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Creativity Cognitive, Personal, Developmental, and Social Aspects Dean Keith Simonton University of California, Davis Although many psychologists have expressed an interest in the phenomenon of creativity, psychological research on this topic" did not rapidly expand until after J. P. Guilford claimed, in his 1950 APA presidential address, that this topic deserved far more attention than it was then receiving. This article reviews the progress psychologists have made in understanding creativity since Guilford's call to arms. Research progress has taken place on 4 fronts: the cognitive processes involved in the creative act, the distinctive characteristics of the creative person, the development and manifestation of creativity across the individual life span, and the social environments most strongly associated with creative activity. Although some important questions remain unanswered, psychologists now know more than ever before about how individuals achieve this special and significant form of optimal human functioning. C reativity is certainly among the most important and pervasive of all human activities. Homes and ofrices are filled with furniture, appliances, and other conveniences that are the products of human inventiveness. People amuse themselves with the comics in the daily paper, take novels with them to while away the hours on a plane or at the beach, go to movie theaters to see the latest blockbusters, watch television shows and commercials, play games on the computer, attend concerts from classical and jazz to rock and soul, visit museums that display the artistic artifacts of cultures and civilizations--again all implicitly bearing ample testimony to the consequences of the creative mind. The buildings people enter, the cars they drive, the clothes they wear--even the music they hear in elevators--are all exemplars of some form of creativity. The only way to escape this phenomenon is to walk stark naked deep within some primeval forest, and even then a person must take care not to hum a single tune, not to recall even one line of poetry, or not to even to look up in the sky for fear of seeing some jet or its contrail. Not surprisingly, creativity is seen as a good attribute for people to possess. Teachers expect their students to display some creativity in their science projects and term papers. Executives at high-tech firms expect their research and development units to devise new products and their marketing units to conceive novel strategies to promote those products. At a more personal level, creativity is often seen as a sign of mental health and emotional well-being. In fact, various art and music therapies have emerged that promote psychological adjustment and growth through creative expression. In a nutshell, creativity can be counted among those very special ways that human beings can display optimal functioning. Despite the significant and omnipresent nature of creativity, psychologists have seldom if ever viewed it as a central research topic (Sternberg & Lubart, 1996). For example, of all the numerous recipients of APA's Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions since 1956, only one, J. P. Guilford, can be credited with devoting a substantial part of his career to the psychological study of creativity. To be sure, other recipients of this high honor have addressed this topic as a side excursion of their primary investigations. Examples include figures as diverse as Wolfgang Krhler, Carl Rogers, B. F. Skinner, Jerome Bruner, James E. Birren, Herbert A. Simon, Donald T. Campbell, and David C. McClelland. Nevertheless, probably only Guilford can be said to enjoy simultaneous prominence in psychological science in general and in the more specialized domain of creativity research. Indeed, in his classic 1950 presidential address before the American Psychological Association, Guilford made a plea on behalf of making creativity a more focal point of psychological inquiry (Guilford, 1950). Fortunately, many psychologists responded to the call, and creativity research really boomed in the 1960s and early 1970s. Moreover, after a slight lull of a decade or so, psychologists have shown a renewed interest in the phenomenon. Although not yet a mainstream research topic, psychologists now know far more about creativity than ever before. That knowledge reveals a great deal about antecedents, correlates, and consequences of this particular form of optimal human functioning. In fact, this literature has now become so vast and rich that this article can accomplish no more than a review of the mere highlights, Overview The literature on creativity spans several of the core subdisciplines of psychology. This breadth is immediately apparent ill the four main topics discussed below: cognitive processes, personal characteristics, life span development, and social context. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Dean Keith Simonton, Department of Psychology, One Shields Avenue, University of California, Davis, CA 95616-8686. Electronic mail may be sent to dksimonton(,~ ucdavis.edu. January 2000 • American Psychologist Copyright 2000 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 0003-066X/00/$5.00 Vol. 55, No. 1, 151-158 DOI: 10.1037//0003 066X.55.1.151 151

Dean Keith Simonton Cognitive Processes The creative act is often portrayed as a mysterious and even mystical process, more akin to divine inspiration than to mundane thought. This view dates back to the ancient Greeks, who believed that creativity required the intervention of the muses. One of the principal goals of psychological studies has been to try to remove this mystery, replacing it with a deeper scientific understanding. For example, Sigmund Freud and other psychoanalytic thinkers attempted to accomplish this end by explicating creativity in terms of primary-process thinking (Gedo, 1997). However, with the advent of contemporary cognitive science, psychology has come much closer to appreciating the mental processes that must participate in the creative act. Recent developments in four areas of research--insightful problem solving, creative cognition, expertise acquisition, and computer simulation--deserve special mention. Insightful problem solving. The Gestalt psychologists were the first psychologists to study creativity through the process of insight. Cognitive psychologists have built upon this early tradition by developing new experimental methodologies and theoretical models (Sternberg & Davidson, 1995). By manipulating priming stimuli, assessing feeling-of-knowing states, using protocol analysis, and applying other techniques, psychologists better understand how creative insights emerge during the incubation period. Especially striking is the empirical demonstration of intuitive information processing as a regular manifestation of the cognitive unconscious (e.g., Bowers, Farvolden, & Mermigis, 1995; Schooler & Melcher, 1995). The magic behind the sudden, unexpected, and seemingly unprepared inspiration has now been replaced by the lawful operation of subliminal stimulation and spreading activation. Creative cognition. One of the more significant events in recent cognitive psychology is the emergence of the creative cognition approach (Smith, Ward, 8,: Finke, 1995). According to this research program, creativity is a mental phenomenon that results from the application of ordinary cognitive processes (see also Ward, Smith, & Vaid, 1997). In addition, just as laboratory experiments have provided tremendous insights into human cognition, the same methodology can be applied to the study of creative thought. Particularly provocative are the experimental studies showing how visual imagery can function in the origination of creative ideas (Finke, Ward, & Smith, 1992). Another exciting feature of these experiments is the use of open-ended problems that demand genuine creativity, in contrast to much laboratory research that relies on problems that have fixed solutions. Nevertheless, these investigations concur with those on insightful problem solving in one fundamental message: The optimal functioning embodied by creativity entails ordinary cognitive processes, and hence creative thought is accessible to almost anyone. Expertise acquisition. Recent research has amply demonstrated that exceptional talents are less born than made (Ericsson, 1996). Whether the domain is competitive sports, chess, or music performance, it usually requires about a decade of extensive deliberate practice before a person can attain world-class proficiency. Furthermore, evidence increasingly shows that to a certain extent, creativity demands a comparable level of systematic training and practice. Even the creative genius cannot escape this inherently laborious period of apprenticeship (Hayes, 1989; Simonton, 1991b). Creative individuals do not produce new ideas de novo, but rather those ideas must arise from a large set of well-developed skills and a rich body of domain-relevant knowledge. Like the work on creative cognition, this conception of creative expertise has rather egalitarian implications regarding the ability of anyone to acquire this form of optimal functioning (see Howe, Davidson, & Sloboda, 1998). Computer simulation. A final development that has great promise is the increased use of computers to test explicit cognitive models of the creative process (Boden, 1991; Johnson-Laird, 1993). For instance, Newell and Simon's (1972) classic theory of human problem solving has inspired the emergence of several "discovery programs" that purport to uncover laws and principles from empirical data--often using the same raw data to make the same discoveries made by eminent scientists (Langley, Simon, Bradshaw, & Zythow, 1987; Shrager & Langley, 199/)). Other computer programs have endeavored to reproduce creative behavior in art, literature, and music, sometimes with remarkable success (Boden, 1991). Additional strategies that have promising futures are genetic algorithms and genetic programming (Martindale, 1995). Although originally designed by computer scientists to solve practical problems, it is becoming increasingly apparent that these programs may eventually provide valuable theoretical models of how the creative process operates in the human mind (Simonton, 1999b). 152 January 2000 * American Psychologist

In the long term, as the simulations of these computer models become ever more convincing, psychologists may eventually understand how best to increase the creative potential of all human beings. Personal Characteristics Psychologists have long been interested in the individual attributes that enable some persons to display more creativity than others do. The empirical literature, both classic and current, falls naturally under two headings: intelligence and personality. Intelligence, Many investigators have been interested in the extent to which creativity requires superior intelligence, a tradition that dates back to the pioneer work of Galton (1869) and Yerman (1925). Using performance on standard IQ tests as the gauge of intellectual capacity, the early research indicated that a certain threshold level of intelligence was required for the manifestation of creativity but that beyond that threshold, intelligence bore a minimal relation with creative behavior (Barron & Harrington, 1981). More critical was the realization that the simplistic, exclusive, and unidimensional concept of intelligence had to be replaced by a more complex, inclusive, and multidimensional conception. Examples include Guilford's (1967) structure-of-intellect model, Sternberg's (1985) triarchic theory of intelligence, and Gardner's (1983) theory of multiple intelligences. The last theory is especially provocative insofar as it includes abilities that are not a standard part of psychometric tests (e.g., musical, bodilykinesthetic, interpersonal, and intrapersonal intelligences). Moreover, each intelligence is associated with a specific manifestation of creativity, such as painting, choreography, or psychology (Gardner, 1993). Personali~¢o It has been long recognized that creativity is as much a dispositional as an intellectual phenomenon (e.g., Dellas & Gaier, 1970). This was made quite apparent, for example, in the early research on the creative personality conducted at the Institute for Personality Assessment and Research at the University of California, Berkeley (e.g., Barron, 1969; MacKinnon, 1978). Although interest in the dispositional correlates of creativity waned somewhat with the arrival of the cognitive revolution, personality research has seen a revival in recent years. As a result, researchers have now compiled a fairly secure profile of the creative personality (e.g., Martindale, 1989; Simonton, 1999a). In particular, such persons are disposed to be independent, nonconformist, unconventional, even bohemian, and they are likely to have wide interests, greater openness to new experiences, a more conspicuous behavioral and cognitive flexibility, and more risk-taking boldness. Particularly fascinating is what the research has contributed to the long-standing mad-genius controversy. There is now sufficient evidence showing that creativity often tends to be associated with a certain amount of psychopathology (e.g., Eysenck, 1995; Jamison, 1993; Ludwig, 1995). At the same time, this association is not equivalent to the claim that creative individuals must necessarily suffer from mental disorders. On the contrary, research has shown that (a) numerous creators, even of the highest order, have no apparent tendencies toward psychopathology; (b) the incidence rates vary according to the domain of creative activity, with some domains showing rather low rates; (c) those creators who seemingly exhibit symptoms usually possess compensatory characteristics that enable them to control and even channel their proclivities into productive activities; and (d) many characteristics that appear abnormal may actually prove quite adaptive to the individual's lifelong adjustment (see, e.g., Barron, 1969; Csikszentmihalyi, 1997; Ludwig, 1995; Rothenberg, 1990). In fact, the creative personality often provides a fine illustration of how supposed psychological weaknesses can sometimes be converted into a form of optimal functioning. Life Span Development Creativity is more than a cognitive and dispositional attribution in which individuals may vary. It is also an activity that develops over the course of the human life span. Researchers into the developmental psychology of creativity have focused on two aspects of this longitudinal transformation. First, investigators have examined what childhood and adolescent experiences appear to be associated with the development of creative potential. Second, researchers have scrutinized how that potential is actualized during the course of the creator's adulthood and final years. Many of the studies in either category have concentrated on the development of individuals who have attained some acclaim for their creative achievements, albeit there is no shortage of inquiries into the emergence of more everyday forms of creative behavior. The acquisition of creative potential. A very large inventory of developmental antecedents has been documented over the past several decades of research (Simonton, 1987). A great number of these influences concern the family environments and circumstances that seem to most favor the emergence of creative personalities. These factors include birth order, early parental loss, marginality, and the availability of mentors and role models. Other developmental variables refer to an individual's experience and performance in primary, secondary, and higher education. Perhaps the most remarkable generalization to be drawn from both sets of developmental influences is that exceptional creativity does not always emerge from the most nurturant environments (e.g., Eisenstadt, 1978; Goertzel, Goertzel, & Goertzel, 1978; Simonton, 1984). On the contrary, creative potential seems to require a certain exposure to (a) diversifying experiences that help weaken the constraints imposed by conventional socialization and (b) challenging experiences that help strengthen a person's capacity to persevere in the face of obstacles (Simonton, 1994). These developmental inputs may be especially important for artistic forms of creative behavior. In any case, it is startling testimony to the adaptive powers of the human being that some of the most adverse childhoods can give birth to the most creative adulthoods. One other major movement in the recent literature deserves mention. Back in 1869, Galton first introduced the notion that exceptional creativity might have a genetic January 2000 ° American Psychologist 153

