Dean Keith Simonton
born January 27, 1948, Glendale, CA; Los Angeles Metropolitan Area, USA
Citizenship: USA
Category: Scientists
Occupation: Psychologist, professor, author, expert on creativity and genius.
Specification: He is interested in the study of genius, psychology of creativity, greatness, and leadership, the history of psychology and the psychology of science, with special stress on the historiometric analysis of eminent personalities.
Unique distinction: Simonton is distinguished for his multidisciplinary and historiometric approaches to understanding human creativity, genius and leadership, and for his extensive research on eminent individuals across various disciplines.
Influenced by: C. Cox, Ch. Darwin, F. Galton
Gender: Male
Achievements and contributions:
Social and professional position: Dean Keith Simonton is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of California, Davis, and a former president of the International Association of Empirical Aesthetics and the Society for the Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts.
The main contribution (Best Known for): Simonton is best known for his pioneering and extensive research on the psychology of creativity, genius, leadership and aesthetics. He is most recognized for developing the historiometric, cross-cultural, transhistorical, and biographical, approach in studying creativity and genius, for the Study of Creative Genius at the Personal and Sociocultural Level. He is also renowned for his Blind Variation and Selective Retention (BVSR) model, which describes the processes underlying creative thought and innovation.
Simonton explores the history of psychology, particularly focusing on the psychology of science, especially the psychology of distinguished scientists and eminent psychologists.
Major Contributions to the Psychology and Culture, Notable Ideas
1. Historiometric Method
Simonton employs a historiometric methodology that analyzes the lives and works of eminent individuals across various fields.
The historiometric method, as developed and refined by Simonton, combines elements of historiography (the study of historical writing) with psychometrics (the science of measuring mental capacities and processes).
He taps into archival data analysis techniques, including cross-cultural, transhistorical, biographical, and content analytical measures. He made extensive use a variety of statistical methods in his historiometric analyses, including Multiple regression analysis, Factor analysis, Time series analysis, and Meta-analysis.
The Historiometric method is based on the idea that by quantifying and analyzing large amounts of historical data, researchers can uncover patterns and relationships that might not be apparent through traditional qualitative historical analysis.
Using the Historiometric Method, Simonton has examined various aspects of creativity and genius, including:
• Productivity (e.g., number of works produced).
• Impact (e.g., frequency of citations or mentions).
• Age-related trends in creative output.
• Environmental factors influencing creativity.
• Personality traits associated with genius.
2. Theories of Creativity
In his works, Simonton defines the construct of creativity by the three essential and product-focused criteria: novelty (a product or idea needs to be new, original, or even shocking), adaptiveness or appropriateness and completeness. by the three essential and product-focused criteria: novelty (a product or idea needs to be new, original, or even shocking), adaptiveness or appropriateness and completeness.
2.1. Darwinian Theory of Creativity
Simonton applied evolutionary principles to explain the creative process and product generation.
• Chance configuration theory. Simonton used this term back in the late 1980s to describe his version of Donald Campbell’s (1960) blind-variation and selective-retention theory of the creativity process. It means that the ideas are subjected to quasi-random combinations until a stable “configuration” emerges.
Blind Variation and Selective Retention (BVSR) Model posits that creativity arises through a process similar to biological evolution. It involves two stages: blind variation, where random ideas are generated, and selective retention, where the most useful or effective ideas are preserved and developed. This model emphasizes that creativity is not just a product of individual genius but also a systematic process influenced by environmental and social factors.
In more recent work he has dropped this terminology because it has caused all sorts of misinterpretations about the fundamental nature of the theory.
BVSR was radically reformulated with respect to creative problem solving. The reformulation began by defining (a) potential solution sets consisting of k possible solutions each described by their respective probability and utility values, (b) a set sightedness metric that gauges the extent to which the probabilities correspond to the utilities, and (c) a solution creativity index based on the joint improbability and utility of each solution. Critically, it was formally demonstrated that the most creative solutions must emerge from solution sets that score extremely low in sightedness. (2012)
• Creative Performance and Expertise Acquisition: Simonton examines the relationship between expertise and creative results from a stochastic process involving chance combinations of pre-existing ideas, which are then selectively retained based on their utility and effectiveness.
