Talent Is Overrated (29 page)

Sources

For research on how some types of auditor skills diminish over time, see Jean Bedard, Michelene T. H. Chi, Lynford E. Graham, and James Shanteau, “Expertise in Auditing,”
Auditing 12
(suppl., 1993), pp. 1-25.

An excellent summary of the research showing how experience does not necessarily lead to outstanding performance—including the research on clinical psychologists, surgeons, and others cited in this chapter—is found in Colin F. Camerer and Eric J. Johnson, “The Process-Performance Paradox in Expert Judgment: How Can Experts Know So Much and Predict So Badly?” in K. Anders Ericsson and Jacqui Smith, eds.,
Toward a General Theory of Expertise: Prospects and Limits
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 195-217.

The description of “the experience trap” is in Kishore Sengupta, Tarek K. Abdel-Hamid, and Luk N. Van Wassenhove, “The Experience Trap,”
Harvard Business Review,
February 2008, pp. 94-101.

Physicians' scores on tests of medical knowledge declining with experience: N. K. Choudhry, R. H. Fletcher, and S. B. Soumerai, “Systematic Review: The Relationship Between Clinical Experience and Quality of Health Care,”
Annals of Internal Medicine 142
(2005), pp. 260-73.

Physicians' declining skill at diagnosing heart sounds and X-rays: K. A. Ericsson, “Deliberate Practice and the Acquisition of Expert Performance in Medicine and Related Domains,”
Academic Medicine 10
(2004), S70-S81.

The work of Dr. Niels H. Secher of the University of Copenhagen is reported in Gina Kolata, “Bigger Is Better, Except When It's Not,”
The New York Times,
September 27, 2007, p. G1.

The study that demonstrates rising standards in chess over the past two centuries is Roy W. Roring and K. A. Ericsson (in preparation), “The Measurement of the Highest Levels of Productive Thought: An Application to World Championship Performance in Chess.”

Data on the amounts of shareholder wealth created by Microsoft, Procter & Gamble, and other companies comes from the firm EVA Dimensions, which calculates these figures for most of the companies in the Russell 3000. Figures cited in this chapter are for February 5, 2008.

Data on Exxon Mobil's use of cash comes from 2006 financial statements. The quotation from CEO Rex Tillerson is from a personal interview conducted on March 1, 2007.

The quotation attributed to Josh Billings has been attributed also to Mark Twain, Artemus Ward, and other nineteenth-century American writers. Billings looks like the best bet to me, but if anyone has definitive evidence I'd love to know about it.

The study of musical achievement in English students is John A. Sloboda, Jane W. Davidson, Michael J. A. Howe, and Derek G. Moore, “The Role of Practice in the Development of Performing Musicians,”
British Journal of Psychology 87
(1996), pp. 287-309.

The importance of Francis Galton is apparent from the fact that his major works are still in print. Quotations cited in this chapter come from the following edition: Francis Galton,
Hereditary Genius: An Inquiry into its Laws and Consequences
(Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1869/2006).

The study of outstanding pianists referred to briefly is part of a landmark work that we will examine more closely later: Benjamin S. Bloom, ed.,
Developing Talent in Young People
(New York: Ballantine Books, 1985).

The analysis of Mozart's development is based largely on the work of Professor Robert W. Weisberg of Temple University. Two of his written works were especially helpful: Robert W. Weisberg, “Creativity and Knowledge: A Challenge to Theories,” in Robert J. Sternberg, ed.,
Handbook of Creativity
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), and Robert W. Weisberg,
Creativity: Beyond the Myth of Genius
(New York: W. H. Freeman & Co., 1993).

The precocity index used to compare the technical virtuosity of musical performers is described in: A. C. Lehmann and K. A. Ericsson, “The Historical Development of Domains of Expertise: Performance Standards and Innovations in Music,” in A. Steptoe, ed.,
Genius and the Mind
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 67-94.

Neal Zaslaw's very entertaining and erudite paper is Neal Zaslaw, “Mozart as a Working Stiff,” in James M. Morris, ed.,
On Mozart
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994).

