For centuries, individuals demonstrating exceptional expertise and skill in their field of study have fascinated psychologists. These individuals display unprecedented and unparalleled abilities that dwarf the accomplishments of even the closest competitors in their respective fields (Ericsson and Charness, 1994). At the heart of the scientific inquiries surrounding these “experts” is their pursuit of greatness: are they the product of hard work or of gifted hereditary ability? Our understanding of experts, and learning how to groom the next generation of experts, is a paradigm with wide reaching implications both for society at large and for the personal gain of individuals. The long held belief that experts are blessed with innate abilities
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Deliberate Practice (DP) is an effortful activity that is solely …show more content…
(1994) contends that possible genetic and environmental factors may impact the extent to which an individual is either motivated or able to deliberately practice, however, they dismissed all confounding variables as extraneous sources of error, and not as potential causes of an individual’s expertise. In direct rebuttal to Ericsson, researchers Hambrick, Oswald, Altmann, Meinz, Gobet, and Campitelli (2014) assert that an average individual, regardless of deliberate practice time, would be unable to develop expertise without a specific environment, biology or personality. Their study reanalyzed the results of previous studies involving chess and music experts that originally supported the deliberate practice hypothesis; their reanalysis used an attenuation formula, which accounts for Ericcson’s dismissed variables, and the in depth analyses revealed that deliberate practice was not as explicitly correlated with expertise as previously reported. The paper also cites cases of non-expert individuals that had practice times far exceeding 10,000 hours, as well as cases involving expert individuals who achieved their greatness with far less practice time then their peers. Hambrick additionally argues that other factors such as the expert’s starting age, personality factors, intelligence, working memory and genes are more likely to account for an individual’s
Deliberate Practice (DP) is an effortful activity that is solely …show more content…
(1994) contends that possible genetic and environmental factors may impact the extent to which an individual is either motivated or able to deliberately practice, however, they dismissed all confounding variables as extraneous sources of error, and not as potential causes of an individual’s expertise. In direct rebuttal to Ericsson, researchers Hambrick, Oswald, Altmann, Meinz, Gobet, and Campitelli (2014) assert that an average individual, regardless of deliberate practice time, would be unable to develop expertise without a specific environment, biology or personality. Their study reanalyzed the results of previous studies involving chess and music experts that originally supported the deliberate practice hypothesis; their reanalysis used an attenuation formula, which accounts for Ericcson’s dismissed variables, and the in depth analyses revealed that deliberate practice was not as explicitly correlated with expertise as previously reported. The paper also cites cases of non-expert individuals that had practice times far exceeding 10,000 hours, as well as cases involving expert individuals who achieved their greatness with far less practice time then their peers. Hambrick additionally argues that other factors such as the expert’s starting age, personality factors, intelligence, working memory and genes are more likely to account for an individual’s