by Andrew Lynn
The Making of Scientists
It is obvious that this phenomenon could provide answers to the question: what goes into the making of eminent individuals across the various fields of human achievement?
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Let’s start with an eminent individual from the scientific field – Sir Hans Krebs. Krebs was a German-born British physician and biochemist who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1953 for his discovery of the citric acid cycle (now often eponymously known as the ‘Krebs cycle’). The citric acid cycle forms the very basis for life: it describes a series of chemical reactions used by all aerobic organisms to generate energy from food. At the outset of his career Krebs studied medicine and chemistry in Gottingen, Hamburg, and Berlin, before working in roles as a research assistant and in hospital. When the National Socialist Party came to power in Germany, Krebs was removed from his position and went to England, where he occupied a series of academic roles in Cambridge and elsewhere.
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After being awarded the Nobel Prize, Krebs had – perhaps unsurprisingly – asked himself how it had happened.4 Here’s how he put it. On the day he found himself in Stockholm, he said, he realized that he owed his good fortune to the fact that at the critical stage of his academic career – between the ages of 25 and 29 – he was associated with Otto Warburg in Berlin. It was Otto Warburg who had set an example of the methods and quality of first-rate research, and without that example Krebs would never have reached the standards required by the Nobel Committees.
Otto Warburg (1883-1970) was himself a Nobel laureate who had received the prize in 1931 for his work on the enzyme in the reactions between oxygen and foodstuffs in cellular respiration. Interestingly, Warburg had asked himself the same question as Krebs had asked: what was the turning point on his road towards achievement? His answer is recorded in an autobiographical note. The most important event in the professional development of a young scientist, said Warburg, is ‘personal contact with the great scientists of his time’. In Warburg’s case, the turning point came when he was accepted in 1903 by the chemist Emil Fischer as a co-worker in protein chemistry. For three years Warburg met Fischer almost daily to work under his guidance.
So here we have the beginning of a lineage running back from Krebs directly to Warburg, and from Warburg directly to Fischer.
Emil Fischer (1852-1919), Warburg’s mentor, has been called ‘one of the most outstanding chemists of his time’. He was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1902 for work on the chemical structure of sugars. Fischer was a pupil and associate of Adolf von Baeyer, who received the Nobel Prize for discoveries in the field of chemistry of dyestuffs. Von Baeyer (1835-1917) was a pupil of Kekulé (who was renowned for his work on the structure of organic compounds, especially the ring structure of benzene), and Kekulé (1829-1896) was a pupil of Liebig, who is considered the founder of organic chemistry. As the first Nobel Prize was only awarded in 1901, neither Kekulé nor Liebig (1803-1873) could possibly have attained one; had the Nobel existed in their time, ‘they would certainly have been laureates’.5
And it doesn’t even stop there. Liebig was a pupil of the French chemist Gay-Lussac, who had discovered some of the fundamental laws of the behaviour of gases. Gay-Lussac (1778-1850) had himself developed from the French school of chemists associated in particular with Berthollet. Berthollet (1748-1822) was a pioneer of combustion and the role of oxygen in that process. Bethollet was himself taught by Lavoisier. Lavoisier (1743-1794) named the elements carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen.
Arranged schematically, the scientific lineage stretching from Lavoisier and Berthollet in the eighteenth century to Krebs in the twentieth century looks like this:
Berthollet 1748-1822
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Gay-Lussac 1778-1850
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Liebig 1803-1873
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Kekulé 1829-1896
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von Baeyer 1835-1917
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Fischer 1852-1919
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Warburg 1883-1970
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Krebs 1900-1981
What we have now is a direct, unbroken chain showing the lineage of great scientists from as far back as the eighteenth century – from Berthollet to Gay-Lussac, then to Liebig, to Kekulé, to von Baeyer, to Fischer, to Warburg and finally through to Krebs himself. In addition to the unbroken nature of the chain, what also stands out is the reiteration of the basic theme of indebtedness to a mentor. Even five scientific ‘generations’ back in the nineteenth century, Liebig had this to say about his mentor: ‘The course of my whole life was determined by the fact that Gay-Lussac accepted me in his laboratory as a collaborator and pupil.’ As Krebs himself put it: ‘In every case the association between teacher and pupil was close and prolonged, extending to the mature stage of the pupil, to what we would now call postgraduate and doctorate levels. It was not merely a matter of attending a course of lectures but of researching together over a period of years.’6
Relax the criteria slightly by allowing for horizontal links among multiple pupils, and the scientific lineage expands into a full-blown family tree. Here’s the family tree stemming from just one of the progenitors, von Baeyer:
There are seventeen names, all associated with major scientific discoveries.
