New study finds that late bloomers are more successful than child prodigies | Fortune

"You may have a leg up on the child prodigies who made you feel inadequate as a school kid. Despite outliers like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, a new analysis based on 19 studies involving 34,000 high achievers across multiple disciplines - including Nobel laureates, top chess players, Olympic champions, and elite musicians - found that individuals who achieved peak performance early in life were not always the same people to reach high success in adulthood."

"Across the highest adult performance levels, peak performance is negatively correlated with early performance, the report, which was published in the journal Science, said. The researchers, led by Arne Güllich of RPTU Kaiserlautern-Landau in Germany, noted that prodigies often specialized in a single discipline, pigeonholing themselves in a particular field early in life. By contrast, late bloomers found success across multiple fields. The study provides key insights into long-debated scientific inquiries into the origins of elite knowledge."

"World top-10 youth chess players and later world top-10 adult chess players are nearly 90% different individuals across time, the researchers wrote, suggesting that those who bloom early in life don't tend to reach the height of their success at the same time late bloomers hit their stride. It also means that child prodigies and late bloomers develop differently and grow up to be fundamentally different people."

Analysis of 19 studies involving 34,000 high achievers across multiple disciplines found that peak performance early in life was negatively correlated with highest adult performance. Prodigies often specialized early in a single discipline, producing short-term success but limiting longer-term achievement. Late bloomers tended to succeed across multiple fields and were more likely to reach top adult performance levels. For example, world top-10 youth chess players and later top-10 adult chess players were nearly 90% different individuals. Talented children still generally earn more and achieve greater career success than average persons. Early specialization provides short-term gains while broader development supports longer-term success; methodological limitations affect interpretation.

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