality of output over the course of a career. Second, the central methodological issues are outlined, such as the compositional fallacy and differential competition, in order to appraise the relative presence of fact and artifact in the reported results. Third, the more important theoretical interpretations of the longitudinal data are presented and then evaluated for explanatory and predictive power. Fourth and last, central empirical, methodological, and theoretical considerations lead to a set of critical questions on which future research should likely concentrate. For centuries, thinkers have speculated about the association between a person's age and exceptional accomplishment: Is there an optimal age for a person to make a lasting contribution to human culture or society? When during the life span can we expect an individual to be most prolific or influential? It comes as no surprise, then, that one of the oldest topics in life span developmental psychology is the relation between age and achievement. Perhaps the earliest investigation into this matter may be found in Beard's (1874) Legal Responsibility in Old Age. Yet research did not really attain notable proportions until Harvey C. Lehman devoted around three decades to the subject. Most of his principal findings are summarized in his 1953 book, Age and Achievement (Lehman, 1953a; see also Lehman, 1962). Among his numerous results was the tendency for achievement, however gauged and no matter what the endeavor, to be a curvilinear, single-peak function of age. This central conclusion provoked some controversy, led largely by Wayne Dennis (e.g., Dennis, 1954d, 1956a, 1958, 1966) but reinforced by sociologists as well (e.g., S. Cole, 1979; Zuckerman & Merton, 1972). Although interest in this subject waned for a decade or so, and Lehman's contributions suffered some neglect and misunderstanding (Romanuik & Romanuik, 1981), psychologists have once again been drawn to this critical issue (see,

Age, Human Capital and the Geography of Innovation

“…However, it is intuitive that innovative output also depends on exploitation ability. If creative performance follows the double-exponential process of ideation and elaboration, as suggested by Simonton (1988), innovative output starts to decline from a certain age onwards even if human capital was assumed to be homogeneous with respect to age. The second valuable contribution is the multiplicative linkage between exploitation ability and the stock of knowledge.…”

“…Simonton (1988) shows in his model based on the chance-2 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK 6 configuration theory that the emergence of innovative achievements does not only depend on the creative potential, but also on the capacity to exploit it. The initial creative potential, which according to the model is fixed over the life span, consists of mental elements that are available for 'chance' (i.e.…”

“…But only the second step, 'elaboration', leads to the implementation of ideations and hence to concrete innovations. Simonton (1988) suggests to model innovative output as a product of the initial creative potential and two exponential processes (ideation and elaboration) 3 . Through the exponential functional form, this leads to the typical hump-shaped age-performance profile found in many creative disciplines.…”

Why Behave? The Problem of Initiating Causes and the Goals of Prediction and Control

“…Furthermore , environmental events do not shape a scientist's behavior all by themselves. Genetic makeup, as well as age and other factors , are probably also contributing to the type of private verbal behavior that is important in theoretical work (Simonton, 1988(Simonton, , 2000 .…”

The Role of Noncognitive Constructs and Other Background Variables in Graduate Education

“…Accomplishments such as awards (Kaufman, 2000(Kaufman, -2001, length of career (Crozier, 1999), age at different accomplishments (Simonton, 1988), influence, productivity, and international recognition (Ludwig, 1995) have been examined in studies of eminent creative individuals. Biographical data has also been used to study everyday creativity for example, through lists of creative accomplishments (King, McKee-Walker, & Broyles, 1996), or questions about past creative performance (Hocevar, 1979;Taylor & Ellison, 1966).…”