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Krebs in his account explains what he individually learned from his own mentor, Otto Warburg. He found in Warburg, he says, an example of asking the right kind of question, of forging new tools for tackling problems, of being ruthless in self-criticism, of being painstaking in verifying facts, of expressing results and ideas clearly and concisely, and of focusing life on true values. Warburg himself had noted of his own mentor, Fischer, that he learned that the scientist had to have the courage to attack the ‘great unsolved problems of his time’. Others make similar remarks.
What is evident is that the true basis of the inheritance that is passed down from generation to generation is not knowledge as much as an approach or set of values. Krebs – the ultimate beneficiary of this long line of scientific achievement – was very clear about this. Both knowledge and technical skills, he said, could be learned from many teachers. What was crucial was to learn the attitudes of the distinguished teacher: the use of skills, how to assess their potentialities and limitations, and how to rejuvenate and supplement them. Above all was the attitude of humility – since it was from this that came the self-critical mind and the continuous effort to learn and improve.7
Psychic Environments
Humans are not, in this analysis, isolated atomistic units. We are porous and vulnerable to influence both for better and for worse. This includes but isn’t necessarily limited to particular individuals. Above and beyond the people with whom we share our lives is what could loosely be called the psychic or mental environment: the sum total of the images, words, and sensations as experienced by an individual human being.
Psychic environments take on a particular importance as a result of what is known as ‘ideomotor action’. Ideomotor action occurs when the mere thinking (having a mental ‘idea’) about a behaviour increases the tendency to engage in that behaviour: we’re more likely to dance when we think about dancing, for example, and we’re also more likely to yawn when we think about yawning. If that’s the case, then there’s every reason to think that the process can be set in motion not only by thoughts, but also by perceptions. An idea can be introduced from the outside, which then (like any idea) is liable to increase the likelihood of its corresponding action.
What the research shows is that human behaviours can be activated by the mere presence of environmental features. In one experiment, participants were exposed by way of a scrambled sentence test to a series of words priming the concept ‘rude’: ‘aggressively’, ‘bold’, ‘rude’, ‘bother’, ‘disturb’, ‘intrude’, ‘annoyingly’, ‘interrupt’, ‘audaciously’, ‘brazen’, ‘impolitely’, ‘infringe’, ‘obnoxious’, ‘aggravating’, and ‘bluntly’. The aim o
f the experiment was to find out how rude they had become, merely through unconscious exposure to words, and this was done by measuring how long it would take for them to interrupt a conversation being held between the experimenter and someone else. Those primed in the rude condition interrupted in an average of 326 seconds (or around 5½ minutes) – compared with 9 to 10 minutes on average for those primed in a non-rude condition. In a 10-minute period, those in the rude condition interrupted more than 60 percent of the time, compared with interrupting less than 20 percent of the time for those in the polite prime.
It’s not only words that can have this effect. In a similar experiment, participants were primed to an ‘elderly’ stereotype triggered by concepts such as ‘old’, ‘lonely’, ‘forgetful’, ‘retired’, ‘wrinkle’, ‘bingo’, and ‘Florida’. After the experiment, those primed using this elderly stereotype actually walked more slowly down a corridor. In another experiment, merely exposing participants to black and white photographs of African Americans for between thirteen and twenty-seven milliseconds increased their hostility level. Those who were low in racist attitudes towards African Americans were just as likely to respond in this way as those high in racist attitudes.8
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There are several points to make about this.
First, what is happening is not the same thing as was once said to happen in the old ‘subliminal’ advertising. With subliminal advertising, the idea was to flash up frames of Pepsi bottles or popcorn in the middle of a movie to make audiences go and buy soft drinks or popcorn. What is occurring in the modern studies is far more subtle. The primed behaviours of the subjects were already within the range of feasible responses to the situations in which they found themselves; they were already in the ‘behavioural repetoire’. Subjects were not being primed to do anything out of the ordinary or anything that they were not already doing. They were, to adapt the modern phrase, being ‘nudged’ to carry on doing what they were doing but do it differently.
The second thing is that people don’t have a clue that it’s happening. Participants were debriefed and almost without exception showed no awareness of the effect being tested. In the final experiment, only two participants could see a face, and even they couldn’t identify whether it was African American or Caucasian. That has implications for how we deal with the phenomenon when it does occur; as the authors of the study say, we need to be aware of the automatic influence, or at least the possibility of it, before we can control it.
Third, the phenomenon can trigger self-fulfilling effects. When we see something happening in the world outside (aggression, say, or love), we have a tendency to respond to it, automatically, in kind. Of course, the same applies to others: they see us responding in a certain way and have a tendency to respond to that, also automatically, and also in kind. There is an ongoing feedback loop between ourselves and the environment around us, including its people. It’s potentially a kind of perpetual motion machine, and it highlights how people affect each other in ways of which they may not be fully conscious.
