The Mad-Genius Paradox

Abstract

The persistent mad-genius controversy concerns whether creativity and psychopathology are positively or negatively correlated. Remarkably, the answer can be "both"! The debate has unfortunately overlooked the fact that the creativity-psychopathology correlation can be expressed as two independent propositions: (a) Among all creative individuals, the most creative are at higher risk for mental illness than are the less creative and (b) among all people, creative individuals exhibit better mental health than do noncreative individuals. In both propositions, creativity is defined by the production of one or more creative products that contribute to an established domain of achievement. Yet when the typical cross-sectional distribution of creative productivity is taken into account, these two statements can both be true. This potential compatibility is here christened the mad-genius paradox. This paradox can follow logically from the assumption that the distribution of creative productivity is approximated by an inverse power function called Lotka's law. Even if psychopathology is specified to correlate positively with creative productivity, creators as a whole can still display appreciably less psychopathology than do people in the general population because the creative geniuses who are most at risk represent an extremely tiny proportion of those contributing to the domain. The hypothesized paradox has important scientific ramifications.

Psychological Framework for Gifted Children’s Cognitive and Socio-Emotional Development: A Review of the Research Literature and Implications

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A Neuroeconomic Framework for Creative Cognition

“…Finally, since the present framework ascribes a central role to the LC-NE system, it follows that disturbances in the LC-NE system might affect creative cognition. For example, the LC-NE system has been implicated in highly overlapping sets of clinical disorders associated with either enhanced or impaired creativity (e.g., schizophrenia, bipolar disorder; Baas, Nijstad, Boot, & De Dreu, 2016;Kyaga et al, 2011;MacCabe, Sariasian, Almqvist, Lichtenstein, Larsson, & Kyaga, 2018;Simonton, 2014). Some evidence suggests that schizophrenic patients have increased locus NEUROECONOMICS AND CREATIVITY 29 coeruleus cell volumes (Marner, Søborg, & Pakkenberg, 2005), and type 1 (positive symptoms) schizophrenia has been associated with elevated norepinephrine and metabolites in the brain (Yamamoto & Hornykiewicz, 2004).…”

The Mediating Role of Cognitive Flexibility in the Influence of Counter-Stereotypes on Creativity

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