foundation. With the advent of modern behavioral genetics, this possibility has received increased attention (Lykken, 1998; Simonton, 1999c; Waller, Bouchard, Lykken, Tellegen, & Blacker, 1993). Although it is still too early to tell exactly how much individual variation in creativity owes its existence to genetic endowment, there is no doubt that certain intellectual and dispositional traits required for creativity display respectable heritability coefficients (Bouchard, 1994; Eysenck, 1995). It is becoming increasingly clear that the acquisition of creative potential requires the simultaneous contribution of both nature and nurture. The actualization of creative potential. Many investigators have been fascinated with how creativity is manifested during the course of a person's career (e.g., Gardner, 1993; Root-Bernstein, Bernstein, & Gamier, 1993). Especially notable is the evolving systems approach of Howard Gruber (1989) and his colleagues. Taking advantage of laboratory notebooks, sketchbooks, diaries, and other archival sources, these researchers have examined how creative ideas emerge and develop in a complex and dynamic interaction between the creator's personal vision and the sociocultural milieu in which that creativity must take place (see Wallace & Gruber, 1989). A distinctive feature of these inquiries is their emphasis on the qualitative and idiographic case-study method, an approach that permits an in-depth understanding of how creativity works in individual lives. However, large-sample quantitative and nomothetic investigations on this topic are also abundant. The question that has received the most attention has been the relation between creativity and age (Simonton, 1988). Sometimes this issue is addressed by gauging how performance on psychometric measures of creativity changes across the adult life span (e.g., McCrae, Arenberg, & Costa, 1987), but the more common approach is to assess how the output of creative products changes as a function of age (e.g., Lehman, 1953; Lindauer, 1993b). Because this research has consistently found that creativity is a curvilinear (inverted backward J) function of age, one might conclude that older individuals would not be creative. However, the empirical and theoretical literature shows that such a pessimistic conclusion is unjustified (Csikszentmihalyi, 1997; Dennis, 1966; Simonton, 1991a, 1997a). Numerous factors operate that help maintain creative output throughout the life span. Indeed, it is actually possible for creators to display a qualitative and quantitative resurgence of creativity in their final years (Lindauer, 1993a; Simonton, 1989). Considering these findings, the picture for creativity in the later years of life is optimistic rather than pessimistic. Given that the 21st century will see a huge generation of "baby boomers" entering their golden years, this particular generalization about optimal functioning will acquire even more importance. Social Context The original research on creativity tended to adopt an excessively individualistic perspective. Creativity was viewed as a process that took place in the mind of a single individual who possessed the appropriate personal characteristics and developmental experiences. Beginning in the late 1970s, however, more psychologists began to recognize that creativity takes place in a social context (e.g., Harrington, 1990). Indeed, in the 1980s, an explicit social psychology of creativity emerged to supplement the cognitive, differential, and developmental perspectives (e.g., Amabile, 1983). The methods adopted in this burgeoning field range from laboratory experiments and field observations to content analytical and historiometric studies. These investigations have also looked at a diversity of external conditions, with perhaps the greatest emphasis on the interpersonal, disciplinary, and sociocultural environments. Interpersonal environment. Although there has long existed the popular image of the lone genius, it is clear that much creativity takes place in interpersonal settings. The student may be expected to display creativity on a term paper or essay exam, or the worker may be expected to exhibit some creativity on the job. The particular nature of the interpersonal expectations may then serve to either enhance or inhibit the amount of creativity shown by the individual. A good illustration of the possibilities may be found in the research of Amabile and her associates (e.g., Amabile, 1996) on the repercussions of rewards, evaluation, surveillance, and other circumstances. Particularly valuable are their inquiries into the impact of intrinsic and extrinsic incentives for performing a task. Creativity usually appears more favored when individuals perform a task for inherent enjoyment rather than for some external reason that has little to do with the task itself. However, circumstances also occur in which the extrinsic motivation can contribute to the amplification of individual creativity (Amabile, 1996; Eisenberger & Cameron, 1996). This research has obvious implications for how to best nurture creativity in both schools and the workplace. Before advancing to the next variety of social context, I should at least mention the current status of research on brainstorming. This technique was first introduced as a way of stimulating the production of creative ideas in problemsolving groups (Osborn, 1963). In a sense, brainstorming purports to generate creativity from an interpersonal rather than an intrapersonal process. Brainstorming has become a very popular approach in industrial and organizational settings (Farr, 1990). Unfortunately, although the research literature is not uniform in its assessment of the method's validity, it is clear that brainstorming has utility only with rather specific types of instructions and guidance (e.g., Diehl & Stroebe, 1987). At present, it is impossible to say whether this method will be rendered more effective by the current research on electronic brainstorming in which the interactions occur through computer mediation (e.g., Roy, Gauvin, & Limayem, 1996). Disciplinary environment. Most creators do not function in isolation from other creators, but rather their creativity takes place within a particular artistic, scientific, or intellectual discipline. For example, in the systems view put forward by C sikszentmihalyi (1990), creativity requires the dynamic interaction between three subsystems, only one of which entails the individual creator. The second subsystem is the domain, which consists of the set of rules, 154 January 2000 • American Psychologist

the repertoire of techniques, and any other abstract attributes that define a particular mode of creativity (e.g., the paradigm that guides normal science, according to Kuhn, 1970). The third subsystem is the field, which consists of those persons who work within the same domain, and thus have their creativity governed by the same domain-specific guidelines. These colleagues are essential to the realization of individual creativity, according to the systems view, because creativity does not exist until those making up the field decide to recognize that a given creative product represents an original contribution to the domain. Once psychologists recognize that creativity emerges out of an interaction of individual, field, and domain, then the phenomenon becomes far more complex. One illustration of this complexity may be found in Martindale's (1990) research on stylistic change in the arts, especially in poetic literature. Although the poet wants to reach as wide a public as possible, Martindale argued that the most important audience for poetry is fellow writers (as well as a few select critics), who play the major part in evaluating whether an author's poetry qualifies as creative. That evaluation is based on two considerations. First, the poetry must conform to the stylistic rules of the time, rules that define the acceptable form and content for that particular domain of creativity. Second, the poetry must be original, rather than merely rehashing what has already been said. In the early history of a particular style, poets can attain this second end by ever more extensive use of what Martindale called "primordial thought" (i.e., primary-process thinking in psychoanalytic terms), but as time goes on, originality can only be obtained by stretching, even outright violating, the various rules of the game. After a few generations, the stylistic conventions begin to break down, and the domain loses its coherence--which means it becomes increasingly difficult for anyone to judge what is good and bad among contemporary poems. Fortunately, a new style usually emerges, with distinctive sets of form and content prescriptions, and the whole cyclical process begins once again. Martindale has empirically documented this progression not just in poetry, but in most other forms of creativity as well, including music and painting. Needless to say, once psychologists acknowledge that creativity is a systemic rather than a totally individualistic phenomenon, it becomes far more difficult to study using the more commonplace methods of psychology. Experimental studies of human problem solving become far less enlightening to the extent that the laboratory cubical isolates the person from a disciplinary domain and field. Psychometric inquiries into the creative personality are likewise rendered less insightful to the degree that the creator has been unrooted from his or her disciplinary matrix. To circumvent these limitations, psychologists have adopted a number of strategies. Some, like Martindale (1990), have taken advantage of archival data to study the interplay between creators and their disciplines (see also Simonton, 1992b). Others have engaged in some form of participant observation, such as Dunbar's (1995) provocative in situ examination of scientific discovery in biomedical research laboratories. Although these alternative methods are much more arduous than the more commonplace experimental and psychometric investigations, they have contributed findings that could not be acquired in any other way. In particular, such investigations have amply proven that creativity cannot be divorced from its disciplinary context. Sociocultural environment. Beyond the realm of interpersonal and disciplinary interactions, there exists the larger external milieu. Sociologists and anthropologists have long argued that creativity is mostly if not entirely a sociocultural phenomenon (e.g., Kroeber, 1944), but only in the past couple of decades have psychologists begun to scrutinize the extent to which creative achievements depend on the impersonal and pervasive zeitgeist (Simonton, 1984). Two findings warrant special mention here: 1. It has become increasingly clear that certain political environments affect the degree of creativity manifested by the corresponding population. Some of these political influences operate directly on the adult creator, such as when warfare depresses the output of creative ideas (Simonton, 1984). Other political effects function during the developmental stages of an individual's life, either encouraging or discouraging the acquisition of creative potential. Thus, on the one hand, growing up in times of anarchy, when the political world is plagued by assassinations, coups d'dtat, and military mutinies, tends to be antithetical to creative development (e.g., Simonton, 1976). On the other hand, growing up when a civilization is fragmented into a large number of peacefully coexisting independent states tends to be conducive to the development of creative potential (e.g., Simonton, 1975). In fact, nationalistic revolts against the oppressive rule of empire states tends to have a positive consequence for the amount of creativity in the following generations (Kroeber, 1944; Simonton, 1975; Sorokin, 1947/1969). Many nations have experienced golden ages after winning independence from foreign domination, with ancient Greece providing a classic example. 2. The rationale for the last mentioned consequence may be that nationalistic rebellion encourages cultural heterogeneit~y rather than homogeneity (Simonton, 1994). Rather than everyone having to speak the same language, read the same books, follow the same laws, and so on, individuals are left with more options. This suggests that cultural diversity may facilitate creativity, and there is evidence that this is the case. Creative activity in a civilization tends to increase after it has opened itself to extensive alien influences, whether through immigration, travel abroad, or studying under foreign teachers (Simonton, 1997b). By enriching the cultural environment, the ground may be laid for new creative syntheses. This finding is consistent with a host of other empirical results, such as the creativity-augmenting effects of ethnic marginality, bilingualism, and even exposure to ideological or behavioral dissent (e.g., Campbell, 1960; Lambert, Tucker, & d'Anglejan, 1973; Nemeth & Kwan, 1987; Simonton, 1994). These and other sociocultural forces are potent enough that they can completely extinguish creativity in a given nation, sometimes producing a dark age that may last for January 2000 • American Psychologist 155

generations (Simonton, 1984). However, it requires emphasis that zeitgeist factors serve to raise or lower the general level of creative activity at a given time and place, but cannot easily account for individual differences in the development and manifestation of creativity. For example, the general milieu may largely explain why the Renaissance began in Italy but not why Michelangelo towered over his Italian contemporaries. Conclusion Although psychologists have made tremendous progress in the understanding of creativity, much work remains to be done. Certainly, many substantive questions demand considerably more empirical scrutiny. Consider, for example, the following three desiderata: 1. Psychologists still have a long way to go before they come anywhere close to understanding creativity in women and minorities (see, e.g., Helson, 1990). So far, creativity in such groups seems to display a complex pattern of divergence and convergence relative to what has been observed in majority-culture male study participants (e.g., Simonton, 1992a, 1998). The details of these differences and similarities must be empirically documented before psychologists can be said to understand how this form of optimal functioning operates in the entire human race. 2. Psychologists must carry out more ambitious longitudinal studies that examine how creativity develops during the course of childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. Terman's (1925) classic investigation followed a cohort of intellectually gifted children throughout their life courses, but most current work has been obliged to scrutinize a narrower slice of the life span (e.g., Csikszentmihalyi, Rathunde, & Whalen, 1993; Getzels & Csikszentmihalyi, 1976; Subotnik & Arnold, 1994). Although such investigations have told psychologists much about creative development, only more extensive studies can complete the picture of the origins of creative potential. 3. Psychologists also need to carry out more research on the attributes of the creative product. Ironically, although psychologists have made considerable advances in their understanding of what contributes to the success of an aesthetic composition (e.g., Martindale, 1990; Simonton, 1980), they still know very little about what determines the creativity of a scientific contribution (e.g., Shadish, 1989; Sternberg & Gordeeva, 1996). Beyond expanding the scope of empirical inquiries, more attention must be devoted to the development of more comprehensive and precise theories of creativity. At present, two theoretical movements look the most promising: (a) economic models that examine the individual's willingness to invest in "human capital" and to engage in risk-taking behaviors (see, e.g., Rubenson & Runco, 1992; Sternberg & Lubart, 1995); and (b) evolutionary models that have elaborated Campbell's (1960) variation-selection model of creativity into more complete explanations of the creative process, person, and product (see, e.g., Eysenck, 1995; Simonton, 1999b). Both the economic and evolutionary theories have supported the emergence of mathematical models that make predictions susceptible to empirical tests (e.g., Simonton, 1997a). Finally, and perhaps most important, the scientific understanding of creativity should be extended to lead to ever more useful applications. To the world at large, creativity is not just an interesting psychological phenomenon but a socially and personally valued behavior besides. 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The Origins and Ends of Giftedness Ellen Winner Boston College and Project Zero, Harvard Graduate School of Education Five issues about giftedness are discussed. First, the origins of giftedness are explored. The view that gifiedness is entirely a product of training is critiqued. There is indirect evidence for atypical brain organization and innate talent in gifted children: Many gifted children and savants have enhanced right-hemisphere development, language-related difficulties, and autoimmune disorders. Second, the intense motivation of gifted children is discussed. Third, it is argued that gifted children have social and emotional difficulties that set them apart. Fourth, evidence for the often uneven cognitive profiles of such children is presented. Finally, the relationship between childhood g(ftedness and "domain" creativity in adulthood is discussed. Few gifted children go on to become adult creators because the skills and personality factors required to be a creator are very different from those typical of even the most highly gifted children. G ifted children and prodigies display near-adult P level skills and interests. They may begin to read fluently at the age of three or four, without any extended instruction; they may play a musical instrument as skillfully as a highly trained adult; they may turn everyday experiences into mathematical problems to play with, moving from arithmetic to algebra before their peers have learned to carry numbers in addition (cf. Feldman, 1991; Radford, 1990; Winner, 1996a). Psychologists have always been interested in the deviant. As a result we know much more about deviance at the negative than at the positive end of the spectrum. Just as we know more about depression and fear than we do about happiness and courage, we also know far more about retardation and learning problems than we do about giftedness. Research on retardation is more advanced and more integrated into the field of psychology than is research on giftedness. Research on retardation is more likely to find its way into mainstream developmental journals than is research on giftedness, which is often to be found in specialized and hence less widely read journals. This phenomenon is part of the wider phenomenon of psychology's focus on the pathological rather than the healthy. It also surely reflects the view that retardation is a problem researchers may eventually learn to alleviate, whereas gifts are privileges to be admired or envied rather than problems in need of solutions. In previous work I have examined the myths and misconceptions held by laypeople and psychologists alike about the gifted (Winner, 1996a). Here I consider the current state of knowledge about giftedness, focusing on five issues. The first and major focus of this article concerns what is known about the origins and causes of giftedness. I discuss and critique the view that giftedness is entirely a product of training and practice and argue that there is indirect evidence for atypical brain organization and innate talent in gifted children. The same claim is made as well for savants, autistic and retarded individuals with extremely high levels of ability, usually in only one area. I argue that the indirect evidence suggests that many gifted children and savants have enhanced right-hemisphere development, concomitant language-related difficulties, and autoimmune disorders. In the second section, I briefly discuss the motivational characteristics of gifted children, showing that these children are far more intrinsically driven than are average children. Third, I discuss the particular social and emotional difficulties of gifted children that set them apart from others. Fourth, I describe what is known about the often uneven cognitive profiles of gifted children. I conclude by proposing three ways to think about the "ends" of giftedness. The end of giftedness has a deliberately triple meaning. I use this term in a positive sense to refer to the adult endpoint of the development of a gifted child. I use it in a negative sense to refer to the potential disappearance of giftedness after childhood. Finally, I use it to refer to the goals I believe we should expect gifted children in particular to fulfill if we are to give them extra societal resources. Origins and Causes of Giftedness The Disputed Role of Training The topic of giftedness inevitably awakens the naturenurture debate. Most people in our culture subscribe to the nativist view of giftedness, in which giftedness is believed to be a product of inborn high ability. However, this folk psychology view of the origins of giftedness has recently come under sharp attack by psychologists who argue that giftedness (in any domain) is entirely a product of what is referred to as goal-directed hard work, or deliberate pracEllen Winner, Department of Psychology, Boston College, and Project Zero, Harvard Graduate School of Education. Some of the research reported here was supported by a grant from the International Dyslexia Association. I thank Julian Stanley for his insightful comments on an earlier version of this article. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Ellen Winner, Department of Psychology, Boston College, McGuinn Hall, 140 Commonwealth Avenue, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467-3807. January 2000 • American Psychologist Copyright 2000 by the American Psychological Association. Inc. 0003-066X/00/$5.00 Vol. 55, No. I. 159-169 DOE IO. I0371IOlN)3-O66X.55,1.159 159

