Age and Creative Productivity

Synonyms

Career trajectories in creative achievement

Introduction

Typically, creators exert impact through products. Inventors devise inventions, scientists publish articles in technical journals, poets write poems, composers create music, architects design buildings, and so forth. Moreover, for most high-impact creators, such productive activity is not a one-shot affair. Although some creators may produce a single notable work during their entire life span, many creative persons generate multiple contributions across the course of a very long career (Simonton 1997). This latter behavior raises big questions of how creative output changes with age (Lehman 1953; Lindauer 2003; Simonton 1988). At what age does productivity normally begin? At what age does the output rate usually attain a peak? And at what age does productivity commonly end? What factors might affect the answers to these questions? These questions have more than scientific interest, for they have potential practical...