Cognitive and NoncognitiveCharacteristics of Innovators

David Lubinski

Vanderbilt University

24 August 2009

Human Capital

“The relationship between success and IQ works only up to a point. Once someone has reached an IQ of somewhere around 120, having additional IQ points doesn’t seem to translate into any measurable real-world advantage.”

Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell (2008, p. 79)

“But beyond a certain threshold – an I.Q. of 115, say – there is no correlation between intelligence and creativity or genius.”

Get smart (a New York Times book review) by Jim Holt, 29 March 2009

Accomplishments Across Individual Differences within the Top 1% of General Cognitive Ability:

25+ Years After Identification at Age 13

Doctorates (N = 534)

STEM Accomplishments

Z = .45

Fifty Years of Longitudinal Research on Spatial Ability

Terminal Bachelors

Terminal Masters

Doctorates

Occupations

Graduate Record Exam (GRE) and Corresponding Measures from Project Talent on Graduate Majors

Spatial Ability Stanine for STEM PhDs, Masters, and Bachelor Degrees from Project Talent

“There is good evidence that [visual-spatial reasoning] relates to specialized achievements in fields such as architecture, dentistry, engineering, and medicine…Given this plus the longstanding anecdotal evidence on the role of visualization in scientific discovery,…it is incredible that there has been so little programmatic research on admissions testing in this domain” (p. 136)

Snow, R. E. (1999). Commentary: Expanding the breadth and depth of admissions testing. In S. Messick (Ed.), Assessment in higher education (pp. 133–140). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Bachelor’s Degrees (N = 580)

Master’s Degrees (N = 472)