Ellen Winner Photo by Jerry Bauer tice (Ericsson, Krampe, & Tesch-Romer, 1993; Ericsson & Lehman, 1996; Howe, Davidson, & Sloboda, 1998; Howe, Davidson, Moore, & Sloboda, 1995; Sloboda, Davidson, & Howe, 1994). Ericsson et al. (1993) showed that levels of expertise in piano, violin, chess, bridge, and athletics correlate directly with the amount of deliberate practice. They also argued that there is no systematic and verifiable evidence for high abilities emerging prior to extensive periods of deliberate practice. They discounted as unreliable anecdotal reports about the childhood feats of prodigies such as Mozart, Gauss, and Menuhin. Ericsson and Faivre (1988) have also sought to account for savant gifts in terms of deliberate practice. Savants are individuals who are retarded (with IQs between 40 and 70) and also either are autistic or show autistic symptoms. Savants are typically found in the domains of arithmetic calculation, music, and realistic drawing, and they often surpass child prodigies in their level of achievement. For instance, at ages three and four, the drawing prodigy Nadia drew more realistically than any known "normal" child prodigy at the same age (Selfe, 1977). Savants work obsessively in their area of ability, and it is the countless hours they spend drawing, doing mental calculation, or playing an instrument that have led to the suggestion that the savant's skills are the product of deliberate practice. Consistent with this contemporary nurture view of giftedness are several other earlier findings. First, case studies of creative people such as those by Csikszentmihalyi (1996), Gardner (1993a), and Gruber (1981) show that all great achievement is associated with years of deep and prolonged work. For example, Gruber (1986) pointed out that it took Newton 20 years to go from his preliminary ideas to his magnum opus, Principia Mathematica. However, does this mean that hard work is all that is needed or that anyone can engage in the kind of hard work that will lead to Newton's creative breakthroughs? Second, Roe (1951, 1953a, 1953b) found that outstanding achievement in science was predicted by the participants' capacity for endurance, concentration, and commitment rather than their level of intellectual ability. However, Roe's scientists were all high in intellectual ability to begin with. Her studies thus show that high ability is not sufficient for exceptional achievement; rather, one needs both high ability and perseverance. Third, Bloom (1985) showed that eminent adults in a variety of domains did not achieve high levels of performance without a long and intensive period of training. Their training began in early childhood with warm and loving teachers, who were then supplanted by more demanding and rigorous master teachers. Bloom's study might be taken as evidence that the high levels of achievement attained were entirely the result of the rigorous training. However, a careful look at the descriptions of these eminent individuals as children shows that at a very young age, prior to any regimen of training or deliberate practice, signs of unusual ability were present. The musicians were described as quick to learn the piano, and both their parents and their teachers recognized they were special. The sculptors said that they drew constantly as children, usually realistically. The mathematicians recalled being obsessed with gears, valves, gauges, and dials and were considered "brilliant" as children. Thus, Bloom's work, like that of Roe (1951, 1953a, 1953b), allows us to conclude only that intensive training is necessary for the acquisition of expertise; it does not sufficiently explain children's high level of achievement. The same criticism can be leveled at the work of Ericsson and his colleagues (Ericsson et al., 1993). Hard work and innate ability have not been unconfounded. Those children who have the most ability are also likely to be those who are most interested in a particular activity, who begin to work at that activity at an early age, and who work the hardest at it. Ericsson's research demonstrated the importance of hard work but did not rule out the role of innate ability. Although Ericsson and his colleagues (Ericsson et al., 1993) consider the stories of early (pretraining) achievements of child prodigies to be unreliable, there are simply too many such reports that are too consistent with one another for them to be easily discounted. In addition, these reports come not only from potentially biased parents but also from careful case studies of young prodigies (cf. Feldman, 1991; Milbrath, 1998; Winner, 1996a). If exceptional abilities emerge prior to intensive instruction and training, then these abilities are likely to reflect atypical, innate potential. The claim that savants achieve their astonishing level of performance because they have practiced their skill for countless hours leaves unexplained the fact that, like gifted children, savants show extremely high abilities right from the start, before they have spent much time working at their gift. In addition, this claim cannot explain why savants are 160 January 2000 • American Psychologist

found only in domains that are highly rule governed and structured rather than in looser domains such as higher mathematics, abstract painting, philosophy, or creative writing. Thus, it seems more likely that savants and gifted children owe their gifts at least in part to innate abilities that in turn reflect atypical brain organization. Recently, Miller (1999) has made the same point: The motivation of savants may be the result rather than the cause of high ability. Indirect evidence indicates that gifted children and savants have atypical brain organization (whether as a result of genetics, the in utero environment, or after-birth trauma). First, giftedness in mathematics, visual arts, and music is associated with superior visual-spatial abilities, and children with mathematical gifts show enhanced brain activity in their fight hemisphere when asked to recognize faces, a task known to involve the fight hemisphere (O'Boyle, Alexander, & Benbow, 1991; O'Boyle & Benbow, 1990). Thus, giftedness in these domains may involve enhanced right-hemisphere development. Second, individuals with gifts in mathematics, visual arts, and music are disproportionately nonright-handed. Again, this finding suggests atypical brain organization, because nonrighthandedness is a rough index of anomalous brain dominance (Annett, 1985; Geschwind & Galaburda, 1987).Third, studies have shown that mathematically and musically gifted individuals have a more bilateral, symmetrical brain organization than is usual, with the right hemisphere participating in tasks ordinarily reserved for the left hemisphere (Gordon, 1970, 1978, 1980; Hassler & Birbaumer, 1988; O'Boyle, Gill, Benbow, & Alexander, 1994). Fourth, giftedness in spatial areas is accompanied by a disproportionate incidence of language-related learning disorders such as dyslexia, a finding reported for artists (Winner & Casey, 1993; Winner, Casey, DaSilva, & Hayes, 1991), inventors (Colangelo, Assouline, Kerr, Huesman, & Johnson, 1993), and musicians (Hassler, 1990), Finally, youths with very high IQs have an increased incidence of autoimmune problems (Benbow, 1986; Hildreth, 1966; Kolata, 1983; Temple, 1990); a link between immune disorders and giftedness in music has been suggested but not firmly established (Hassler & Birbaumer, 1988; McNamara, Flannery, Obler, & Schachter, 1994; but see Hassler & Gupta, 1993). In summary, giftedness in abilities that involve the right hemisphere may be associated with enhanced right-hemisphere development and hence with anomalous brain dominance. Individuals with such gifts are more likely to be nonrighthanded, to have language represented bilaterally, and to have language-related and immune system disorders. These disparate signs and symptoms are accounted for by Geschwind and Galaburda's (1987) theory of the pathology of superiority, in which an association between spatial (right-hemisphere) gifts, linguistic (left-hemisphere) deficits, nonright-handedness, and immune disorders is argued to be a consequence of testosterone-induced alterations of the fetal brain. Testosterone is argued to inhibit some areas of the brain while stimulating other areas. This theory has come under sharp attack (cf. Bryden, McManus, & Bulman-Fleming, 1994), and the evidence in support of the model is inconsistent. However, whether or not the Geschwind and Galaburda model best accounts for the associations just described, we cannot discount the existence of these associations, which suggest gifted children, child prodigies, and savants are not made from scratch but are born with unusual brains that enable rapid learning in a particular domain. The Role of Families The notion that giftedness is a product of intensive training reflects an overly optimistic view of the power of nurture. A more negative view of the power of nurture is reflected in another common claim: that gifted children are created by driving, overambitious parents, There is concern that the end result of such extreme pushing will be disengagement, bitterness, and depression. Parents of gifted children are advised to let their children have a normal childhood. However, most gifted children do not become bitter and disaffected. Moreover, it is impossible to drive an ordinary child to the kinds of high achievements seen in gifted children. In addition, gifted children typically report that their family played a positive, not a negative, role in their development (Van Tassel-Baska, 1989). Today we know quite a bit about the family characteristics of gifted children, at least of those in our society. These characteristics are positive ones, as described below, but the research does not allow us to conclude that particular family characteristics play a causal role in the development of giftedness. There are two reasons why no causal conclusions can be drawn from the existing data. First, there is the lack of relevant control groups. Second, if causality exists, its direction could be either from parent to child or from child to parent. The families of gifted children are child centered, meaning that family life is often totally focused on the child's needs (e.g., Freeman, 1979; Winner, 1996a). However, the fact that parents spend a great deal of time with their gifted children does not mean that they create the gift. It is likely that parents first notice signs of exceptionality and then respond by devoting themselves to the development of their child's extraordinary ability. Of course, we have no information on the number of child-centered families that do not produce gifted children (i.e., the controlgroup problem). Gifted children typically grow up in enriched family environments with a high level of intellectual or artistic stimulation (e.g., Csikszentmihalyi, Rathunde, & Whalen, 1993; Freeman, 1979; Gottfried, Gottfried, Bathurst, & Guerin, 1994; Moss, 1990). Of course, these findings are correlational. We cannot conclude that stimulation and enrichment lead to the development of giftedness. First, gifted children may need an unusual amount of stimulation and may demand enriched environments, a demand to which their parents respond. Thus, the child's inborn ability could be the driving force, leading the child to select enriched environments (cf. Scarr & McCartney, 1983). Again, how many children of enriched environments display no signs of giftedness? January 2000 • American Psychologist 161

Parents of gifted children typically have high expectations and also model hard work and high achievement themselves (Bloom, 1985; Csikszentmihalyi et al., 1993; Gardner, 1993a). It is logically possible that gifted children have simply inherited their gift from their parents, who also happen to be hardworking achievers. Parents of children in performance domains like music and athletics are the most directive; parents of children in the visual arts are the least directive; parents of children gifted in an academic domain fall somewhere in between (Bloom, 1985). To achieve in a performance domain, one must submit to rigorous and early training; even the most gifted children might not stick to such a rigorous schedule without a directive parent who insists that time be spent on practice. Families of children gifted in the visual arts may be the least directive because of the low value our culture places on being an artist. Parents of gifted children grant their children more than the usual amount of independence (Colangelo & Dettman, 1983; Karnes, Schwedel, & Steinberg, 1984; Terman & Oden, 1947). However, we do not know whether granting independence leads to high achievement, or whether it is the recognition of the child's gift that leads to the granting of independence. It is also possible that gifted children are particularly strong willed and single-minded and thus demand independence. Gifted children who grow up in "complex" families-- those that combine both stimulation and nurturance--are happier, more alert, more engaged, and more goal directed than are gifted children who grow up in families with only one or neither of these traits (Csikszentmihalyi et al., 1993). Gifted children from complex families report more states of flow and high energy and were rated by teachers as original, independent, and working up to their potential. Youths who dropped out of their domains of talent reported having parents who were either too directive or too uninvolved. However, we do not know whether a combination of stimulation and nurturance causes gifted children to remain engaged, because we do not know whether the parents are reacting to the child, or the child to the parents. Implications for Education and Child Rearing Research on the nurture hypothesis has failed to demonstrate that giftedness is a product of hard work and intensive training or that any particular kind of family environment causes giftedness. Nonetheless, the research just reviewed has implications for the nurturance of giftedness. To be sure, no research has demonstrated that hard work, perseverance, and practice is sufficient to explain the existence of giftedness. Yet, these qualities have been shown to be necessary for high achievement, because we have no documented cases of high achievement reached in the absence of long training and many cases showing the association of high achievement with training. Thus, parents and schools ought to hold and model high expectations if gifted children are to reach their potential. All too often, American schools do not sufficiently challenge their students. International comparisons show that American children, no matter what their ability level, perform below the levels of comparably aged students in most European and East Asian nations (Mullis et al., 1998). The gap between American students and others is greatest for those at the highest levels of ability. According to a widely cited government report, about half of the top one percent of our students are underachieving (Ross, 1993). Any educational solution for the gifted should be made in the context of educational reform for all students (Winner, 1996a, 1996b, 1997a). Standards and expectations are not only too low for the gifted, they are also far too low for the rest of our students. If our schools were as rigorous as those in Western Europe and East Asia, then many of our moderately gifted students, who are currently bored, tuning out, and underachieving, would be appropriately challenged. Those still not challenged enough ought to be able to take advanced classes in their domain of gift. Such advanced classes exist in high schools (e.g., advanced placement courses), but they should be available at all levels. Schools are not the only agents that should hold gifted children to high standards. Parents also play a critical role. Too often parents fear pushing their children too hard. They fear they may rob their children of a normal childhood if they make them work too much and instead allow their children unlimited access to television, video games, malls, and such (Damon, 1995). To be sure, many gifted children are so driven than they focus on work in the area of their ability or talent whether or not their parents push them to do so. However, we do not know how many more high-potential children never develop their ability because they are not challenged but are instead captured by the potent messages from their peer culture to avoid work and be like everyone else. Similarly, although we cannot conclude that any particular kind of family can create a gifted child, the correlational findings reported by Csikszentmihalyi et al. (1993) certainly suggest that given a high-potential child, certain kinds of family constellations are most likely to succeed in maintaining and nurturing the gift. Although it is not proven that complex families, which combine nurturance and stimulation, are causally implicated in maintaining and developing a gift, it is also not proven that they are not causally implicated. Unless we have evidence to show that family environment plays no causal role, it seems prudent to urge families to strive to combine the two qualities most typically associated with gifted youths who remain engaged in their area of ability. Motivational Aspects of Giftedness Gifted children have a deep intrinsic motivation to master the domain in which they have high ability and are almost manic in their energy level (Winner, 1996a, 1997b). Often one cannot tear these children away from activities in their area of giftedness, whether they involve an instrument, a computer, a sketch pad, or a math book. These children have a powerful interest in the domain in which they have high ability, and they can focus so intently on work in this domain that they lose sense of the outside world. They combine an obsessive interest with an ability to learn easily in a given domain. Unless social and emotional factors 162 January 2000 • American Psychologist

