Factors That Contribute to or Hinder Academic Productivity: Comparing two groups of most and least successful Olympians

Abstract

In the 1940s, Lewis Terman (1954a, 1954b) studied “life success” of 730 gifted men at the midpoint of their careers and found that success is associated with stability and absence of disturbing conflicts. In this article, we use retrospective data (N = 624) from the academic Olympians in 3 countries (USA, Germany, and Finland) to study factors that are responsible for actualizing the Olympian's talent. The results, analyzed in 3 age cohorts, support the findings of the original Terman study. In the youngest age cohort (16 – 22 years), we found that most of the females were in the A group. For the second (23 – 29 years) and third (30 – 54 years) age cohorts, the findings show that the Olympians in the A group have higher motivation than those in the C group. Results showed that a conducive home atmosphere promoted best Olympians' long-term academic productivity.