The Alex Ross quotation is from Alex Ross, “The Storm of Style,”
The New Yorker,
July 24, 2006.

Earl Woods's account of how he managed Tiger's development as a golfer is Earl Woods with Pete McDaniel,
Training a Tiger: A Father's Guide to Raising a Winner in Both Golf and Life
(New York: HarperCollins, 1997).

Also helpful in providing useful information on Tiger's development was Lawrence J. Londino,
Tiger Woods: A Biography
(Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2006).

Jack Welch's story comes from knowing him for many years and from his first book: Jack Welch with John A. Byrne,
Jack: Straight from the Gut
(New York: Warner Business Books, 2001).

The stories of Bill Gates, John D. Rockefeller, and David Ogilvy come largely from the following works: Bill Gates,
The Road Ahead
(New York: Viking Penguin, 1995); Ron Chernow,
Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.
(New York: Random House, 1998); and David Ogilvy,
Confessions of an Advertising Man
(New York: Atheneum, 1963).

The story of Warren Buffett comes from having interviewed him formally and informally many times, as well as from the many articles about him by the great Carol Loomis of
Fortune.
One article remains especially insightful: Carol J. Loomis, “The Inside Story of Warren Buffett,”
Fortune,
April 11, 1988.

The academic paper first describing the experiment involving the undergraduate SF is K. A. Ericsson, W. G. Chase, and S. Faloon, “Acquisition of Memory Skill,”
Science 208
(1980), 1181-82. The research has been described at greater length in a number of other papers. In addition, I spoke with Professor Ericsson about the experiment, and he provided an audio tape of the session on July 11, 1978, which I describe in this chapter.

Professor James R. Flynn is an extremely thoughtful researcher on intelligence. See James R. Flynn,
What Is Intelligence?
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

The study of salespeople is Andrew J. Vinchur, Jeffrey S. Schippmann, Fred S. Switzer III, and Philip L. Roth, “A Meta-analytic Review of Predictors of Job Performance for Salespeople,”
Journal of Applied Psychology, 83
, no. 4 (1998), pp. 586-97.

The study of racetrack patrons is Stephen J. Ceci, and Jeffrey K. Liker, “A Day at the Races: A Study of IQ, Expertise, and Cognitive Complexity,”
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General
115, no. 3 (1986), pp. 255-66.

The finding that some chess players at the international master level possess below-average IQs is one of the most surprising and intriguing in this field. It is in J. Doll and U. Mayr, “Intelligence and Achievement in Chess—A Study of Chess Masters,”
Psychologische Beiträge 29
(1987), pp. 270-89.

The research on chess players and how well they can recall the positions of pieces on the board has proven to be extremely important in the study of great performance because it reveals that the seemingly incredible memories of chess experts are developed and specific to chess, not innate and general. Three researchers built the foundation of this work. One was a Dutch researcher, A. D. de Groot, whose doctoral dissertation was written in 1946 but not translated into English until 1965. The other two are William Chase and Herbert Simon, whose research showed that chess experts could remember the positions of many pieces in actual chess positions but were scarcely better than novices at remembering the positions of pieces placed randomly. See A. D. de Groot,
Thought and Choice in Chess
(The Hague: Mouton, 1946/1965); W. G. Chase and H. A. Simon, “Perception in Chess,”
Cognitive Psychology 4
(1973), pp. 55-81; and W. G. Chase and H. A. Simon, “The Mind's Eye in Chess,” in W. G. Chase, ed.,
Visual Information Processing
(New York: Academic Press, 1973), pp. 215-81.

The story of Robert Rubin comes from a personal interview with him on March 23, 2007, and from his book: Robert Rubin and Jacob Weisberg,
In an Uncertain World
(New York: Random House, 2003).

The basic facts of Jerry Rice's biography are very widely available in any number of published accounts. The specifics of his records are from
www.nfl.com
.

The study of violinists at the Music Academy of West Berlin is part of a highly influential paper that has become the foundation of the deliberate practice framework: K. Anders Ericsson, Ralf Th. Krampe, and Clemens Tesch-Römer, “The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance,”
Psychological Review 100,
no. 3 (1993), pp. 363-406.