interfere, this combination leads to high achievement. This intrinsic drive is part and parcel of an exceptional, inborn giftedness. This "rage to master" characterizes children we have traditionally labeled gifted: children with high IQs who excel in school. It also characterizes children we have traditionally classified as talented, children who excel in art, music, or athletics. The distinction in terminology between gifted and talented suggests two different subtypes of children, but this is a distinction with no basis. No matter what the domain, gifted or talented children show a rage to master: Musically gifted children spend hours voluntarily working at their instrument, artistically gifted children draw whenever they are allowed, just as mathematically gifted children willingly spend their time solving existing math problems and discovering new ones (Winner, 1996a, 1997b). The intense drive characterizing gifted children should be recognized, celebrated, and cultivated, not destroyed. When children are not sufficiently challenged in school, as so often happens to gifted children, they sometimes lose their motivation and become underachievers. When parents and schools try to force single-minded, driven children to be well-rounded by curtailing activity in the children's domain of giftedness and having the children spend time on more "normal" activities, they may end up stifling the children's drive. All children, not only the gifted, would be better educated if teachers sought to find out what motivates and excites individual students and then harnessed this drive toward learning. The Social and Emotional Lives of Gifted Children The study of giftedness began in earnest in the early part of this century, when Lewis Terman initiated a large-scale longitudinal study of over 1,500 high-IQ children. The first volume about this group appeared in 1925 (Terman, 1925), a 40-year follow-up appeared in 1968 (Oden, 1968), and a volume describing the survivors in their 80s appeared in 1995 (Holahan & Sears, 1995). Terman's goal was to dispel the myth that gifted children are maladjusted and emotionally troubled. Terman tried to use his evidence to show that the participants in his study were, in his words, "superior to unselected children in physique, health and social adjustment; [and] marked by superior moral attitudes as measured by character tests of trait ratings" (Subotnik & Arnold, 1994, pp. 17-18). To understand how Terman came to this conclusion, it is necessary to understand how the children were selected for the study. The first cut came from teacher nominations of the brightest children and also the youngest children in their classes. Nominated students who scored in the top one percent of the school population on an intelligence test were then admitted to the study. For students under high school age, this meant a score of at least 140 on the Stanford-Binet IQ test; for high school students, this meant a score within the top one percent on the Terman Group Test of Mental Ability. Personality and social and emotional adjustment were assessed by asking teachers to rate students on a variety of scales. Teachers may welt have been subject to a halo effect, perceiving the students they had nominated as gifted as being generally better on all dimensions. In addition, because almost a third of the Terman children were drawn from professional, middleclass families, giftedness was confounded with social class. Another early researcher of gifted children, Leta Hollingworth, argued that children with profoundly high IQs (over 180) had special social and emotional problems (Hollingworth, 1942). In a more recent report it was estimated that the rate of social and emotional difficulties experienced by profoundly academically gifted children is about twice the rate found among the nongifted, with almost a quarter of such children having such difficulties (Janos & Robinson, 1985). Extreme levels of giftedness lead to isolation. Hence, in middle childhood profoundly gifted children may try to hide their abilities in the hopes of becoming more popular. Academically gifted girls are more apt to do this than boys, and such girls report more depression, lower self-esteem, and more psychosomatic symptoms than do academically gifted boys (Gross, 1993). Teenagers with gifts in the visual arts, music, and athletics have as many difficulties with their peers as do those gifted in academic areas (Csikszentmihalyi et al., 1993). These teenagers have been shown to be atypical socially and emotionally in a number of respects: They are highly driven, nonconforming, and independent thinkers. Gifted children in all domains also tend to be introverted. They spend more time alone than do ordinary adolescents. They gain stimulation from themselves more than from others and report liking solitude far more than do most other people (Csikszentmihalyi et al., 1993). Gifted children are not only solitary because of their rich inner lives, but also because solitude is requisite for the development of their talent. Whereas ordinary children come home after school to play, gifted children come home after school eager to paint, play music, work on math problems, read, or write. Despite liking solitude more than do ordinary children, gifted adolescents also report a preference to be with others rather than alone (Csikszentmihalyi et al., 1993). Thus, although they gain more from solitude than do others, they still yearn for peer contact. It is difficult for these atypical children to find like-minded peers. The desire for like-minded peers is one of the strongest arguments for placing gifted children in advanced classes. Advanced classes for gifted students are almost nonexistent at the elementary level, infrequent at the middle school level, and common at the secondary level. Such opportunities come in the form of honors classes, advanced placement classes, and college-level courses. Because meta-analyses of research show that ability grouping helps students academically and does not harm them socially (Kulik & Kulik, 1997), schools should be increasing their offerings of advanced coursework and allowing such courses even at the elementary school level. Yet, all too often today schools are disbanding such offerings in the name of egalitarianism. January 2000 • American Psychologist 163

Advanced courses also exist in summer or weekend programs at many universities around the country (Stanley, 1988). Since 1979, over 100,000 students have participated in programs across the country now run by the Institute for the Academic Advancement of Youth at the Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins University, 1999). Students are selected on the basis of a high Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) or American College Testing (ACT) score earned as early as late elementary school. (Students also participate in various annual regional talent searches based on the same model. In some of these talent searches students all the way down to the second grade are tested using downward extensions of the SAT and the ACT.) Students take courses in their area of high ability, and they find the experience to be very positive, particularly because meeting like-minded peers means they feel less isolated (Benbow & Lubinski, 1997; Enersen, 1993). There are now about a dozen residential state-supported high schools for the gifted, as well as an equal number of residential earlyentrance-to-college programs; these make it possible for highly gifted children to mix with equally gifted peers (Boothe, Sethna, & Stanley, in press). Cognitive Profiles of Gifted and Prodigious Children Psychologists typically assess academic giftedness with an IQ test that yields subtest scores as well as an overall, global number. Children are usually defined as gifted if their global IQ score rises above some arbitrary cutoff point (often 130). The assumption underlying the use of a global score is that academically gifted children are generally gifted in all academic subjects. Some children justify this assumption perfectly by demonstrating giftedness in reading, math, and logical analytic thinking. These kind of children are notationally gifted, able to master rapidly the two kinds of notational symbol systems valued in school: language and numbers. Although globally gifted children certainly exist, many other academically gifted children present a much less balanced picture; unevenness between verbal and mathematical abilities may be the rule, not the exception. Many of Terman's participants had greater strengths and interests in either reading or math. Terman, however, argued that the unevenness in ability among the gifted was no more marked than the unevenness found in the general population: "The 'one-sidedness' of precocious children is mythical" (Terman, 1925, p. 339). More recent research suggests Terman was wrong. When assessed with difficult tests without low ceilings, academically gifted children often reveal jagged profiles, and a gift in one scholastic area does not imply a gift in another area. For example, Detterman and Daniel (1989) have found that the higher the IQ, the lower the correlation among subtests of the IQ test. Thus, it is more common to find mathematical ability far higher than verbal ability in a high-IQ individual than in a low-IQ individual. Wilkinson (1993) reported sharp discrepancies between verbal and performance IQ scores in children with IQs of 120 or higher. In a large-scale study of gifted adolescents, Achter, Lubinski, and Benbow (1996) found that 42% of students scoring in the top 0.5% on the SATs had math and verbal SAT scores over one standard deviation apart, whereas 72% of students scoring in the top .01% had such a differentiated profile. When the personal interests of the individual children were added into the same equation, 82% and 94%, respectively, had differentiated profiles. Some mathematically gifted children identified by the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth (SMPY; Stanley, 1988) are more gifted in math than verbal ability, although extreme cases of such discrepancies are not typical (J. C. Stanley, personal communication, January 7, 1999). For further evidence of unevenness of abilities associated with gifted IQs, see Benbow and Minor (1990); Lewis (1985); Mueller, Dash, Matheson, and Short (1984); and Silver and Clampit (1990). It is not surprising that unevenness exists, because the abilities that underlie mathematical giftedness differ sharply from those that underlie verbal giftedness. Underlying mathematical but not verbal giftedness are spatial abilities (Benbow & Minor, 1990; Benbow, Stanley, Kirk, & Zonderman, 1983; Casey & Brabeck, 1989; Gardner, 1983; Hermelin & O'Connor, 1986; Krutetskii, 1976). Mathematically gifted children show stronger recall for numerical and spatial information than for linguistic information, whereas verbally gifted children show the reverse pattern (Dark & Benbow, 1991). Jagged profiles also characterize children gifted in music and art. A gift in music or art can exist alongside an average or even a subnormal IQ. Correlations between musical ability and IQ are positive but low: Above an average IQ, intelligence is not particularly predictive of musical ability. In the same vein, high musical ability is not predictive of a high IQ (Shuter-Dyson, 1982). Further, the existence of musical savants, individuals who are retarded and autistic but who have exceptional musical ability, shows decisively that a high IQ is not a necessary component of giftedness in music (Miller, 1999; Treffert, 1989). Yet, musically gifted children typically do very well academically (Csikszentmihalyi et al., 1993). One possible explanation for this conflicting set of findings is that all that our knowledge of the relation between music, IQ, and academic skills comes from studies of children taking classical music lessons. These children are likely to come from educated parents who provide enriched family environments. In addition, such children learn to read music and practice regularly, two activities that might transfer to school performance. Whether children who perform rebellious antiauthority music (rock, rap, etc.) and who do not read music also do well academically has not been investigated, but I speculate that such children would not excel in school-related activities. Children gifted in the visual arts and in athletics typically show a lack of interest in academic achievement, with those gifted in the visual arts even less committed academically than those in athletics (Csikszentmihalyi et al., 1993). Savants who excel in drawing provide clear evidence 1or the possible dissociation between giftedness in the visual arts and IQ (Miller, 1999; Treffert, 1989). 164 January 2000 • American Psychologist

