An Abbreviated Autobiography of a Single-Case Historiometrician

Writing a brief autobiography would seem easy, especially after publishing previously in Clio’s Psyche. The journal and its readership are already familiar. Yet attempting to write an autobiography for this special issue is surprisingly challenging. One difficulty ensues from the fact that I have already published five autobi-

Page 94

ographical essays spread over three decades in different publications, with the last one appearing not that long ago. In addition, I have been the subject of two excellent biographies that provide a more objective perspective than I can offer: Ryan Daniel’s “Dean Keith Simonton: A truly remarkable contribution to creativity studies that will be one for the ages” in 2021 and Rodica Damian’s “Biography of Dean Keith Simonton” in 2020. Likewise, personal interviews have also been published in which someone else sets the biographical agenda, such as Suzanna E. Henshon’s “The Creative Path: An Interview with Dean Keith Simonton” in 2011 and Taisir Subhi Yamin’s “Dean Keith Simonton” in 2021. Perhaps everything that can be said has already been said, reducing me to compiling and paraphrasing.

Yet none of these essays specifically examine my life and career from the standpoint of psychobiography (the minor exception being Damian’s 2014 article, “An Interview with 2014 Murray Award Winner Dean Keith Simonton”). That oversight should not surprise anyone. Most of my research is multiple-case, quantitative, and nomothetic, using multivariate statistics, mathematical models, psychometric assessments, computer simulations, and even laboratory experiments. Thus, I have never explicitly identified as a psychobiographer, and the term “psychobiography” only appears in the title of a single publication (Simonton, 2023). Indeed, I have often tended to prefer the term “single-case historiometry” where the “case” is a historical creator or leader.

The term “historiometry” captures my research’s quantitative rather than qualitative nature—for an example, see my article, “Shakespeare’s Sonnets: A Case of and for Single–Case Historiometry,” from 1989. In truth, I have published only one qualitative single-case study, namely that of Galileo Galilei, in 2012, titled “Foresight, insight, oversight, and hindsight in scientific discovery: How sighted were Galileo’s telescopic sightings?” Of course, this count does not include purely biographical publications without any prominent psychological interpretation, like my 2017 encyclopedia entry on Francis Galton. So, let us turn to what I would consider my most important contributions to psychobiography, broadly conceived.

Single-Case Historiometry

Although I have published 13 single-case historiometric studies, these really entailed only seven separate historical cases (three involving target articles with commentaries and replies): Wil-

Page 95

liam Shakespeare (five studies); King George III of Great Britain (one study, plus reply to commentaries); Napoleon Bonaparte (one study); Ludwig van Beethoven (two studies); Thomas Edison (one study, plus reply to commentaries); Pablo Picasso (two studies, plus one reply to commentaries); and B. F. Skinner (one study with two co-authors). Many of these inquiries covered the luminary’s entire lifespan or at least all of their career. However, sometimes the investigation would concentrate on characteristic works, such as Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets, Beethoven’s nine symphonies, or Picasso’s Minotauromachy (1935) and Guernica (1937). Most were designed to test general psychological hypotheses. For instance, the stress-illness relation was confirmed in the case of King George III, and domain-specific profiles from the Big Five Personality Factor Model were applied in the case of B. F. Skinner.

Nevertheless, the subset was more exploratory. Shakespeare provides a prime example, especially when I ventured into the authorship controversy in my 2004 article, “Thematic content and political context in Shakespeare’s dramatic output, with implications for authorship and chronology controversies.” Finally, it should be noted that many of these investigations used computer content analysis. Such was applied to Beethoven’s symphonies and Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets, as in my 1997 article, “Imagery, style, and content in 37 Shakespeare plays.” Amazingly, a computer could distinguish between Beethoven’s odd- and even-numbered symphonies, thus supporting some recurrent biographical observations dating back to Robert Schumann (Simonton, 2015a).

Does my autobiography help explain what I just observed? Does my career make psychobiographical sense? I think so, but the explanation must have started when I entered kindergarten.

Kindergarten through High School

As the first-born son from a working-class family—my father never finished high school—my childhood began in a modest home without books. Fortunately, my kindergarten teacher recommended that my parents purchase a set of encyclopedias designed for K-12 use. I absolutely fell in love with these volumes, first browsing through all the pages packed with photographs and drawings and eventually reading one article after another. I was especially drawn to entries about people who were shown wearing unusual clothes and hairstyles—beards even—that were uncommon in 1950s Los Angeles. Having noticed that nobody I knew claimed an entry, I wondered how these people earned such special attention.