• The Role of Chance in Creativity: Hе еmphasized the importance of chance and randomness in creative achievements.
• Multiple-Discovery Theory: In this theory, it was explained how scientific discoveries and inventions often occur simultaneously by multiple individuals.
• The Equal-Odds Rule: This rule suggests that the probability of producing a masterpiece is proportional to the total number of works produced. Apart from that it demonstrated that the ratio of high-quality to low-quality creative output remains constant throughout a creator’s career.
2.2. Sociocultural context of creativity
Creativity is understood as more than just an individual phenomenon. It is not just an interesting psychological phenomenon but a socially and personally valued behaviour besides.
Beyond the realm of interpersonal and disciplinary interactions, there exists the larger external milieu. Creativity does not just occur in a specific social context –but in the cultural, political, military, and economic milieu. Without taking these circumstances into account, it would be impossible to explain why some times and places are more creative than others. From the sociocultural perspective, creativity is often recognized as a symbol of cultural vitality.
The cultural diversity, ethnic marginality, bilingualism, and even exposure to ideological or behavioral dissent may facilitate creativity. Ultimately, even more, human beings may be able to display optimal functioning through creativity
2.3. Integration of Creativity and Leadership
Simonton explores the relationship between creativity and effective leadership, proposing that many successful leaders exhibit high levels of creativity in their decision-making processes. His research suggests that creative thinking is essential for innovative leadership, enabling leaders to navigate complex challenges and inspire their teams.
Simonton Investigated the creativity of political leaders and the impact of their personal characteristics on their leadership style and historical outcomes.
2.4. Cognitive and Personal Factors and Creativity
Simonton investigated the relationship between personality traits and creative achievement across various domains.
His research highlights the interplay between cognitive abilities, personality traits, and personal experiences in shaping creative output. For instance, he has identified specific cognitive styles, such as openness to experience and divergent thinking, as critical components of creative thinking. Additionally, he explores how personal background, motivation, and social, and cultural factors influence an individual’s creative potential, eminence and the emergence of genius.
2.5. Creativity and Intelligence
“My view of intelligence is basically a Darwinian one. It’s based on sort of the old Functionalist notion that goes way back to Francis Galton, which says that there are a certain set of cognitive capacities that enable an individual to adapt and thrive in any given environment they find themselves in, and those cognitive capacities include things like memory and retrieval, and problem solving and so forth. There’s a cluster of cognitive abilities that lead to successful adaptation to a wide range of environments”
Individual differences in intellect and personality. Simonton’s contributions provide a comprehensive understanding of how individual differences in intellect, cognitive capacities and personality shape not only personal achievements but also broader societal outcomes. While a moderately high IQ is significant for achieving eminence, statistical analyses show that intelligence contributes to only approximately 4-5 per cent of cultural achievements and eminence. Developmental, motivational and personality factors seem to matter a great deal more.
Intelligence level impacts everyday creativity, such as that involved in problem-solving, but individuals with very high intelligence do not necessarily demonstrate the type of creativity that will make an impression on society at large (1999).
In 2006, he published a paper that ranked the IQ, Openness, Intellectual Brilliance, and Leadership of all past 42 US presidents.
3. Genius and Eminence
Simonton has made an enormous contribution to the study of the traits and sociocultural factors that contribute to high levels of achievement and genius. He has conducted extensive research on the psychological profiles of eminent individuals, providing insights into the cognitive and personality traits that characterize creative geniuses. Genius is often conceived of as the absolute peak of human performance within a given domain. The existence and number of geniuses in a given historical period allow for the identification and degree of prominence given to each golden period.
3.1. Psychological Profiles of Geniuses
Genius must possess a few key characteristics that differentiate them from the everyday creator.
1. Uniqueness. A genius is someone who possesses unique or distinctly characteristic creative ideas or behaviors—a concept that we will label uniqueness.
2. Individual’s social impact. The genius’s thoughts, ideas, or products have a tremendous impact on the social environment, ranging from other members of the individual’s field to society as a whole.
3. The quality of intellectual power – a crucial ingredient, which includes the significance power and importance of the act.
