Working Paper Series No. 2016-28 Creative Life Cycles: Three Myths David W. Galenson December 2016 Keywords: creativity, innovation, aging, ageism Becker Friedman Institute for Research in Economics Contact: 773.702.5599
[email protected] bfi.uchicago.edu Creative Life Cycles: Three Myths David W. Galenson University of Chicago Universidad del CEMA December 2016 Abstract This paper debunks three persistent myths: that creativity is greatest in youth, that wisdom hinders creativity, and that every discipline has a single peak age of creativity. These myths systematically neglect the achievements of experimental innovators – including such figures as Charles Darwin, Mark Twain, Paul Cézanne, Robert Frost, Virginia Woolf, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Alfred Hitchcock – who develop their work gradually over long periods to arrive at major contributions. Recent research has shown that experimental innovators are greatest late in life, that their wisdom increases their creativity, and that virtually every intellectual domain has great experimental old masters as well as conceptual young geniuses. In a society that devotes as much effort as ours to eliminating such pernicious forms of discrimination as racism and sexism, it is past time to recognize that these myths about creativity make a damaging contribution to ageism. 1 Age and Creativity One of the most widespread and persistent myths about creativity is that it is primarily, or even exclusively, associated with youth. The stereotype of the brash and iconoclastic young genius as the dominant source of important innovations has long had a firm hold on the popular imagination. Thus in surveying popular attitudes toward aging, the psychologist Dean Simonton observed that “Most conspicuous is the notion that creativity is the prerogative of youth, that aging is synonymous with a decrement in the capacity for generating and accepting innovations.”1 Nor is this misconception restricted to the general public.