A gift in the visual-spatial area may bring with it a language-based learning disability. Gifted children may perform at an average level in some academic domain. Others are gifted in one domain and learning disabled in another. Davis and Rimm (1985) estimated that there are between 120,000 and 180,000 American schoolchildren who are both gifted and learning disabled. A recent study by Reis, Neu, and McGuire (1995) found that all of the academically gifted students in a University of Connecticut program for learning disabled students had a languagebased learning disability. It is certainly not uncommon to encounter high-IQ children who are also dyslexic. It has also been argued that dyslexia is often accompanied by gifts in the visual-spatial arena, a view consistent with Geschwind and Galaburda's (1987) pathology of superiority theory, and anecdotal reports on this association abound (Galaburda & Kemper, 1979; Rimland & Fein, 1988; Sano, 1918; West, 1991). Consistent with this claim of association is the finding that there are disproportionately more dyslexics in populations of artists than in the population at large (Winner & Casey, 1993; Winner et al., 1991). Also consistent is Bloom's (1985) report that none of the 20 world-class mathematicians he studied had learned to read before attending school (even though most academically gifted children do read by that time) and that 6 had had trouble learning to read. A retrospective study of inventors (who are presumably individuals with high mechanical and spatial aptitude) showed that as children these individuals struggled with reading and writing (Colangelo et al., 1993). Also, late-talking children have been found to have high spatial abilities and to have relatives in spatial professions such as engineering (Sowell, 1998). Despite these intriguing findings, however, systematic studies of the spatial abilities in dyslexic populations have revealed mixed and inconsistent findings (for a review, see von Karolyi, 1998a). Individuals with dyslexia show no spatial advantage on a wide variety of spatial tasks, including spatial visualization, mental rotation, spatial memory, visual scanning, and spatial orientation (Malinsky & Winner, 1999; Winner et al., 1999; for an exception, see yon Karolyi, 1998b, 1999). Educational programs for the academically gifted that rely on global IQ scores as an entrance criterion are likely to miss children who are unevenly gifted. Of course, admission by overall IQ means that children with mathematical gifts are treated identically to those with verbal gifts. It would make far more sense to admit children to special programs that are tailored to the domain in which they are gifted (Stanley & Benbow, 1986). Although our schools do little for the academically gifted, with those choosing the curriculum often insisting that all children are gifted and hence none need special classes, our schools do even less for the musically or artistically gifted child. It is assumed that schools nurture academic but not artistic or musical abilities. Children with gifts in an art form are expected to get extracurricular training. This is particularly true in the case of music, whereas children gifted in the visual arts are likely to experiment on their own time in their field of talent, not receiving formal training outside of school until or unless they elect to attend an art school. Schools ought to offer rigorous and advanced training in the arts as well as in academics so that gifted children can advance in an art form and have their gift taken as seriously as is academic ability. The Ends of Giftedness There are at least three senses in which to consider the ends of giftedness: (a) the most positive endpoint of childhood giftedness, (b) the end or loss giftedness in adulthood, and (c) the end or goals that we should expect gifted children to fullfil. In the following paragraphs I consider each of these in turn. When Giftedness Ends in Big-C Creativity The highest possible endpoint of childhood giftedness is certainly creativity in the sense of domain-altering innovation (which I refer to here as big-C creativity). Terman's children typically became experts in a well-established domain (e.g., medicine, law, business, the academy). Although they may have been creative in the little-c sense (e.g., coming up with innovative approaches to problems), they did not become major creators. That is, they neither created a new domain nor revolutionized an old domain. Yet, expertise as an endpoint should not be lightly dismissed. Society needs experts, and we can neither expect nor hope that all prodigies will become creators. Many gifted children grow up to become happy and well-adjusted experts in their fields. However, only a fraction of gifted children eventually become revolutionary adult creators. Those who do so must make a painful transition from a child prodigy (a child who learns rapidly and effortlessly in an established domain) to an adult creator (a person who disrupts and ultimately remakes a domain; Gardner, 1993a, 1993b; Simonton, 1977). It is not surprising that most gifted children, even most child prodigies, do not go on to become adult creators. All young children, whether typical or gifted, think divergently and engage in fantasy play (cf. Richards, 1996, for a discussion of divergent thinking in ordinary children). However, this kind of universal creative thinking is quite different from the kind of big-C creativity that is involved in reshaping a domain. Individuals who are creative in this big-C sense have a personality structure different from that of the typical gifted (and nongifted) child: They are rebellious, they have a desire to alter the status quo, and they have often suffered childhoods of stress and trauma (Gardner, 1993a; M. G. Goertzel, Goertzel, & Goertzel, 1978; V. Goertzel & Goertzel, 1962; Sulloway, 1996). Their families are often a far cry from the complex families of engaged gifted adolescents (Csikszentmihalyi et al., 1993). The disproportionate incidence of manic depression in creative individuals also suggests a link (although not a necessary one) between creativity and psychopathology (Jamison, 1993: Ludwig, 1995). The biggest issue for profoundly gifted children is making the transition from precocity and technical experJanuary 2000 • American Psychologist 165

tise to the innovation of the big-C creator. Consider the very different situation of a prodigy in an academic or artistic domain as compared with an athletic prodigy. An athlete's career is over relatively early in life because physical strength and agility are so important. Also, in sports, creativity plays far less of a role than it does in an art form or in a scholastic area such as mathematics. In sports there is no transition to be made from technical perfection to creative interpretation. For the athlete, technical perfection is most, if not all, of the story. In contrast, in music, mathematics, writing, or the visual arts, the situation is much more difficult for the prodigy. For example, a high-IQ six-year-old who can multiply three-digit numbers in her head or solve algebraic equations wins acclaim. However, as a young adult she must come up with a new way to solve some unsolved mathematical problem or discover some new problems or areas to investigate to make her mark in the domain of mathematics. Although she may remain in the domain of mathematics for her whole life as an excellent teacher, an accountant, an engineer, or a math professor, she will not have become a creator in the domain. Although she may not drop out of the field entirely, she will not fulfill the highest level of potential that a gifted child may reach, big-C creativity. The situation is the same in art or music. Technical perfection wins the prodigy adoration, but if the prodigy does not eventually go beyond technical perfection into originality, he or she sinks into oblivion. There are a number of reasons for prodigies' failure to remake themselves into big-C creators. Two are inevitable, but two are within our control and hence challenge us to change how prodigies are nurtured so we may help them make this transition. One inevitable reason is that the funnel is small. There is simply not enough room at the top for all prodigies to become creators. Therefore, there is an inevitable weeding out of those who do not make the cut, so to speak. Any domain would be in chaos if there were as many creative adult innovators as there are child prodigies. A second inevitable reason is that the skill of being a prodigy is not the same as the skill of being a big-C creator. A prodigy is someone who can easily and rapidly master an already-established domain with expertise. A creator is someone who changes a domain. Personality and will are crucial factors in becoming an innovator or revolutionizer of a domain. Creators have a desire to shake things up. They are restless, rebellious, and dissatisfied with the status quo (Csikszentmihalyi, 1996; Gardner, 1993a; Simonton, 1994; Sulloway, 1996). They are courageous (cf. Gruber's, 1981, discussion of Darwin's courage) and independent (Albert & Runco, 1986). They are able to manage multiple related projects at the same time, engaging in what Gruber (1981) calls a "network of enterprise" (p. 105). For these two reasons, we should never expect a prodigy to go on to become a creator. The ones who do make this transition are the exception, not the rule. When Giftedness Ends One noninevitable reason that prodigies may fail to make the transition is that they have become frozen into expertise. This is particularly a problem for those whose work has become public and has won them acclaim, such as musical performers, painters, or children who have been publicized as "whiz kids." Expertise won them fame and adoration as child prodigies. It is then difficult to break away from expertise and take the kinds of risks required to be creative. A second noninevitable reason is that some with the potential to make the transition do not do so because they have been pushed so hard by their parents, teachers, and managers that they lose their intrinsic motivation (Elkind, 1981; Winner, 1996a). At adolescence they begin to ask, "Who am I doing this for?" If the answer is that they are pursuing their gift for a parent or a teacher but not for themselves, they may decide that they do not want to do it anymore and drop out (cf. Bamberger, 1986). The case of William James Sidis, a math prodigy pushed relentlessly by his father, is one such case among many (Montour, 1977). These last two reasons show us what can happen when culture and greed overtake nature and stamp it out. Parents, teachers, and psychologists all have an obligation to nurture prodigies through the potential transition from expertise to creative innovation and to help them avoid four dangers: 1. The danger of pushing so hard that the intrinsic motivation and rage to master these children start out with become a craving for the extrinsic rewards of fame. 2. The danger of pushing so hard that these children later feel they missed out on having a normal childhood. 3. The danger of freezing a prodigy into a safe, technically perfect but noninnovative way of performing because this is what he or she has been rewarded for doing so well. 4. The danger of the psychological wound caused by the fall from being a famous prodigy who can perform perfectly to a forgotten adult who can do no more than perform perfectly. The Ends, or Goals, That Gifted Children Should Be Held To I have argued here and elsewhere (Winner, 1996a, 1996b, 1997a) that we should provide extra resources for the education of our most able students. The traditional argument for this has been a utilitarian one. These children are our national resources, and we should cultivate them so they can become our future leaders and innovators. However, there is also a nonutilitarian reason for intervention: We need to intervene for the happiness and mental health of gifted students. For their emotional well-being, students need an appropriate level of challenge. Otherwise, they are not only bored (which can lead to underachievement) but also socially isolated, and they feel different from everyone else. Schools can meet the needs of gifted students without violating egalitarianism. Schools cannot be truly egalitarian unless they acknowledge learning differences, including those differences possessed by students of high ability. 166 January 2000 • American Psychologist

However, if our schools are to provide specialized education for the most able, then the most able must also learn to give back to the society that grants them extra resources. Thus, one of the ends of giftedness might be argued to be service. Today there is a one-sided emphasis on the self-actualization of the gifted child. All of the educational research on the outcomes of ability grouping, acceleration, pull-out programs, and so on focuses on one primary issue: whether the gifted do better on some cognitive or emotional measure when given such education. An altogether different emphasis can be found at the Israel Academy of Art and Science, a school for gifted adolescents in which students not only develop their abilities but also participate in community service, making use of the kinds of abilities in which they are gifted (Gardner, 1998). 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Toward a Psychology of Positive Youth Development Reed W. Larson University of lllinois at Urbana-Champaign This article analyzes the development of initiative as an exemplar of one of many learning experiences that should be studied as part of positive youth development. The capacity for initiative is essential for adults in our society and will become more important in the 2lst century, yet adolescents" have few opportunities to learn it. Their typical experiences during schoolwork and unstructured leisure do not reflect conditions for learning initiative. The context best suited to the development of initiative appears to be that of structured voluntary activities, such as sports, arts, and participation in organizations, in which youths experience the rare combination of intrinsic motivation in combination with deep attention. An incomplete body of outcome research suggests that such activities are associated with positive development, but the developmental processes involved are only beginning to be understood. One promising approach has recorded language use and has found that adolescents participating in effective organizations acquire a new operating language that appears to correspond to the development of initiative. I t cannot be said, as for other domains of psychology, that developmental psychology has neglected the positive. Development, after all, is a process of growth and increasing competence. In the important subdomain of social and emotional development, however, we are often more articulate about how things go wrong than how they go right. We have a burgeoning field of developmental psychopathology but have a more diffuse body of research on the pathways whereby children and adolescents become motivated, directed, socially competent, compassionate, and psychologically vigorous adults. Corresponding to that, we have numerous research-based programs for youth aimed at curbing drug use, violence, suicide, teen pregnancy, and other problem behaviors, but lack a rigorous applied psychology of how to promote positive youth development. The place for such a field is apparent to anyone who has had contact with a cross section of American adolescents. In such a group, one encounters a surprising number of youth who appear to be bored, unmotivated, and unexcited about their lives. This malaise was brought home to me when we obtained a random sampling of self-reports on 16,000 moments in the daily experience of a representative sample of White, working- and middle-class young adolescents--a group that seemingly has everything going for them. These youth reported feeling bored for 27% (4,300!) of these random moments (Larson & Richards, 1991). Of course, individuals differed in these rates, but what was surprising was that honor students were as likely as those involved in delinquent activities to be among those reporting high rates of boredom, in many cases for more than 50% of the random moments. The litany of explanations for this boredom--"algebra sucks," "I'm always bored on Sunday," "there's nothing to do," "the Odyssey is boring"-- reads like a script from Bart Simpson. They communicate an ennui of being trapped in the present, waiting for someone to prove to them that life is worth living. High rates of boredom, alienation, and disconnection from meaningful challenge are not signs of psychopathology, at least not in most cases, but rather signs of a deficiency in positive development. The same might be said for many cases of problem behavior, such as drug use, premature sexual involvement, and minor delinquency-- that they are more parsimoniously described, not as responses to family stress, emotional disturbance, or realadaptive cognitions, but rather to the absence of engagement in a positive life trajectory. Many youth do their schoolwork, comply with their parents, hang out with their friends, and get through the day, but are not invested in paths into the future that excite them or feel like they originate from within. A central question of youth development is how to get adolescents' fires lit, how to have them develop the complex of dispositions and skills needed to take charge of their lives. This calling is made particularly difficult by the absence of a well-developed body of relevant theory and research regarding these dispositions and skills. In this article, I am going to focus on adolescents' development of initiative, which I see as a core quality of positive youth development in Western culture. The construct initiative is closely related to capacity for agency or for autonomous action that others have discussed (Brandtst~idter, 1998; Deci, 1995; Ryan, 1993). It consists of the ability to be motivated from within to direct attention and effort toward a challenging goal. In addition to being an important quality in its own right, I believe that initiative is a core requirement for other components of positive development, such as creativity, leadership, altruism, and civic engagement. Work on this article was partly supported by National Institute of Mental Health Grant 1RO1 MH57938. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Reed W. Larson, University of Illinois, 1105 West Nevada Street, Urbana, IL 61801. Electronic mail may be sent to [email protected]. 170 January 2000 ° American Psychologist Copyright 2000 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 0003-066X/00/$5.00 Vol. 55, No. I, 170-183 DOI: 10.1037//0003-066X,55.1.170