“Overall, the creative genius is an individual who brings into being products of undeniable novelty, adaptability to the particular problems of a domain, and completeness. In addition, these creative products bear the indelible stamp that is associated with each genius’s unique style of thinking and being, a style that often pervades all aspects of his or her life. The products of genius also affect others—changing the way people think, behave, and experience their lives—and stand as a testament to the genius’s tremendous intellectual power. The creative genius, by definition, is poised to have a tremendous and indelible impact on innumerable lives (Cassandro, Simonton, 2002).
Through his historiometric studies, Simonton has developed psychological profiles of renowned historical figures like Sir Isaac Newton, Leonardo da Vinci and Albert Einstein. These profiles reveal common personality traits, cognitive styles, and life experiences that characterize creative geniuses, providing valuable insights into the nature of genius itself.
3.2. The Genius Checklist, identifies traits and factors common among historical geniuses.
Simonton said that it takes a distinctive confluence of events and circumstances to produce geniuses of the highest order and two different combinations of forces have to come together. The first involves the general set of factors that are common to all geniuses – their intelligence, imagination, motivation, and determination. The second concerns the specific set of factors that make each individual genius unique – truly sui generis.
Attempts to measure and identify creative genius usually fall into six somewhat related categories:
1. Creative product. The use of productivity in the identification of creative genius continues to be fruitfully applied to a variety of topics. However, the productivity-centered approach is limited to content that can not be easily quantified.
2. Eminence (i.e., prominence or high position) as a primary criterion. Strategies that emphasize eminence select individuals who have established distinct and enduring reputations in a particular field.
3. Intelligence. It should be taken into account that qualities measured by IQ tests, without requisite levels of creativity and motivation, are unsatisfactory in their ability to capture creative genius
4. Cognitive style. The concept of divergent thought can be conceptualized as an individual’s cognitive orientation toward the production of multiple solutions to a given problem.
5. Personality and biography. The primary advantage of personality measures can be found in their consistent demonstration of high reliability.
The best approach to conceptualizing and measuring creative genius may be to adopt a multiple measurement strategy as a combination of the previously mentioned factors, such as a composite of personality, intelligence, and productivity measures.
3.3. The “Mad Genius” Hypothesis
Simonton explores the link between creativity and mental illness. He argues, that the most important process underlying insights of creative genius is cognitive disinhibition—the tendency to pay attention to things that normally should be ignored or filtered out by attention because they appear irrelevant. Cognitive disinhibition proves beneficial in both art and science. And this quality is positively associated with psychopathology. in both art and science.
He also found that creators tend to display higher rates of psychopathology than do leaders, and artists tend to display higher rates than do scientists. Artists who operate in expressive, subjective, or romantic styles display more psychopathology than those who operate in classical or academic styles. Scientists in paradigmatic disciplines like physics tend to display lower rates of psychopathology than do those in the non-paradigmatic disciplines like psychology. In general, the more constraints on the genius in a particular domain, the lower the rate of psychopathology.
3.4. The Study of Creative Genius at the Sociocultural Level
The ultimate goal of most scientific, including psychological, research is to
discern universal patterns of behaviour and thus to predict creative behaviour across time and space. The primary advantage of cross-cultural and transhistorical creativity research concerns its generalizability.
Cross-cultural studies focus on creative genius as a quantity specific to a particular culture or geographic region. They rely on the concept of Ortgeist, or the “spirit of the place,” and emphasize the cultural factors that covary with indicators of creativity and genius.
The transhistorical study of creative genius relies on the concept of Zeitgeist, or the “spirit of the times,” and uses the historical period as its unit of analysis.
However, the universal laws discerned by creativity and genius research must be qualified in relation to data adequacy concerns.
3. 5. Eminence Across Domains
Simonton’s work emphasizes that creativity manifests differently across various domains, such as science, art, and literature and emphasizes the unique contributions of individuals in each domain. He investigates how domain-specific factors, including cultural context and disciplinary norms, shape the expression of creativity. This perspective allows for a more comprehensive understanding of how different fields cultivate and recognize creative contributions.
He also found that while too much expertise can hurt one’s chances of greatness, the downsides of overtraining in one domain can be ameliorated by the acquisition of expertise among numerous different domains.