Page 96

Over time, I gathered that everyone had left a mark on history in some manner, most often as either leaders or creators. This led me to read extensively beyond the encyclopedias, including histories and biographies, even going back to Herodotus and Plutarch. At the same time, I became increasingly fascinated with the sciences, particularly chemistry. In fact, in junior high, I participated in a special LA summer school program for scientific talent. I later graduated from high school with a degree designated “science – college preparatory” and top-in-class awards in science, social studies, and English but not history.

Undergraduate Years

These broad interests did not seem contradictory until I sought admission to college. My first choice was Occidental College, so I applied under its early admissions program. During the interview, the admissions officer naturally asked what my plans were for a major. I impulsively said, “History.” She looked puzzled, saying they thought I would pursue a science major. Besides, the college, as a liberal arts institution, already had an abundance of history majors. So, I immediately said, “I mean chemistry.” Then, she reassured me with the information that Oxy required all students, no matter what their major, to take a two-year course in the history of civilization. Hence, I would get six trimesters of history anyway, spanning from antiquity to recent times. At Occidental, we read primary sources, too, from the Epic of Gilgamesh (written c. 2100-1200 BC) to The Golden Ass (second half of 2^nd century AD) to The Tale of Genji (published before 1021) to The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965). Accordingly, I could get my dose of history and biography along with my regular courses in mathematics and chemistry. Yet, the way my mind works, I could not help but make connections between the two, looking at history from a scientific perspective. One of my teachers even warned me that I would never understand history if I looked for regularities, patterns, or even laws. Then, a miracle happened.

As a chemistry major (with added pre-med coursework), I had very few electives. But in my second year of college, I managed to squeeze in an introductory psychology course, which I heard had an outstanding professor. The textbook was the fourth edition of Hilgard and Atkinson’s Introduction to Psychology (1967). I had no idea that a scientific discipline existed that attempted to address some of the questions I had been dealing with. For example, the text contained an extensive section on genius and

Page 97

another on creativity. It even included an instructive “Critical Discussion” side box entitled “Life-History Data vs. Laboratory Data; Advantages and Hazards” (Hilgard & Atkinson, 1967, p. 112; yes, the textbook remains in my possession). I was hooked and opted to take another psychology course the next trimester, this time concerning social psychology, where I learned that psychologists had also conducted considerable research on leadership. Because this second course had thrown me off my rigid chemistry sequence, meaning that I could not finish in four years (and thus beyond what my scholarship supported), I changed my major to psychology—joyfully, not reluctantly.

A year later, I decided to apply to the Social Psychology graduate program in the Department of Social Relations at Harvard University. One reason why I applied to this department is because it was still very interdisciplinary at that time, including sociology and cultural anthropology along with corresponding psychological subdisciplines. Although I knew what topics I wanted to study—namely, genius, creativity, and leadership—I was less sure about the optimal methodology. Hence, I wanted exposure to a wide range of options.

Graduate Student Years

Unfortunately, the Department of Social Relations fell apart soon after I arrived. Sociology and cultural anthropology went their separate ways, plus the remaining psychologists rejoined their colleagues in William James Hall to form the Department of Psychology and Social Relations (later changed, after I got my doctorate, by deleting “Social Relations”). Nevertheless, I eventually acquired a new mentor, David A. Kenny, who had just received his PhD under eminent methodologist Donald T. Campbell, who received the American Psychological Association’s (APA’s) Distinguished Scientific Contributions Award (DSCA) in 1970, the same year I entered Harvard. My mentor was unusually open to various innovative and highly sophisticated methods (later receiving his own APA DSCA in 2019). Moreover, Harvard remained very intellectually stimulating, exposing me to abundant ideas, sometimes through random encounters, such as my meeting William “Mac” Runyan (Simonton, 2023).

But what finally provided the big break was chancing upon a 1971 article by Raoul Naroll, E. C. Benjamin, F. K. Fohl, M. J. Fried, R. E. Hildreth, and J. M. Schaefer, “Creativity: A Cross-Historical Pilot Survey,” in which cross-cultural methods used in

Page 98

anthropology were applied to a trans-historical question. Historical data was subjected to quantitative techniques to answer this important nomothetic issue: What is the sociocultural context of exceptional creativity? After acquiring new expertise in econometric methods, I improved this study by testing additional hypotheses with even greater analytical sophistication. My doctoral dissertation, “The social psychology of creativity: An archival data analysis,” emerged less than three years later in 1974. I submitted my thesis shortly before loading up a U-Haul truck to head to my first job as Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Arkansas. I joined the faculty the same year as Hillary Rodham, who entered the law school there. She married Bill Clinton the following year. We never met, though, not even at the reception for the new faculty.