Reed W. Larson How does initiative develop? After situating this question in a cultural context, in the first section, I argue that initiative must emerge at least partly from adolescents' daily experiences, from the sparks of excitement and absorption that occur in their ordinary lives. In the following section, I examine how adequately the dominant daily activities of adolescents--schoolwork and unstructured leisure-produce the requisite elements. I conclude, as the boredom findings suggest, that Western adolescent life does not provide abundant daily opportunities for the experience and development of initiative. In the middle part of the article, my focus turns to youths' experiences in structured leisure activities, such as arts, sports, hobbies, and participation in organizations. These activities account for only a small fraction of adolescents' time, but preliminary evidence suggests they are a context in which the elements of initiative often coalesce and an operating language of initiative develops. Readers may know that there is a loosely defined field of practice called youth development that is concerned with these types of activities and that positive youth development is currently a hot term in this field (Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development [Carnegie], 1992). But, regrettably, this field has evolved separately from developmental psychology (partly because we psychologists have had little to offer) and has not had a strong base of research and theory, especially regarding positive youth development (Brown, 1988; Dubas & Snider, 1993; Oden, 1995; Roth, BrooksGunn, Murray, & Foster, 1998). The final section of this article envisions a new domain of developmental knowledge that is integrated with this applied field and is aimed at facilitating positive development. Initiative in a Western Cultural Context Given the renewed ideology of enterprise capitalism in U.S. and Western society, the importance of initiative hardly needs selling. The economic, social, and political order of our society presupposes an individual who is capable of autonomous action. Furthermore, we are moving into a new millennium in which changes in the occupational, interpersonal, political, and moral realms will demand new reserves of adaptation and creativity. In the last 50 years, we have already seen the wage value of rote, repetitive, and manual labor fall, as much of this labor is replaced by machines, and daily behavior, it appears, is less shaped by shared normative habits and goals than in the past (Oettingen, 1997). In the emerging heterogeneous global society where job demands and basic life course and life-style decisions are not preconfigured, adolescents will need to acquire the motivation and skills to create order, meaning, and action out of a field of ill-structured choices. Individuals will need the capacity to exert cumulative effort over time to reinvent themselves, reshape their environments, and engage in other planful undertakings. A generation of bored and challenge-avoidant young adults is not going to be prepared to deal with the mounting complexity of life and take on the emerging challenges of the 21st century. Yet although the capacity for initiative is a presupposition of adult membership in our society, it is by no means a guaranteed result of our childhood and adolescence. In fact, it has been argued that the route to becoming an autonomous, agentic adult in our culture is problematic. The anthropologist Ruth Benedict (1938) observed that many traditional societies provide a progressive set of steps that socialize youth into the roles and responsibilities of adulthood, whereas in Western society there is marked discontinuity between what we expect of children and what we expect of adults, especially with regard to initiative. Benedict pointed out that children in our society are treated as dependent and given few responsibilities, whereas adults are required to be independent and suddenly take charge of all parts of their life--to a much greater degree than in other societies (cf. Sampson, 1988). In a similar vein, anthropologists Schlegel and Barry (1991) found that American and European adolescents carry less responsibility and are given fewer occasions to engage in consequential and planful action than are adolescents in most other societies of the world. They experience little societal support or scaffolding to practice and develop initiative. They have few experiences of "preparing, planning, executing, and assessing" an endeavor (Heath, 1999, p. 64). It is not surprising, then, that young adults in our society fail to carry through on a high rate of the intentions they set for themselves (GoUwitzer, 1999). One way that initiative might be instigated would be if adolescents were "pulled" by appealing images of adulthood. They might then be motivated to set themselves on a course of action aimed at reaching adult goals. Except for sports heros, however, adolescents have few models of January 2000 • American Psychologist 171

adults they seek to emulate (Balswick & Ingoldsby, 1982; McCormack, 1984); the prospect of current adult careers-- for example, becoming a systems analyst, marketing specialist, or health technician--is not likely to inspire initiative. Recent commentators have also noted that the path into adult occupations is opaque to young people. Many poor and minority youth have little contact with successful adult models (Wilson, 1996) and perceive the transition into middle-class adulthood to be blocked (Ogbu, 1991). Yet, even for advantaged middle-class American youth, the steps required to gain entrance to many occupations are opaque (Hamilton, 1994; Schneider & Stevenson, 1999). Whereas an optimistic vision of the future can be an important influence on adolescents' choices (Nurmi, 1991; Seligman, 1990), images of adult careers do not have enough magnetic pull, in and of themselves, to motivate most adolescents to begin taking control of their lives. The development of initiative, I believe, needs to at least partly originate from adolescents' experiences in the present moment. Rather than just being pulled, it needs to be propelled. Especially given that the future is unstable (e.g., that many current occupations may not exist in 20 years), it is better if adolescents are motivated by the process of initiative, rather than by anticipated long-term rewards. For this to happen, adolescents need a series of experiences and opportunities, a la Benedict (1938), that build their development of this capacity. What opportunities do youths have? In what contexts do Western adolescents experience elements of initiative in their daily lives? First, let me elucidate what I think these elements are. I see three elements as crucial. To begin with, initiative involves intrinsic motivation, the experience of wanting to be doing an activity and being invested in it. Agency entails the experience that one's thoughts and actions originate voluntarily from the self (Ryan, 1993; Ryan, Sheldon, Kasser, & Deci, 1996). But intrinsically motivated action in a vacuum, or the confines of a solipsistic, self-created, or delusional world does not constitute initiative. The second requirement is that this intrinsic motivation be experienced in association with concerted engagement in the environment, with exertion of constructive attention in a field of action involving the types of constraints, rules, challenge, and complexity that characterize external reality. In defining this second element, I draw on various constructs from Csikszentmihalyi (1978, 1993, t996; Csikszentmihalyi & Larson, 1984). Attention means devotion of thought and effort. Constructive attention means that this thought and effort is not random but directed toward creating some form of order, synergy, or negentropy. And this order or negentropy must be definable within an objective universe, within a field of externally recognizable challenge and complexity. The third requirement is that this motivation and concerted engagement occur over time. Initiative involves a temporal arc of effort directed toward a goal, an arc that might include setbacks, re-evaluations, and adjustment of strategies. It is the capacity to carry out what Brian Little (1983, 1998) describes as a "serial" or "personal project." Despite its root in initiate, initiative is not just starting things but sticking with them. To be an agentic adult, one needs to be able to mobilize one's attention, one's mental powers, on a deliberate course of action, without being deterred by the first obstacle one encounters. Initiative is the devotion of cumulative effort over time to achieve a goal. For initiative to develop, I believe that all three of these elements need to come together. An individual needs to experience the three in consort and learn to regulate them. Adolescence may be a particularly valuable time for the development of initiative, because the acquisition of hypothetico-deductive or formal-operational reasoning facilitates the growth of metacognitive strategies for selfregulation of psychological states and action over time (Brandtst~idter, 1998; Lerner & Busch-Rossnagel, 1981). Contexts of Adolescents" Daily Experience Where do these elements of initiative occur in adolescents' lives? In what contexts might these three elements come together? My colleagues' and my research provides a broad view of the different experiential contexts that fill adolescents" waking hours and includes data bearing on the first two elements of initiative. One major block of adolescents' daily experience is schoolwork. Schools are institutions deliberately created by society to prepare youth for adulthood, so one might hope they would foster this important capacity. In the United States and Europe, schoolwork, including classwork and homework, accounts for an average of 25-30% of adolescents' waking hours (Larson & Verma, 1999). However, our data and that of many others indicate that this is a limited context for experiencing the elements of initiative. The limits of the school context are evident in the psychological states adolescents report during schoolwork. In our research, we have had adolescents carry electronic pagers or alarm watches for one week and report on their activities and experiential states at random times when signaled by the pagers, following the procedures of the experience sampling method. We find that during classwork and homework, adolescents experience high levels of concentration (Figure 1), as well as high challenge. To me, this is evidence (albeit incomplete) of the second element of initiative: that they are exerting effort in an environment of challenge and complexity. But although this element is present, the first element is not. During schoolwork, adolescents report low intrinsic motivation (Figure 1). They also report high rates of boredom, and, although they report high concentration, they report difficulty in concentrating. Research by others using the same methodology also finds this pattern of concentration without intrinsic motivation during schoolwork (Csikszentmihalyi, Rathunde, & Whalen, 1993; Leone & Richards, 1989; Carli, Delle Fave, & Massimini, 1988). This is a context of what Gibson and Rader (1979) called "other-directed attention." It is mental effort that is under the control of incentives and structuring provided by adults. 172 January 2000 • American Psychologist

Figure ! High-School-Aged Adolescents Average Ratings of Their Psychological States in Class andWith Friends Class Experience 0.5 0.4 T °-it 0.2 o ° 0. -0.1 -0.2 I -0.3 -0.4 -0.5 k Intrinsic Motivation Concentration Experience With Friends 0.6- 0.5- 0.4- 0.3- ~= o.2- O o 0.1- ,= o, N -0.1 -0.2 : -0.3 -0.4 ~- -0,5 Intrinsic Concentration Motivation Note. Data are from Csikszentmihalyi and Larson (1984). This comparative absence of intrinsic motivation suggests that schoolwork is usually not a context conducive for the development of initiative. Indeed, the profile of experience just described appears to become less favorable as children advance into adolescence. We found that 15-yearolds reported lower levels of concentration and intrinsic motivation during schoolwork than 10-year-olds, both on an absolute scale and in comparison with other domains of their daily experience (Larson, Ham, & Raffaelli, 1989; Larson & Kleiber, 1993b). Other studies confirm the reduction in intrinsic motivation between the elementary and junior high school grades (Eccles, Wig field, & Schiefele, 1998) and provide behavioral evidence of reduced effort, showing a decline in school grades across this period (Eccles & Midgley, 1991; Simmons & Zhou, 1994). In observational research, Eccles and Midgley (1991) found that junior high classrooms provided fewer opportunities for student decision making than elementary schools. Although students are older and more capable of making decisions, the junior high school environment appears to provide fewer, not more, opportunities for the exercise of initiative. My aim here is not to be critical of schools. There are many constraints on teachers, including large class sizes and an obligation to cover a broad ranging curriculum, that make it difficult to give students latitude to steer their own course. A number of researchers have suggested and demonstrated ways that schoolwork can be made to be intrinsically motivating (Anderman & Maehr, 1994; Csikszentmihalyi, 1993; Deci & Ryan, 1985). And there are parts of adolescents' schoolwork in which many do experience all three elements of initiative, for example, in doing independent research projects (Larson, 1985). But in the current reality, we need to look to other contexts of adolescents' lives to find consistent convergence of the elements of initiative. Besides schoolwork, the other major block of adolescents' waking time is leisure. In the United States and Europe this discretionary activity accounts for a large expanse of time, 40-50% of waking hours during the school year and more during the summer (Larson & Verma, 1999). Because leisure is self-controlled, one might expect that it provides unique opportunities for the development of personal agency (Silbereisen, Noack, & Eyferth, 1986). One large segment of this time, however, is watching TV, accounting for 7-14% of the average adolescents' waking hours (Larson & Verma, 1999). Adolescents typically report high intrinsic motivation when watching TV, however, they do not report high concentration or challenge (Larson et al., 1989; Larson & Kubey, 1983), nor is it associated with effort over time. So it is hardly a context of initiative. A large proportion of Western adolescents' leisure time is spent in activities with peers, mainly talking and hanging out. Might this be a context for the experience and development of initiative? Our data indicate that, on average, this context does yield some of the requisite features of subjective experience. Adolescents report high intrinsic motivation (Figure 1), as well as ease of concentration. But they report low concentration (Figure 1), as well as low challenge. In Dewey's (1913) terminology, this is "spontaneous attention," a type of engagement that children show in play. It is intrinsically motivated but does not involve concerted effort in a domain of challenge and complexity. Our data suggest that interactions with friends resemble positive feedback systems; ongoing feedback from friends is open, accepting, and uncritical, thus imposing limited reality constraints (Larson, 1983). Although there are certainly higher order challenges in negotiating peer relationships, most immediate interactions with friends do not appear to involve concerted engagement with challenge and complexity. In conclusion, the great majority of adolescents' time is spent in two opposite experiential situations. In schoolwork, they experience concentration and challenge without being intrinsically motivated. In most leisure, including January 2000 • American Psychologist 173

watching TV and interacting with friends, they experience intrinsic motivation but not in a context of concentration and challenge. Neither provides the combination of both of these elements necessary for the experience and development of initiative. There is, however, one small segment of adolescents' time that combines intrinsic motivation and concerted attention. Structured Voluntary Activities This one exception is a category we call structured voluntary activities, or youth activities for short. It includes activities that are organized by adults, such as extracurricular school activities and community youth activities, as well as structured activities that youth participate in on their own--such diverse things as hobbies, writing poetry, constructing a web site, or playing in a band with a group of friends. Our defining criteria for this category is activities that are voluntary (i.e., not required for school) and involve some structure, that is, where students' participation occurs within a system involving constraints, rules, and goals. Sports are the most frequent activity in this category, accounting for an average of 4-6 hours per week of U.S. adolescents' time (Csikszentmihalyi & Larson, 1984; Kirshnit, Ham, & Richards, 1989) and somewhat less in most European countries (Alsaker & Flammer, 1999). Other activities, including arts, music, hobbies, and participation in organizations, account for a total average of 1-2 hours per week, with variations across Western nations (Larson & Verma, 1999). These rates, it should be noted, do not include summertime, when structured voluntary camps, classes, and sports leagues fill a larger portion of time for adolescents from middle-class and affluent families. As Figure 2 shows, the immediate experience associated with these activities includes both high intrinsic motivation and concentration. We see this for sports and for arts, hobbies, and organizations. In both contexts, students also reported that concentration was easier than at other times and reported experiencing very high average challenge (Larson & Kleiber, 1993a). This conjoint pattern has been replicated in our study of urban African-American young adolescents (Richards & Larson, 1998) and in other studies of adolescents (Csikszentmihalyi et al., 1993; Larson & Kleiber, 1993a). This co-occurrence of motivation and attention, suggests what Dewey (1913) called "voluntary attention" and Gibson and Rader (1979) called "selfgenerated attention": attention that adolescents themselves direct. In an interview about experiences during this type of activity, one 9th grader described feeling "real strong and in control, like I could do anything." Adolescents' subjective involvement in these activities also resembles what Csikszentmihalyi (1975, 1990) calls flow; another 9th grader said, "You change, you forget everything around yOU." This profile of experience, then, fits my first two criteria for initiative, intrinsic motivated effort in a context of complexity. Adolescents are highly motivated paying attention within a domain of challenges. We also found that the correlation between reported motivation and attention Figure 2 High-School-Aged Adolescents Average Ratings of Their Psychological States During Structured Voluntary Activities Experience During Sports m i 0.6 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 O o 0.1 0 " -o.1 -0.2 -0.3 -0.4 -0.5 Intrinsic Motivation Concentration Experience During Arts, Hobbies, and Organizations 0.6 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 O o 0.1 0 -0.1 T -0.2~ -0.3 T -0.4 T -0.5 Intrinsic Concentration Motivation Note. Data are from Larson and Kleiber (1993a) and Csikszentmiholyi and Larson (1984). increased with age during these activities, which suggests that adolescents may be learning to coordinate these two elements (Larson et al., 1989). Indeed, in interviews, older adolescents reported exerting more control and self-regulation of these elements than did younger adolescents. Our momentary sampling data do not provide direct substantiation of the third element of initiative: an arc of effort over time. But this arc is inherent in many of these activities. Many involve cumulative planning and action for the duration of a project or season (Heath, 1994; Larson & Kleiber, 1993b). They have the quality of Little's (1983) "personal projects," involving concerted effort over time toward an outcome. A richer picture of this temporal arc of agentic action is provided by Rogoff, Baker-Sennett, Lacasa, and Gold174 January 2000 * American Psychologist

