How Geniuses Think

Are there criteria for genius? How can you distinguish a smart or creative person from a true genius? Is it true that geniuses are mad? The phenomenon of genius is still being studied, and the concept itself lacks a clear definition. However, modern researchers suggest that genius is not measured by IQ tests and can manifest in anyone, regardless of age, experience, or heredity.

How Can Genius Be Measured?

At age 26, Albert Einstein developed the theory of relativity. He also proved that atoms exist and discovered that light behaves both as a particle and a wave. He created his famous equation, E = mc², describing the relationship between matter and energy. Without a doubt, Einstein was a genius. So was Isaac Newton, who played a major role in developing calculus—a subject some people struggle to understand even after extensive study. Another genius, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, began composing music at age 5 and wrote hundreds of works before his death in 1760 at age 35.

According to popular belief, geniuses are different from everyone else. They can think faster and better than other people. While such individuals are easy to spot, it’s harder to determine exactly what makes someone a genius, and even harder to figure out how they became one.

There are two main challenges in studying genius:

1. Genius is subjective. Some people insist that anyone with an intelligence quotient (IQ) above a certain value is a genius. Others believe IQ tests only measure a limited part of a person’s overall intelligence. Some are convinced that high test scores have nothing to do with genius.
2. Genius is a broad concept. Such a subjective idea is not easy to measure, analyze, or study. When exploring how geniuses work, it helps to start by defining what a genius is. In this article, a genius is not just someone with an exceptionally high IQ. Instead, a genius is an extremely intelligent person who breaks new ground through discoveries, inventions, or works of art.

Genius-level work changes how people see the world or the field in which they worked. In other words, a genius must be smart and able to use that intelligence productively and on a large scale. But what drives a person to do these things? Do they have a different, more flexible brain? Exceptional intelligence? The ability to notice information others miss?

The Human Brain and Genius

The brain regulates your body’s organ systems, controls your senses of smell, taste, touch, sight, and hearing, processes emotions, and allows you to think, analyze information, and solve problems. Scientists haven’t figured out exactly how the gray matter in your brain works, but they have an idea of which part allows you to think. The cerebral cortex, on the outer part of the brain, is where thoughts and reasoning occur. These are the brain’s higher functions; lower functions related to basic survival are performed deeper inside.

The cerebral cortex is the largest part of your brain. If you removed and stretched it out, it would be the size of several newspaper pages. The brain is divided into several lobes, and different areas within these lobes handle specific thinking-related tasks:

• Frontal lobe: speech, thought, and memory
• Parietal lobe: sensory information from the body
• Temporal lobe: auditory information
• Occipital lobe: visual information

Tools for studying the brain, such as MRI machines, often require a person to remain completely still, making it difficult for doctors to observe brain activity in real-life situations. The brain, like all organs, changes after a person dies, so autopsy studies can’t assess brain activity. Despite these challenges, researchers have learned how the brain affects intelligence. The volume of gray matter in parts of the cerebral cortex has a greater impact on intelligence than overall brain size. The physical characteristics of many brain regions, rather than a centralized “intelligence center,” determine how smart a person is.

An analysis of Albert Einstein’s brain in 1999 also supports this theory. Einstein’s brain was slightly smaller than average, but parts of his parietal lobe were wider than most people’s. His parietal lobe also lacked a fissure found in most brains. Analysts suggested that the absence of this fissure meant different areas of his brain could communicate better with each other.

How the brain develops is more important than its size. The human cerebral cortex thickens during childhood and thins during adolescence. To some extent, children inherit intelligence from their parents, but these qualities must be developed.

Genius and Intelligence

Like genius, intelligence is hard to measure quantitatively. An entire field of research, known as psychometrics, is devoted to studying and measuring intelligence. While intelligence is a central element of genius, not all geniuses score well on tests or do well in school.

Intelligence testing has existed for thousands of years. Chinese emperors used ability tests to evaluate government officials as early as 2200 BC. Intelligence tests began to appear in the late 19th century. Today, IQ tests typically measure a person’s memory, as well as language, spatial, and mathematical abilities. In theory, these tests measure a factor known as g.

IQ tests are also standardized so that most people score between 90 and 110. When graphed, the IQ test results of a large group of people usually form a bell curve, with most people scoring in the middle. It’s commonly believed that anyone who scores above a certain threshold (140) is automatically a genius. However, geniuses may not always achieve these scores.

Standardized IQ tests predict how well a child will do in school. They are often used to determine which children are placed in gifted classes. Most colleges and universities, as well as some employers, also use standardized tests as part of their admissions or hiring process.

One stereotype about gifted children is that they have trouble adjusting to school. A 20-year study of gifted children, completed in 1940 and forming the basis for the book “Handbook of Giftedness in Children,” showed that difficulty adapting to the world often appears in adulthood. The study used a test that measured both verbal intelligence and adaptation. People who scored 140 points on the first criterion generally had lower scores for personal adaptation.

However, these tests are not always reliable. Overall, people with lower incomes tend to score lower than those from other economic groups. Critics argue that this makes IQ tests unfair and point to broader social injustice and inequality.

Additionally, some researchers and theorists argue that the concept of g is too limited and doesn’t provide a complete picture of human intelligence. Intelligence is a combination of many factors. One theory that tries to give a fuller picture is Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences. According to Gardner, there are seven types of intelligence:

• Linguistic
• Logical-mathematical
• Musical
• Bodily-kinesthetic
• Spatial
• Interpersonal
• Intrapersonal

Another, Robert J. Sternberg’s triarchic theory of human intelligence, suggests that overall intelligence is a combination of:

• Creative intelligence, or the ability to generate new and interesting ideas
• Analytical intelligence, or the ability to study facts and draw conclusions
• Practical intelligence, or the ability to adapt to the environment

These theories may better explain the concept of genius than traditional IQ tests. Geniuses are not just people with a lot of g. Mozart, for example, combined musical genius with an innate understanding of mathematics and patterns. Einstein’s genius spanned logic, mathematics, and spatial relationships.

All geniuses share one very important ability—they possess tremendous creative intelligence. Without it, they would simply be exceptionally smart.

There is a big difference between being truly smart and being a genius. While geniuses are usually exceptionally intelligent, they also use imagination and creativity to invent, discover, or create something new in their field of interest. They break new ground, rather than just memorizing or repeating existing information.

Geniuses also usually don’t work in isolation: almost all of them analyze the work of other great minds and use that information for new discoveries. On the other hand, self-taught geniuses often explore information in unexpected or inventive ways, partly due to a lack of formal training. In any case, the ability to imagine and create is just as important as general intelligence.

The Creativity and Productivity of Geniuses

The creativity of geniuses is also linked to productivity and hard work. Sometimes the brightest examples of genius are people who produce their best work at a young age, like Einstein and Mozart. Others, like Ludwig van Beethoven, did their best work in middle age.

Researcher David Galenson, in his book “Old Masters and Young Geniuses,” suggests that creative people fall into two types:

• Conceptual innovators think in bold, dramatic leaps and do their best work when young
• Experimental innovators learn by trial and error and do their best work after long periods of experimentation

Critics argue that Galenson’s theory overlooks people who do exceptional work throughout their lives. Instead of being experimental or conceptual, they may fall somewhere in between.

We may never know exactly where creativity comes from, why some people are more creative than others, or at what age genius appears. But it’s clear that geniuses play a key role in the achievements of science and technology. Without geniuses, our understanding of mathematics, literature, and music would be completely different.