Scientific Genius: Examining the nature of scientific genius and the social and psychological factors that contribute to it. Scientific genius shares with all forms two main characteristics: intellect and drive. That is, intelligence and motivation are crucial to success in almost all domains of exceptional achievement, whether creativity or leadership. Creative genius in the sciences, however, differs from that in the arts in two ways: (a) imagination is more restrained by logic and fact and (b) the drive is a bit less personal and idiosyncratic, conforming a bit more to social conventions.
3.6. Creative Productivity and Influence
Simonton analyzes the patterns of lifetime creative productivity and the factors that influence it. He argues that the single most important predictor of a creator’s long-term influence is his or her total lifetime output. A scientist’s total output predicts whether or not that person will have an entry in a major encyclopedia. In most of his research, he measured creativity in terms of productivity – counting either total work or high-impact work.
3.7. Life-span development
Simonton argues, that one of the unique features of historiometric research is the possibility of studying the lives and careers of high achievers from birth to death and every age between.
He notes, that his extensive work on career trajectories – the relation between age and exceptional achievement – has had the biggest impact and his journal article (1997) concerning this subject is the most cited.
Simonton also ventured into a mathematical model of talent development (1999), a meta-analytic integration of behavioural genetic and psychometric research ( 2008), and a proposed structural equation model that attempts to combine both nature and nurture (2014).
3.8. Age and Developmental Antecedents and of Creativity
He researched the relationship between age and creative output and investigated how early life experiences influence creative potential. “If you tabulate output across time in consecutive age periods, you obtain a single-peaked curve. Productivity increases rapidly up to a peak and then gradually declines. The details of this peak vary according to the particular domain of creativity. Sometimes the peak occurs earlier, other times late. Sometimes the decline is steep, other times not. Now greatness is another matter. It tends to increase over time” – noted Simonton.
3.9. Giftedness, Creativity and Genius
The three concepts—creativity, genius, and giftedness—are distinct, and yet closely related as well, argued Simonton. Education and training is most often dedicated to teaching someone to filter out the irrelevant, and yet creativity requires consideration of the superficially irrelevant—the proverbial ‘thinking outside the box.’ Hence, by definition, creativity cannot be inculcated, only encouraged.
Honours and Awards:
• William James Book Award from the American Psychological Association (APA) Division 1 (1991)
• William James Book Award for The Origins of Genius (1999)
• Award for Excellence in Research from the Mensa Foundation (multiple years: 1986, 2009, 2011)
• Sir Francis Galton Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Study of Creativity from the International Association of Empirical Aesthetics (2002)
• APA’s Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions (2018)
• Lifetime Achievement Award from the Mensa Foundation (2019)
Research awards
• Ernest R. Hilgard Lifetime Achievement Award, Division 1 – Society for General Psychology, APA (2023)
• Rudolf Arnheim Award for Outstanding Achievement in Psychology and the Arts, Division 10 – Society for the Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts, APA (1997)
• Sir Francis Galton Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Study of Creativity, International Association of Empirical Aesthetics (IAEA, 1996)
• Henry A. Murray Award for Distinguished Contributions to the Study of Individual Lives and Whole Persons, Association for Research in Personality and the Society for Personology (2014)
• Joseph B. Gittler Award for the Most Scholarly Contribution to the Philosophical Foundation of Psychological Knowledge, American Psychological Foundation (2013)
• E. Paul Torrance Award, Creativity Network, National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC, 2010)
• Distinguished Scientific Contributions to Media Psychology Award, Division 46 – Society for Media Psychology and Technology, APA (2013)
• Mensa Lifetime Achievement Award, Mensa Foundation (2019)
Research publication awards
• William James Book Award, Division 1 – Society for General Psychology, APA (2000)
• George A. Miller Outstanding Article Award, Division 1 – Society for General Psychology, APA (1997)
• Theoretical Innovation Prize, Division 8 – Society for Personality and Social Psychology, APA (2004)
• Mensa Award for Excellence in Research, Mensa Education & Research Foundation (1986, 2009, 2011)
• Otto Klineberg Intercultural and International Relations Honorable Mention, Division 9 – Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, APA (1997)
Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Major works
Simonton has published over 550 articles, book chapters, and books, contributing significantly to the fields of creativity, genius, and leadership. He has over 550 publications, including 14 books.