smith's (1995) observations on the experience of Girl Scouts engaged in a campaign to sell cookies. They observed that these girls, both singly and in small groups, developed plans for their sales that included rehearsal of their sales pitch and development of spatial routes through the neighborhoods. As they gained experience, they then adjusted their plans and strategies. Sales pitches became more refined, their methods for keeping track of orders became more systematic, and they took over responsibilities initially held by their mothers. The temporal course of their involvement included monitoring their activities and self-regulation: They modified their strategies in response to feedback from their experiences. Rogoff et al. also emphasized that this process of learning was collaborative-with parents, peers, and customers--and they provided a useful warning that development of initiative is not necessarily an individual process, but rather often involves this type of collaborative agency. As a whole, these findings begin to suggest that structured voluntary activities are a context that is particularly suited to the development of initiative. The presence of intrinsic motivation, concerted engagement, and, in many cases, a temporal arc, suggests that participants in these activities are having experiences of directing and regulating their actions in pursuit of a goal. Such experiences, I believe, are likely to stimulate the learning of initiative dispositions and skills. The process of creating order or negentropy within the activity, I suspect, promotes secondary processes of change within individuals (personal negentropy), change that facilitates this type of endeavor in the future. For me, the phenomenological profile that we discovered for these activities inspires further theorizing. The unique combination of psychological states, intrinsic motivation with concentration, suggests that adolescents are awake, alive, and open to developmental experiences in a way that is less common in other parts of their daily lives. Research suggests that positive states are associated with more global and integrative thinking (Isen, 1987; Isen & Means, 1983) and that they can be "organizers of development" (Collins & Gunnar, 1990; Hauser & Smith, 1991). I believe that this unique combination of agentic states may make these activities a fertile context for adolescents to develop and teach themselves a wide range of positive competencies, in addition to initiative. Such unbridled enthusiasm, however, has a long history in the discussion of youth activities and has often strained credibility. Proponents have frequently made uncritical claims that youth activities build character, redirect aggressive impulses, and promote initiative, without subjecting these claims to the test of falsifiability. We must ask, then, where is the beef? What is the evidence that participation in these activities is related to measurable developmental change? Outcome Research Existent evaluation research on structured youth activities has typically dealt with the question of outcomes in general terms. It has examined outcomes from activity participation for broad, generic adjustment variables, without specifically focusing on initiative, and often without any theoretical base. The history of these studies provides a textbook example on the difficulties of conducting truly critical outcome research. A substantial fund of cross-sectional, correlational research at first blush would seem to substantiate the claims that youth activities are related to positive developmental change. Participation in school extracurricular activities and community youth organizations has been found to be correlated with higher self-esteem, feelings of control over one's life, lower rates of delinquency, and higher educational aspirations and achievement (Holland & Andre, 1987; Larson, 1994). The problem with these correlational relationships, however, is that research also suggests that youths' participation in these activities is selective. Participation is greater among higher socioeconomic status (SES) and higher ability-tracked students, who have more parental support (Butcher, 1985; Carnegie, 1992; Holland & Andre, 1987; McNeal, 1995; Winnie & Walsh, 1980). These are factors that predict positive outcomes on their own, so they represent a confound in the interpretation of correlational findings. Once these factors are controlled, the relationships between participation and positive outcomes are reduced in strength and in some cases disappear (Agnew & Petersen, 1989; Holland & Andre, 1987; Schafer, 1969). The claim that structured youth activities promote positive developmental outcomes is more adequately tested by longitudinal studies. These, however, are few and many of them suffer the same possibility of confounding selfselection variables as the cross-sectional research. A number of studies analyzing data over long time periods suggest impressive long-term effects. They have found associations between high school and adult participation in political organizations (DeMartini, 1983), the arts (Bloom, 1985), and sports (Howell & McKenzie, 1987) but do not adequately control for the possibility that prior, unmeasured third variables were driving these relationships. Studies that control for some of the variables that affect high school participation, such as SES, grade point average (GPA), and academic ability, still find effects, though modest in size. Hanks and Eckland (1978) found that youth who participated in extracurricular activities in high school were more likely to be involved in voluntary associations at age 30, even with controls for initial SES and academic aptitude. Glancy, Willits, and Farrell (1986) found participation in extracurricular activities to be associated with occupational attainment 24 years later, with controls for parents' SES and high-school GPA. The most rigorous test of the thesis is provided by shorter term longitudinal studies in which dependent variables are measured on multiple occasions. This design allows investigators to assess whether participation in youth activities is related to within-person change for these dependent variables. Using this approach with a sample of 1,259 middle-class youth, Eccles and Barber (1999) found that participation in structured youth activities in 10th grade predicted positive changes in GPA between 10th and January 2000 • American Psychologist 175

12th grade. They also found that participation in team sports was related to a comparative increase in use of alcohol. Analyzing longitudinal data from a sample of 10,000 youths in the High School and Beyond Study, Marsh (1992) found significant relationships between participation in extracurricular and community activities and positive changes in self-concept, schoolwork, and educational and occupational aspirations from 10th to 12th grade. Marsh noted that the effect sizes were small, under one percent. But this may be because the impact of effective programs or activities is diluted by the lack of impact among weaker ones. Effects can, in fact, be much larger for specific structured youth activities, as is demonstrated by research evaluating adventure programs, such as Outward Bound. Adventure programs are not the prototypic structured youth activity; they involve experiences of intense mental, physical, and interpersonal challenge in a wilderness setting, typically for a period of two to four weeks. They are, however, structured and voluntary. What is more, they easily lend themselves to rigorous pre-post evaluation. Hattie, Marsh, Neill, and Richards (1997) conducted a meta-analysis of evaluation data from 151 samples of participants, approximately one half of whom were schoolaged adolescents. Aggregating findings for 40 different types of outcome variables, they found a mean effect size of .34 across all samples and .26 for the adolescent samples. In a similar, although less comprehensive meta-analysis, Cason and Gillis (1994) found a mean effect size of .31 for adolescents. The strongest effect sizes in Hattie and associates' meta-analysis were for variables dealing with self-control, such as independence (.47), self-efficacy (.31), assertiveness (.42), internal locus of control (.30), and decision making (.47)--variables that relate to my construct of initiative. The most striking finding of their metaanalysis was that, unlike in most program evaluations, effect sizes increased rather than diminished in the 25 months following participation in the program. This suggests that participants may have acquired some new quality, such as initiative, that is generative of additional, postprogram positive growth. This research on adventure programs is clearly the most compelling body of evidence that structured voluntary activities can have powerful, sustainable, positive effects on development, including what looks like development of initiative. But the differences in effect sizes between this and other youth activities also highlights how little we really know about what actually accounts for these changes. Several authors have lamented the absence of theory in this research and the lack of attention to process (Brown, 1988; Holland & Andre, 1987; Oden, 1995). Most of this outcome research does not allow us to conceptualize or discriminate what processes or experiences create positive development in some activities but not in others. The one set of processes that is discussed in some of this research, but not rigorously tested, is the sociological phenomenon of social integration into a group (Eccles & Barber, 1999; Youniss, Yates, & Su, 1997). Classic sociological theory recognizes that joining a group leads to processes of secondary socialization, which include assimilation of the group's norms and internalization of an identity associated with group membership (Berger & Luckmann, 1966). In the case of youth activities, not only does a teen join the team, club, or activity group, but frequently other participants become part of the teen's peer friendship network (Brown, 1990), thus redoubling the opportunity and impetus for him or her to be socialized into group norms. Eccles and Barber suggested that the sequence is typically reflexive, that the choice to enter an activity may both grow out of and reinforce an adolescent's norms and emerging identity. Ethnographic studies provide in-depth descriptions of this socialization into group norms (Eder & Parker, 1987; Fine, 1983, 1987). The most extensive and most psychological discussion of these processes of social integration are provided by Youniss, Yates, and their colleagues, who have focused on how participation in service activities, an important subcategory of youth activities, is related to adolescents' development of civic participation. They argued that service activities provide a context for youth to observe and practice basic roles and processes of civic engagement (Youniss, McLellan, & Yates, 1997). They also proposed that the formation of relationships with group members and adult leaders furnishes adolescents with valuable social capital (Youniss, Yates, & Su, 1997). Furthermore, they suggested that experiences in service activities can provide provocative reflective material at a critical juncture in identity development that adolescents incorporate into their identity work (Youniss, McLellan, Su, & Yates, 1999; Youniss & Yates, 1997). These processes of social integration are useful for making sense of outcome findings regarding normative behavior. Reduced delinquency, increased self-esteem, greater career aspirations, and even athletes' increased alcohol use may reflect socialization into group mores and identity, and the social capital acquired in an activity may facilitate continued participation and advancement in that activity after high school. As a psychologist, however, I find these processes less useful for explaining what seem like organismic developmental changes, such as the acquisition of initiative. With the exception of Youniss and Yates's (1997) discussion of identity development, these accounts do not seem very useful for explaining changes that increase after group membership ends, such as the rising effect sizes that follow participation in adventure programs. Recent research by Shirley Brice Heath (1999) provides a window on processes that are more internal, organismic, and better suited to explaining the development of initiative. A Language of Agency As a linguist, Heath has been interested in the oral communications of adolescents while they participate in structured voluntary activities. The speech samples she obtained provide a direct view of changes in adolescents' thought processes that reflect learning of initiative. Heath's research, conducted in collaboration with Milbrey McLaughfin and others, deals with youth participating in organiza176 January 2000 • American Psychologist

tions that youth themselves have identified as being particularly attractive and effective (Heath, 1993; Heath & McLaughlin, 1993; McLaughlin, Irby, & Langman, 1994). Their sample of organizations included art and drama groups, sports teams, Boys and Girls Clubs, YMCA gang intervention programs, and other community organizations. All were in low-income neighborhoods, serving multiethnic groups of youth in urban, small-city, and rural settings. The researchers observed activities, interviewed participants, and recorded their language use. Before discussing developmental changes in the youths' language, it is essential to provide a brief description of the psychological environments these organizations provided. These environments appeared to be structured to facilitate the three elements of initiative. First, these researchers found that all of these effective organizations were youth based: Although the original impetus for the groups came from adults, the motivation, direction, and goals of the groups' activities came from the participants. Adult leaders skillfully avoided assuming responsibility for the direction of the group, insisting that those decisions be made by participants (McLaughlin et al., 1994). Agentry was placed with the youth. Thus, rather than working toward goals set for them by adults, the participants held responsibilities for setting goals and identifying what problems needed to be solved. They held responsibility for raising money, writing grants, handling budgets, setting rules, and deciding schedules. These organizations depended upon the participants being intrinsically motivated, otherwise they quite literally went under (Heath, 1997). A second feature of these effective organizations was that all of them engaged youth in an environment of realworld constraints, and the leaders did not blanch from articulating these constraints. The coach of one Little League team that Heath studied repeatedly restated the rules of the game, including the constitutive rules of baseball and informal rules of strategy and good sportsmanship. He also continually asked players to recite these rules to encourage their internalization (Heath, 1994). In all of the organizations, the groups' work eventually led to some form of what Heath (1997) called "authentic evaluation," assessment of the group's product by an outside evaluator, criteria, or test. In other words, to the extent that participants devoted attention to the activity, they were required to engage with challenge and complexity. Third, all of the organizations studied involved an arc of activity over a period of time. In some cases it was a season, in others the period of time required to develop a production or perlbrmance. As a result, all involved stages of planning, practice, or rehearsal, followed by production, performance, or achievement of a goal (Heath, 1994; Heath & Langman, 1994). This arc of activity frequently involved setbacks, obstacles, and emerging challenges, such as losing games, funding shortages, toilets overflowing in the organization's building, or the challenge of how to get 11 band members into a van when the insurance only covered 9 people (Heath, 1997). Therefore, youths were required to monitor and regulate the cumulative course of their actions. These organizations, then, provided an environment of possibilities for planful action, for initiative. They provided a context that demanded self-directed constructive attention over time. What emerged within these environments was a language of agency. When adolescents first joined these organizations, they exhibited a type of language fitted to the bored youth that I described at the beginning of this article. They changed topics of conversation frequently, with few instances of sustained focus on a single topic. Their statements included almost no conjectures about future events and reflected a passive and selfdefensive orientation that viewed acts of initiative as inevitably doomed to failure. However, Heath (1997, 1999) reported marked changes in the language of young people in these organizations within their first three to four weeks of participation. Four types of language use increased that reflect skills to think about the world as a field of action. To begin with, Heath found a dramatic increase in the use of conditionals, statements taking the form "If A, B & C, then X, Y & Z." These statements often laid out hypothetical scenarios for discussion and analysis. "Let's imagine that .... then what?" Scenarios typically situated the individual or group as actors. They dealt with likely outcomes that might ensue from different courses of action. "If we spend our budget on set design, how much money will we have left for costumes?" Or they dealt with types of actions that might be required should certain situations arise. Along with more frequent conditionals, new participants increased their use of modals, such as "should," "could," and "would." "Could we do so and so? Would it work out?" Heath observed a dramatic increase in probabilistic thinking. Their language reflected a weighing of hypothetical possible actions against realistic likelihoods that those actions would have desired versus undesired consequences. They were developing the language skills of contingency thinking. Next, new participants increased their use of strategies for getting clarification from others. In discussion with each other, or with outside people with whom they were engaged, they more often sought to sharpen their understanding of conditionals: "You mean if I do X, then... ?" This reflects increased value placed on precise knowledge of consequences. For example, "If we rent the band shell, will the city give us access to electric jacks and bathrooms?" Contingency thinking requires accurate information about likely outcomes of actions. Finally, Heath found that new participants expanded their use of varied genres and voices in their speech. They more frequently shifted registers in their statements, including adapting the perspective and language of board members, business leaders, reporters, and other adult worlds with which they interacted. Depending on the situation, they might use legalese, a care-giving register, or problem-solving language. In short, they became more able to play a variety of roles and take multiple perspectives (Heath, 1997, 1999). Heath (1993) reported that, when adapting the role of someone else, even shy youth showed January 2000 ° American Psychologist 177