Professional Career

Hillary went from Yale Law to Arkansas because of her fiancé’s political ambitions (soon becoming first Attorney General and then Governor). In my case, I went from Harvard to Arkansas because it was my only job offer. Just one out of well more than a dozen ever increasingly desperate job applications! My Harvard professors and fellow students had already warned me that I would face severe difficulties pursuing my research program, which I detailed in my 2002 article, “It’s absolutely impossible? A longitudinal study of one psychologist’s response to conventional naysayers.” Because I could not possibly publish my non-mainstream work in prestigious journals, it would be impossible for me to obtain a tenured position at a top research university. But I persisted. I would rather do the research that most attracted my enthusiasm than conduct inquiries like everybody else was doing. Besides, Arkansas provided an excellent failsafe position that allowed me to explore parts of the United States that were unknown to me.

Happily, the dismal prognoses were plain wrong. I launched an original research program that produced hundreds of publications, dozens published in top-tier journals, plus numerous books—the first one, Genius, Creativity, and Leadership (1984), somewhat ironically, published by Harvard University Press. I was sufficiently prolific that within two years I moved to the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Davis. There, I accelerated up the ranks until I was promoted to Distinguished Professor just 30 years after turning in my doctoral dissertation. Better yet, I eventually advanced to an office next to that of Alan C. Elms to more easi-

Page 99

ly continue our intermittent exchanges regarding psychobiography (Simonton, 2023).

Coda

My research output was high in both quantity and quality. While the former claim is endorsed by mere bean counting, the latter is justified by the many awards I have received for both single publications and lifetime contributions. I won’t list them all here, but two stand out in the context of this specialized autobiography.

First comes the 2014 Henry A. Murray Award for “distinguished contributions to the study of individual lives and whole persons,” jointly bestowed by the Association for Research in Personality and the Society for Personology. This was the same honor that was given much earlier to Mac Runyan and Alan Elms (in 1986 and 1987, respectively), two highly distinguished psychobiographers (Simonton, 2023). Interestingly, later in 1998, this same recognition was granted to David C. McClelland (also 1987 APA DSCA), who just happened to have served on my doctoral committee, having signed off my thesis back in 1974. Given the interpersonal connections—a fellow graduate student, a faculty colleague, and a former graduate school mentor—this honor seems almost inevitable.

Next comes the 2023 Ernest R. Hilgard Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society for General Psychology, Division 1 of the American Psychological Association. Hilgard is the same Stanford psychologist who co-authored the textbook that motivated me to switch from chemistry to a psychology major. Coincidentally, Hilgard’s co-author, Richard C. Atkinson, served as President of the University of California for part of my tenure as Full Professor (and he even attended a gala award ceremony on my behalf). But most importantly, their textbook substantially influenced my later research program. Many of the topics I pursued over the years came directly from that text.

To offer but one example, they devoted a few pages to the age at which historic creators make their superior contributions (based largely on Harvey Christian Lehman’s book, Age and Achievement, from 1953). That was the subject of my very first publication, “Age and literary creativity: A cross-cultural and transhistorical survey,” in 1975 (a chapter from my 1974 doctoral dissertation), and I continued to publish on that subject throughout my career, including original empirical studies, literature reviews,

Page 100

and mathematical models (e.g., “Age and outstanding achievement: What do we know after a century of research?” in 1988, “Creative productivity: A predictive and explanatory model of career trajectories and landmarks” in 1997, and “Creative life cycles in literature: Poets versus novelists or conceptualists versus experimentalists?” in 2007).

Some of my single-case historiometric studies dealt with this same question as well, namely, those involving Shakespeare, Beethoven, and Edison, such as my 2015 article “Thomas Alva Edison’s creative career: The multilayered trajectory of trials, errors, failures, and triumphs.” Notably, the idiographic results for these three cases align with the nomothetic results from multiple-case historiometric research. Exemplary creative geniuses can sometimes also prove typical for their domain (for an explanation, see Simonton, 1997a).

Fittingly, the Hilgard Award was officially bestowed in a ceremony held at the 2024 APA Convention, a few days more than a half-century after I turned in my Harvard doctoral thesis that launched my career (namely, from August 5, 1974, to August 9, 2024). It seems like an opportune occasion to bring this autobiography to a close. As documented in my publications, we understand much better how historic creators and leaders earn entries in encyclopedias—as well as so much more about the psychology of history!

Page 101