THE ROUGH GUIDE TO PSYCHOLOGY
It’s the final eureka stage that leads us to forget all the hard work and
thought that’s gone before it, and it’s the stage that usually enters popular
folklore. Kary Mullis, who won the Nobel Prize for his discovery of the
polymerase chain-reaction, a technique that led to DNA fingerprinting
and other biomedical breakthroughs, said the idea came to him in a
flash when driving home one day. Similarly, Michael Jackson, one of the
hardest workers in the entertainment industry, described how his hit
song “Billie Jean”, and others like it, landed in his lap as if a gift from
God. He even joked that if he hadn’t acted as the receptacle for the ideas,
God would have give them to someone else like Prince.
Several studies suggest that insight is achieved largely via the brain’s
right hemisphere, which is characterized by more diffuse, but weaker,
activation than the left hemisphere. For example, research shows that if
you present a person with the solution to a problem that they couldn’t
solve, they’re quicker at reading it with their right hemisphere. This
can be tested by presenting the solution to just one side of the person’s
brain at a time, by making it visible on just one side of space (the left
side of space is processed by the right hemisphere and vice versa). The
quicker reading by the right hemisphere suggests that it was nearer to
finding the solution. Brain-imaging results back this up. Scans of brains
that have solved a problem via insight, rather than piecemeal, show
more activity in the front part of the right upper-temporal lobe (the
superior temporal sulcus).
Expertise and giftedness
Related to creativity is the notion of genius or remarkable talent. Whether
we’re talking about the musical wonder of Mozart and Beethoven or the
sporting prowess of David Beckham and Michael Jordan, there’s a deep-
rooted belief that genius is founded on innate talent. However, years of
research, much of it by the Florida-based psychologist Anders Ericsson,
has exploded this myth. Having the appropriate genetic endowments
helps up to a point, but when it comes to truly exceptional talent, the
secret lies in practice – lots of it and of the right type.
In a 1993 paper, Ericsson investigated the practice habits and history
of violinists, including several from the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra
and the Radio Symphony Orchestra, and pianists from the Music
Academy of Berlin. His key finding was that the most accomplished
musicians had totalled around ten thousand hours of practice by the
age of twenty, whereas the lesser accomplished had totalled only five