The specific elements of deliberate practice are all to be found in the description presented in the foundational paper cited above, though these elements are not discussed individually at length. The elements are considered more deeply in a number of later papers; a good introduction, with references to other research, is K. Anders Ericsson, “The Acquisition of Expert Performance: An Introduction to Some of the Issues,” in K. Anders Ericsson, ed.,
The Road to Excellence: The Acquisition of Expert Performance in the Arts and Sciences, Sports and Games
(Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1996).

The account of Moe Norman is from a chapter in the book cited above: Janet L. Starkes, Janice M. Deakin, Fran Allard, Nicola J. Hodges, and April Hayes, “Deliberate Practice in Sports: What Is It Anyway?”

The account of Chris Rock's preparation for his New Year's Eve performance at Madison Square Garden, illustrating all the elements of deliberate practice, is David Carr, “Hard at Work on New Year's Eve,”
The New York Times,
December 28, 2007.

The account of the Polgar sisters is taken primarily from Carlin Flora, “The Grandmaster Experiment,”
Psychology Today,
July/August 2005; and “Queen Takes All,”
The Telegraph,
January 16, 2002.

The description of how professional singers experience a singing lesson very differently from the way amateurs do is from C. Grape, M. Sandgren, L. O. Hansson, M. Ericson, and T. Theorell, “Does Singing Promote Well-being? An Empirical Study of Professional and Amateur Singers During a Singing Lesson,”
Integrative Physiological and Behavioral Science 38
(2003), pp. 65-71.

For a particularly passionate explication of the case against a strict nature-versus-nurture separation in understanding development, see David S. Moore,
The Dependent Gene: The Fallacy of “Nature vs. Nurture”
(New York: Owl Books, 2001).

Until the expert performance research of the past thirty years, the prevailing view among psychologists was that performance at its highest level was largely automatic. The standard description is in P. Fitts and M. I. Posner,
Human Performance
(Belmont, Calif.: Brooks/Cole, 1967).

The opposite view, that top performers reach their high levels of achievement in part by avoiding automaticity, is described in K. Anders Ericsson, “The Influence of Experience and Deliberate Practice on the Development of Superior Expert Performance,” in K. Anders Ericsson, Neil Charness, Paul J. Feltovich, and Robert R. Hoffman, eds.,
The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

The original work on how an expert tennis player predicts the flight of his opponent's serve based on cues in his posture is C. M. Jones and T. R. Miles, “Use of Advance Cues in Predicting the Flight of a Lawn Tennis Ball,”
Journal of Human Movement Studies 4
(1978), pp. 231-35.

Similar findings have since been produced in several other sports. For a recent discussion of the general topic, see A. Mark Williams, Paul Ward, and Nicholas J. Smeeton, “Perceptual and Cognitive Expertise in Sport: Implications for Skill Acquisition and Performance Enhancement,” in A. Mark Williams and Nicola J. Hodges, eds.,
Skill Acquisition in Sport: Research, Theory, and Practice
(Abingdon, U.K.: Routledge, 2004).

The findings on expert typists' ability to look farther ahead in the text is in T. A. Salthous, “Effects of Age and Skill in Typing,”
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 113
(1984), pp. 345-71.

The findings on drivers and how they respond to hazardous situations, as well as research on pilots mentioned later in the chapter, are summarized in Francis T. Durso and Andrew R. Dattel, “Expertise and Transportation,” in K. Anders Ericsson, Neil Charness, Paul J. Feltovich, and Robert R. Hoffman, eds.,
The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

The research showing how expert jugglers need to see only the apex of the balls' trajectories is in P. J. Beek,
Juggling Dynamics
(Amsterdam: Free University Press, 1989).

The research on how expert radiologists read X-rays, as well as research on how physicists and psychological counselors categorize problems cited later in this chapter, is summarized in the following chapter in the
Cambridge Handbook:
Michelene T. H. Chi, “Laboratory Methods for Assessing Experts' and Novices' Knowledge.”