Books:
1. Simonton, D. K. (1984). Genius, creativity, and leadership: Historiometric inquiries. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
2. Simonton, D. K. (1987). Why presidents succeed: A political psychology of leadership.
3. Simonton, D. K. (1988). Scientific genius: A psychology of science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
4. Simonton, D. K. (1990). Psychology, science, and history: An introduction to historiometry. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
5. Simonton, D. K. (1994). Greatness: Who makes history and why. New York: Guilford Press.
6. Simonton, D. K. (1997). Genius and creativity: Selected papers. Greenwich, CT: Ablex.
7. Simonton, D. K. (1999). Origins of genius: Darwinian perspectives on creativity. New York: Oxford University Press.
8. Simonton, D. K. (2002). Great psychologists and their times: Scientific insights into psychology’s history. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
9. Simonton, D. K. (2004). Creativity in science: Chance, logic, genius, and zeitgeist. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
10. Simonton, D. K. (2009). Genius 101. New York: Springer Publishing.
11. Simonton, D. K. (2011). Great flicks: Scientific studies of cinematic creativity and aesthetics. New York: Oxford University Press.
12. Kaufman, J. C., & Simonton, D. K. (Eds.). (2014a). The social science of cinema. New York: Oxford University Press.
13. Simonton, D. K. (Ed.). (2014). The Wiley handbook of genius. Oxford, UK: Wiley.
14. Simonton, D. K. (2018). The genius checklist: Nine paradoxical tips on how you can become a creative genius. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
His most recent articles:
1. Simonton, D. K. (2014). Historiometric studies of genius. In D. K. Simonton (Ed.), The Wiley handbook of genius (pp. 87- 106). Oxford: Wiley.
2. Simonton, D. K. (2014). The mad-genius paradox: Can creative people be more mentally healthy but highly creative people more mentally ill? Perspectives on Psychological Science, 9, 470-480.
3. Simonton, D. K. (2015). Historiometry. In J. Martin, J. Sugarman, & K. Slaney (Eds.), Wiley handbook of theoretical and philosophical psychology (pp. 183-199). Oxford, UK: Wiley.
4. Simonton, D. K. (2016). Scientific genius in Islamic civilization: Quantified time series from qualitative historical narratives. Journal of Genius and Eminence, 1, 4-13.
5. Simonton, D. K. (2017). Creative genius and psychopathology: Creativity as positive and negative personality. In G. J. Feist, R. Reiter-Palmon, & J. C. Kaufman (Eds.), Cambridge handbook of creativity and personality research (pp. 235-250). New York: Cambridge University Press.
6. Simonton, D. K. (2017). Creative geniuses, polymaths, child prodigies, and autistic savants: The ambivalent function of interests and obsessions. In P. A. O’Keefe & J. M. Harackiewicz (Eds.), The science of interests (pp. 175-185). New York: Springer.
7. Simonton, D. K. (2018). Creative genius as inherently relevant and beneficial: The view from Mount Olympus. Creativity: Theories – Research – Applications, 5, 138-141.
8. Simonton, D. K. (2019). Creativity and genius. In B. Wallace, D. A. Sisk, & J. Senior, The SAGE handbook of gifted and talented education (pp. 70–82).
9. Simonton, D. K. (2019). Talent development in the domain of academic psychology. In P. Olszewski-Kubilius, R. Subotnik, & F. Worrell (Eds.), The psychology of high performance: Developing human potential into domain-specific talent (pp. 201-218).
10. Simonton, D. K. (2019). Creativity in sociocultural systems: Cultures, nations, and civilizations. In P. B. Paulus & B. A. Nijstad (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of group creativity and innovation (pp. 271-284). New York: Oxford University Press.
11. Simonton, D. K. (2020) Genius. In V. P. Glăveanu (Ed.), The Palgrave encyclopedia of the possible. London: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. Simonton, D. K. (2020g). Genius and greatness. In M. A. Runco & S. Pritzker (Eds.), Encyclopedia of creativity (3rd ed., pp. 539-545). Oxford: Elsevier.