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This doesn’t always mean that the effects are always helpful. When well-known exemplars (as opposed to stereotypes) of a particular skill are presented, the effect is to inhibit the corresponding behaviour in the observer. When photographs of famous footballers are presented, foot motion is inhibited; when photographs of famous tennis-players are presented, it is hand motion that slows down.9 When primed by way of a stereotype (e.g., ‘professor’), performance in intelligence tests is enhanced. But when presented with ‘Albert Einstein’ as a specific well-known exemplar, performance in intelligence tests is impaired.10 It is thought that this occurs due to quick – and negative – automatic comparisons with the well-known figures.
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Imagine what this means. It means that there is almost nothing that we take in – words or images – that is not able, in some way, to affect the way we are going to behave. The effect may be subtle; it may be more like ‘nudging’ than pushing. The effect will almost always be invisible. But it’s there and it’s profound.
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Contagion is, in fact, not merely a matter of behaviour – it is also a matter of goals. Certain actions imply certain kinds of goals, and those goals (and not just the actions by which they are manifested) are themselves contagious. We tend to abstract the goals implied by the behaviour of others and imitate them. What is more, this process is also automatic.
For the sake of illustration, have a brief look at the following scenario (Scenario 1):
Bas is meeting a former college friend called Natasha while having a beer in his favourite pub. They are having a chat, and Bas tells her about his new job. The atmosphere in the pub is great, and a lot of people have been showing up. At the end of the evening, people start to dance. Bas looks at the dance floor from a distance, and thinks, ‘Isn’t this a nice place to be?’
It is likely that you have correctly identified that in this scenario Bas is an amiable person having a drink with his old friend Natasha and enjoying the ambience of the pub. Now – having read this scenario – imagine that you are asked to help out a female undergraduate by giving feedback on a computer skills task she had designed. You would probably help her out of kindness, but you might not invest a great deal of time and effort in assisting an unknown undergraduate with her studies.
Now have a look at this scenario (Scenario 2):
Bas is meeting a former college friend called Natasha while having a beer in his favourite pub. They are having a chat, and Bas tells her about his new job. The atmosphere in the pub is great, and a lot of people have been showing up. At the end of the evening, Bas walks Natasha home. When they arrive at her home, he asks her, ‘May I come in?’
In this scenario, Bas is doing more than just enjoying a quiet drink and the atmosphere of the bar; he is also opportunistically making the most of his prior acquaintance with Natasha. To put it simply, Bas is acting with clear sexual intent. Now imagine that female undergraduate has come to you asking for help with her assignment. Would you help her?
This is precisely the test that was carried out on forty-eight young Dutchmen by Henk Aarts and colleagues at the University of Utrecht. What they found was that the young men were far more likely to help out the (imaginary) undergraduate after reading Scenario 2 than they were after reading Scenario 1. Simply by reading the second short passage about a man walking a woman home and inviting himself in for a drink, the men had (as it were) been infected by his goal of seeking casual sex and were themselves more inclined to help out a woman. The participants were doing much more than imitating Bas’ behaviour (which would have been impossible in the circumstances) – they were beginning to imitate the goal that his behaviour implied. This is what is known as ‘goal contagion’, and it has been shown to work similarly for other goals, such as making money.11
The Making of Artists
It’s the contention of the chapter that creativity is a function not only of individuals but also of environments and the people who inhabit them. If that’s right, then the process ought to have left some discoverable mark on the past. There ought to be some relationship, in history, between real individual creators and the other creative geniuses that came before, alongside, and after them. There also ought to be some patterns discoverable among the great currents of creativity that have swept through history.
One way of looking into this is to take actual creative individuals who have obtained historical distinction and then identify correlations using biographical and historical data. We already have all the data we need in the many published reference works; all we need to do is to operationalize the data by joining the dots. So we can start, for example, by identifying artists in a standard biographical dictionary. Next, we can assess the relative eminence of the artists using page counts, picture counts, and existing rankings. Then we can test for correlations between eminence and social relationships: here, influential or inspirational predecessors, contemporaries,
and successors of various kinds. Finally, we can do the statistics to see what kind of connection there is between a great creator and his or her social world more broadly.12
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Great artists, it turns out, tend to be deeply embedded in a mesh of social relationships. This in itself is not necessarily very surprising in the light of what we have seen, except insofar as it tends to defeat the stereotype of the poet in a garret, poor and alone. Where it gets interesting is in the type of relationships that come out as being important.
First of all, it is of no real significance for an artist to have another family member who is also a famous artist. If anything, the effect is negative. So, for example, having an eminent parent is negatively related to an artist’s own personal eminence. Likewise, those with brothers or sisters who are eminent artists are less likely to be famous than those without. Artistic talent does not, it seems, run in families.
All other kinds of relationships have a positive impact: paragons (influencers), masters (teachers) in the preceding generation; rivals, collaborators, associates, friends, and co-pupils in the contemporaneous generation; apprentices and admirers in the succeeding generation.