an assertive confidence not evident when speaking as themselves. What unites all four of these changes is the representation of thought and action in a world of contingencies and possibilities. These teens had learned to think of the world as similar to a chess board in play. They learned to perceive the array of strategic options and to estimate probable consequences associated with these options. In other terms, they had developed what I would call an operating language for initiative, with tools for anticipating, planning, adapting to others, monitoring progress, and adjusting behavior over time to achieve a goal. For most of the groups Heath studied, this language was learned in group contexts, reflecting the injunction from Rogoff et al. (1995) that the development of agency in these contexts often involves collective participation. What Heath's work does, then, is begin to open the black box to internal transformations within participants, providing a window on what they are actually learning. It begins to make the processes of developmental change more tangible, including some of the processes that correspond to the development of initiative. These changes can be seen partly as secondary socialization: Leaders and older members modeled this operating language and new members, eager to be part of the group, internalized it (Heath, 1991, 1999; Heath & Langman, 1994). But these changes also involve organismic, developmental processes. Participants did not merely acquire a language, they learned to adapt and use it generatively. Although the sociological account elucidates processes of social integration, this linguistic-psychological account gives us a handle on processes of personal integration. New participants appeared to undergo a paradigm shift in their way of thinking, reflecting qualitative developmental change. They appeared to have developed skills for implementing plans, for directing and regulating their activities over time. They ingested a new mode of action. Along with it, they reported feeling more self-efficacious, more confident in their ability to affect the world (Heath, 1997). Such a paradigm shift could provide an explanation of why youth in adventure programs show sustained and increased effects after the program is over; they acquire an operating language that is generative. It is too soon to be certain how much this language change corresponds to actual behavioral change. As of yet, there is not evidence regarding its association with acts of initiative or anything else. Development of other constructs from the emerging social psychological literature on agency, such as implementation intentions and emotional self-regulation (Gollwitzer, 1999; Mischel, Cantor, & Feldman, 1996), might also be fruitfully tested in this context. Nonetheless, Heath's work provides a very promising start. Conclusion: Youth Activities as Developmental Contexts The thesis of this article has been that structured voluntary youth activities provide a fertile context for positive development, particularly the development of initiative. First, I showed that during youth activities, adolescents experience a unique combination of intrinsic motivation and concentration that is rarely present during their daily experiences in schoolwork and unstructured leisure. These two components of experience, I proposed, represent two critical elements of initiative, and when they occur in activities involving a temporal arc of action toward a goal, as is the case with many youth activities, all three elements for the experience and learning of initiative are in play. Second, I reviewed a range of outcome research that begins to confirm that such activities are indeed associated with positive outcomes, such as diminished delinquency, greater achievement, and increased self-control and self-efficacy. Some of these positive outcomes may be attributable to important sociological processes, such as secondary socialization into a group, but these processes were not adequate for explaining changes that appeared to be more internal and organismic. Thus, last, I presented Heath and colleague's work demonstrating that activity participation, at least in some cases, is related to acquisition of an operating language of agency. This gives us a window on organismic processes that might lie behind the positive outcomes associated with participation in structured youth activities, particularly the development of initiative. It suggests processes of personal integration that may work in tandem with the sociological processes of social integration. The conditions that make structured youth activities a fertile context for the development of initiative, I believe, also make them a rich context for the development of an array of other positive qualities, from altruism to identity. Children and adolescents come alive in these activities, they become active agents in ways that rarely happen in other parts of their lives. This makes youth activities an invaluable laboratory for the study of processes of positive development, one that deserves much more scientific attention. Of course, positive development occurs across contexts--in school, with families, and with peers--but I hypothesize that this is a context in which there is often a higher density of growth experiences. To advance knowledge of positive development, one useful avenue for developmental psychology would be to give youth activities equivalent status to school, family, and peers as a focal context of development. This might include comparable research funding and a separate chapter in developmental textbooks. True, this context accounts for much less of youths' daily time, but knowledge of developmental processes in this domain has the potential to have equal or greater impact on practice. It is essential, of course, that research on this context be done in collaboration with youth development professionals, for there to be the type of interaction between science and practice that has been called for in applied developmental science (Fisher & Lerner, 1994). I should also call attention to fruitful visions developed by others for such a field of research and practice (American Youth Policy Forum, 1997; Hamburg, 1997; Roth et al., 1998). An alternative avenue would be to envision positive youth development as a parallel (and closely aligned) field to developmental psychopathology, one that deals with positive development regardless of context. This might also 178 January 2000 • American Psychologist

be envisioned as a National Institute of Mental Health study section and a separate chapter in developmental textbooks. It would seek to integrate research on resiliency, initiative, emotional regulation, self-efficacy, identity, prosocial behavior, and moral development, among other topics. Although I do not want to diminish this later alternative (indeed, I would like to see both taken up), I spend the remainder of this conclusion drawing out the first proposal, because I think its focus on a specific context gives it more potential as a cohesive project. Here are some of the issues I see as foundational. Contexts A key to conceptualizing structured youth activities as developmental contexts is identifying the processes that occur in them, from learning an operating language to developing emotional skills to overcome disappointments. A major challenge to research and theory, however, is dealing with the heterogeneous array of extracurricular, community, and self-directed activities that can be included as youth activities, each harboring distinct opportunities and processes. From aerobics to service activities to creating a web site, the "treatment" is extremely varied. Some activities are collective and demand coordination with others, whereas others are solitary. Activities differ in the degree to which the goals and criteria for desirable performance are prescribed (gymnastics, school band) versus those in which participants have much freedom to create their own standards (plastic arts). Adolescents' activities on computer systems are particularly diverse in form, with some being structured and goal oriented and others requiring little cumulative effort over time. How do we categorize this array? A useful starting point for conceptualizing and categorizing youth activities would be descriptive research that simply enumerates what types of process experiences participants typically have across different types of activities. How often do youth in swimming versus drama clubs versus service organizations have the experience of setting their own goals, developing plans, or empathizing with people from a dissimilar background to theirs? In gathering such enumeration, it would be useful to obtain parallel data for activities such as schoolwork, work at a job, and unstructured leisure activities, in order to test whether rates of these process experiences are indeed higher during youth activities. Developmental and Individual Differences The occurrence of developmental processes in a given setting, of course, is not just a function of the context, but is a joint function of the context and the individual. What would be beneficial is theory and research that helps identify individuals' preparedness to engage in specific developmental processes. How might age, personality, culture, gender, and SES, among other factors, shape initial dispositions and how youths experience and participate in an activity? The starting point for much developmental research has always been identifying ages at which specific skills are and can be mastered. For example, at what age are children or adolescents able to acquire the various elements of an operating language for initiative, such as the use of modals? Rogoff et al. (1995) observed that with age and experience, Girl Scouts had diminished needs for adult scaffolding in structuring their activities. Indeed, if one looks at the current array of structured activities available to youth, one sees that there is already a loose progression from activities in childhood, such as Brownies and Cub Scouts, that are highly structured by adults, to activities in high school, such as publishing a school newspaper, in which youths take much more responsibility for directing their action. More specific data on the ages at which youths are ready to master specific skills would be beneficial to the design of activities and, eventually, to knowledge that helps place individual youths in activities suited to their zone of proximal development. Other individual factors besides age need to be considered as well. For example, how do cultural differences in the construction of agency (Markus, Kitayama, & Heiman, 1996) affect youth's participation and learning? Leading~Coaching Knowledge of the interplay between contexts and persons leads to the applied question of how leaders of structured voluntary activities can best facilitate developmental processes. Leaders face a fundamental problematic of allowing participants' actions to be self-directed, voluntary, and intrinsically motivated, yet also structured and challenging enough that participants are stretched into new domains of complexity. Leaders of Heath and colleagues' successful organizations tenaciously insisted that youths hold responsibility for major decisions of the organization, even when those decisions threatened the existence of the organization. But at the same time, these leaders played a role in defining the situation and modeling the language of agency. They laid out problems in the form of "what if' and "if then" contingencies. They prompted participants to think through alternative scenarios and hypothetical situations, posing open-ended dilemmas that required reflection, analysis, and drawing on past experience (Heath, 1991; Heath & Langman, 1994; McLaughlin et al., 1994). Research in coaching sports is the furthest along in providing empirically tested paradigms for addressing this fundamental problematic. Roberts and colleagues have found that many youth coaches create a performance-oriented motivational climate that is not conducive to development because it focuses athlete's attention on winning, public recognition, and performance relative to others. Athletes adapting this performance-focused orientation tend to think of talent as a native endowment and practice less, and their motivation flags when feedback suggests that they are less endowed with talent than others (Roberts & Treasure, 1992; Roberts, Treasure, & Kavussanu, 1997). In contrast, another set of coaches create a mastery-oriented climate that focuses athletes' attention on their development of skills relative to individualized standards. Athletes adapting this mastery orientation are more likely to see talent as something that results from practice, are more likely to January 2000 • American Psychologist 179

persist in the face of difficulty, and show more skill development over the course of a season. These findings have had a direct impact on practice, leading to the development of techniques for coaches to work with athletes in setting goals for personal skill development that are independent of winning and losing (Roberts & Treasure, 1992; Roberts et al., 1997). Coaches learn to support self-direction, while encouraging structures suited to mastery of new skills. A next step is to evaluate how well this and other knowledge of coaching can be applied to leadership in nonsport youth activities. In addition, we might ask, how much existing knowledge about good teaching and good parenting can be applied? For example, are good leaders like authoritative parents, like child-centered teachers? Outcomes Outcome research is often a necessary evil that is done before anyone knows what to look for, and that has been the case in this domain as well. Evaluative data have been needed to justify funding for youth activities, even though we are not yet sure what the independent and dependent variables for this evaluative research should be. From a scientific perspective, the first priority needs to be descriptive and process research, done in collaboration with youth professionals, that helps to conceptualize what the developmental phenomena are. What is especially needed is longitudinal action research and qualitative research that follows the same individuals over time in order to develop models of change processes. A useful strategy for some types of activities would be to identify individuals and groups whose participation in an activity showed exemplary objective progress, then look backwards to these longitudinal data to see how their processes differed from those exhibited by individuals and groups who spun their wheels and showed less progress. When the field is ready for quantitative outcome studies, they need to use a higher level of critical rigor than has often been the norm. This calls for research that evaluates the occurrence of processes as a function of activity, participants' developmental stages, and leadership variables, and how these processes are related to progressive change over time. Researchers must study and control for selfselection characteristics. Evaluations need to assess possible negative effects of participation in youth activities as well as positive ones. For example, research on participation in competitive sports suggests that they are associated with increased competition anxiety (Smoll & Smith, 1996) and acquisition of more self-centered moral reasoning (Bredemeier & Shields, 1996). Might these negative outcomes also occur in other demanding and competitive activities, such as in music competition? The most strenuous evaluation research would test whether participation in an activity is related to effects outside the activity itself. I have argued that youth activities are a context for development of qualities and skills, like initiative, that have general applicability across domains of life. In a similar vein, Youniss, Yates, and Su (1997) hypothesized that participation in youth activities creates personal confidence that increases the participants' likelihood of engaging in public service in other contexts. Research evaluating these types of generalized, cross-context effects will be the most difficult to conduct, but will provide the most persuasive evidence. Practice The large applied discipline of psychotherapy currently exists to treat psychological problems. Imagine, if you will, a field of psychological practitioners whose knowledge, skills, and status are comparable with those of clinical psychologists, who have advanced training in diagnostics, mentoring, and program design, and who draw upon a well-developed body of research to provide guidance and counseling on positive human development. Such a field does not need to start de novo, as there are currently many youth development professionals. But it does need to evolve to incorporate a cumulative body of research and theory. One role of these practitioners would be to help place children, adolescents, and perhaps adults too in structured voluntary contexts that are suited to individuals' personality, developmental stage, and ability level. Another would be to provide process mentoring, to help keep people "in the envelope" of intrinsically motivated challenge and learning. Yet another role would be to design and run programs that maximize individual and group growth. Rather than leaving positive development in the hands of nonprofessionals, self-help gurus, and for-profit, ClubMed-type chains, we need a science and art, comparable with psychotherapy, regarding how to help people realize their full capacities across ages. Research on coaching provides an example of the impressive payoffs that can result from a research-based, applied discipline of positive development. In observational studies, Smith and Smoll (1990) found favorable psychological outcomes to be greater for boys in Little League Baseball whose coaches engaged in high levels of positive reinforcement for both desirable performance and effort, who responded to mistakes with encouragement and technical instructions, and who emphasized the importance of fun and personal improvement over winning (Curtis, Smith, & Smoll, 1979; Smith & Smoll, 1990). On the basis of these and other findings, they then designed a three-hour training workshop for new coaches. Three hours is extremely short compared with most interventions; nonetheless, they found that athletes playing for the trained coaches reported substantially and significantly more enjoyment than did control participants, showed increases in selfesteem and decreases in performance anxiety over the course of the season, and were more likely to return the next season, with the biggest effects being for athletes who were low in self-esteem (Smith & Smoll, 1997; Smoll, Smith, Barnett, & Everett, 1993). If a three-hour intervention can have such long-term impact, imagine what might be accomplished with a body of research comparable in size and sophistication with that for developmental psychopathology. As someone with a special interest in adolescence, my vision for the 21 st century is a society in which youth have a rich range of expertly staffed structured activities to 180 January 2000 * American Psychologist

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