12. Simonton, D. K. (2022). Creative productivity across the lifespan. In J. A. Plucker (Ed.), Creativity & innovation: Theory, research, and practice (2nd ed., pp. 155-168). Waco, TX: Prufrock Press.
13. Simonton, D. K. (2022). The development of creativity, expertise, talent, and giftedness: A bridge too far? In J. Van TasselBaska (Ed.), Talent development in gifted education: Theory, research and practice (pp. 25-40). New York: Routledge.
14. Simonton, D. K. (2022). Giftedness from the perspective of research on genius: Some precautionary implications. Gifted Education International, 38, 362-365.
15. Simonton, D. K. (2022). Historiometric methods. In M. Nadal & O. Vartanian (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of empirical aesthetics (pp. 105-218). New York: Oxford University Press.
16. Simonton, D. K. (2022). Serendipity and creativity in the arts and sciences: A combinatorial analysis. In W. Ross & S. Copeland (Eds.), The art of serendipity (pp. 293-320). London: Palgrave Macmillan
17. Simonton, D. K. (2023). The blind-variation and selective-retention theory of creativity: The development and current status of BVSR. Creativity Research Journal, 35, 304-323
18. Simonton, D. K. (2024). Historiometric approaches to assessment: Products, persons, and places. In M. Runco & S. Acar (Eds.), Handbook of creativity assessment (pp. 270-285). Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar.
19. Simonton, D. K. (2024). Transformational creative genius: Four wise considerations of three definitions. In R. J. Sternberg & S. Karami (Eds.), Transformational creativity: Learning for a better future (pp. 255-266). Switzerland: Springer Nature.
Career and personal life:
Family background: Dean Keith Simonton was born in Glendale, CA, a city near downtown Los Angeles and Hollywood, but grew up in the San Fernando Valley. He was the son of Dean Clarence Simonton and Laverne (Merkobrad) Williams.
His father began on the assembly line in the aerospace industry and retired as a long-haul trucker.
He wrote about his ancestry: Scottish, English, Serbian, and French-Canadian (i.e., Gàidhlig, West Germanic, South Slavic, and Gallo Romance); about one quarter each (e.g., maternal grandfather born in Serbia): four distinct Indo-European language branches!
Despite growing up in a working-class neighbourhood, he very early became ambitious, an ambition fueled by his omnivorous reading.
His interest in creativity and human intelligence arose, in part, from a youthful enthusiasm for the classical arts, sciences, and humanities. He wrote that his family bought a set of the World Book Encyclopedia. There were portraits of outstanding creators or famous leaders who made a name for themselves by some exceptional achievement. “But not until I became a psychology major did I realize that researchers actually studied the
factors underlying creativity and leadership. And it was not until graduate school that I figured out a scientific approach – historiometry – to comprehend the geniuses of history”.
That keen interest in the nature and origins of genius led to his prolific research career.
Education background: Simonton actually started out as a chemistry major at Occidental College. But that major was pursued in a liberal arts college that required that all students take a two-year long course in the history of civilization. Then in his second year, he took an introductory psychology course in my second year, albeit the final change wasn’t complete until the end of his third year.
Simonton completed his Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Occidental College in 1970, graduating magna cum laude and as a member of Phi Beta Kappa and Psi Chi. (1966-1970).
He furthered his education at Harvard University, earning a Master of Arts in Social Psychology in 1973, followed by a Ph.D. in Social Psychology in 1975 (1970-1975).
The topic of his dissertation was.: “The social psychology of creativity: An archival data analysis” (1974).
During his time at Harvard, Simonton received fellowships from the National Science Foundation and the Danforth Foundation.
Career highlights:
He served as a Section Leader in the History of Civilization at Occidental College from 1969 to 1970 and Teaching Fellow, at Harvard University (1971-1973).
He held positions as an Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville (1974-1976).
Between 1975 and 2000, he averaged about 8 publications per year, and twice he could claim 18 publications in a single year. These publications include 8 books and more than 3 dozen publications in top journals. These publications have earned Simonton a considerable amount of professional recognition.
University of California, Davis:
Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, University of California, Davis; 1976-1980
Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, University of California, Davis; 1980-1985
Visiting Research Psychologist, Institute for Personality Assessment and Research, UC Berkeley; 1985.
Simonton served as a Full Professor from 1985 to 2016 and he held the title of Distinguished Professor (Above Scale) from 2004 to 2016 both within the Department of Psychology at UC Davis.
In 2013, Simonton was honoured as the Ida Cordelia Beam Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Iowa.
Since 2016, Simonton has served as a Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Davis.
Elected Offices:
President, Society for General Psychology, APA Division 1 (2011-12);
President, International Association of Empirical Aesthetics (1998-2000);
President, Society for the Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts, APA Division 10 (1985-86);
President, Society for the History of Psychology, Division 26 – APA (2023); Member-at-Large, Executive Committee, APA Division 10 (1980-82).
From 1993 to 1999, he served as the editor of the Journal of Creative Behavior.
Personal life:
Dean Keith Simonton has been married three times: first to Susan Youel, then to Melody Boyer, and to Karen Dawn Horobin (m. 2005), whom he referred to as the love of his life. She was a CSU Sacramento professor. They were married for 13 years until her passing in 2018. Simonton wrote: “…she was trained in pure psychological science before turning to community service in early childhood education, where she truly shined, obtaining substantial grants to set up enduring programs. Kazie had a really great brain, but an even greater heart”.
The couple had a stepdaughter Sabrina Dee Simonton.
Personality:
Simonton is known for his intellectual rigour, curiosity, passion for the arts and sciences, methodical approach to research and dedication to his field.
Colleagues describe Simonton as intellectually curious, meticulous in his research, and possessing a broad interdisciplinary perspective. He is known for his ability to synthesize complex ideas from various fields and his openness to exploring unconventional research methods.
He typically works on several different projects all at once. They usually vary in their stages of completion, the degree of ambition they represent, and, of course, the specific subject matter. “My work style is more that of a lone wolf. In fact, 93% of my publications are single authored”, – wrote Simonton.
He gave two motivational and inspirational career pieces of advice for new researchers:
1. Find a question big enough that it can occupy your interest for a lifetime.
2. Do not allow rejections and criticisms to deflect you from that personal enterprise.
In addition, in order to make a significant and substantial contribution in any domain:
a) rather specialized expertise is required. There’s past research to learn and difficult techniques to master, plus there are always new results and methods to keep up on.
b) it is necessary to have wide interests, such as artistic, literary, and musical hobbies.
Zest, Trivia and interesting facts:
Simonton’s interest in creativity extends beyond academia. He has a keen interest in the classical arts and humanities, which has influenced his research focus.
Simonton has a keen interest in classical music and often draws parallels between musical composition and creative processes. He is an aficionado of Classical, especially BBMHH (alias Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Haydn, and Handel). And also he is an opera buff, including Wagner, Puccini, Mozart, Richard Strauss, and Verdi. He has discussed how studying the lives of composers has influenced his understanding of creative productivity.
He likes arts of all kinds but has a special affinity for Classical Chinese painting, El Greco, Goya, and Van Gogh, plus virtually all contemporary painting.
His long-term fascination with mathematics quite surprisingly transformed into a profound curiosity about the world’s languages.
In literature his biggest passion here is English poetry from Geoffrey Chaucer to Elizabeth Bishop, but most especially the plays and sonnets of William Shakespeare. He also greatly enjoyed Spanish literature in the original. He has been most strongly moved by Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Ibsen, Basho and many others.
He maintains a personal library of over 5,000 books, spanning topics from psychology and history to philosophy and the arts.
He enjoys historical research and biographical studies, which complement his professional work.
Simonton has been a guest speaker at numerous international conferences and has given talks on creativity and genius to diverse audiences, including business leaders and educators
Simonton is an avid traveller, often visiting historical sites, and major museums of the world, that inspire his research. In his spare time, he enjoys hiking in the California wilderness, which he finds conducive to creative thinking.
Links:
Dean Keith Simonton, Reflective_Conversation, ucdavis.edu, Prabook, intapi.sciendo
