The researches about developmental features and influence factors of Chinese most creative geniuses’ creativity could contribute to reveal developmental principles of creative talents, which is also a historical puzzle waiting for researchers to figure out. Historiometry was applied in the present study and 92 Chinese most creative writers were selected. Research questions are: (1) What about relationships between psychopathology, developmental adversity and creative achievement of those creative geniuses; (2) Whether the“trade-off”theory which has first discovered in western Historiometric studies could also be testified in the samples from Chinese civilization of Tang and Song dynasties; (3) Whether or not there existed other factors which could affect the creative achievement of literary geniuses significantly.
Results demonstrated that: (1) The precocity, religion and migration were three important influential factors on creative achievements of most creative writers of Tang and Song. (2) Different kinds of relationships were found between creative achievement and psychological factors. Positive monotonic functions were testified for the relationships between precocity, religion and migration, whereas nomonotonic single-peaked functions (U-shaped curve) were confirmed for the relationships between psychopathology and developmental adversity. (3) In predicting the creative achievement, the psychopathology and developmental adversity was found not always confirm the “trade-off” theory, instead them showed more complex relationships including “trade-off” and covariant relations.
Keywords: psychopathology, developmental adversity, creative achievement, Historiometry

Xinfa Yi, Ph.D., is a Professor of Educational Psychology at the Center for Teachers’ Professional Development, as well as Key Laboratory of Modern Teaching Technology, Ministry of Education of China at the Shaanxi Normal University, Xi’an. Before that, he was at University of Connecticut, where he worked as a senior visiting scholar. Also he has completed his post-doctoral study at Tsinghua University. He received his Ph.D. from Freie University Berlin of Germany in 2008. Yi is known for his research on such areas as creativity development, creativity promotion, creativity and modeling, and creativity and culture. Dr. Yi has published more than 70 papers, chapters, and reviews and 6 books. Currently Dr. Yi is the executive president of International Coalition of Education Innovation and the director of Center of Teaching Psychology and Creativity, Key Laboratory of Modern Teaching Technology, Ministry of Education of China. His awards and honors include 2021 National Award of Teaching Innovation Contest, 2018 National Teaching Award of China, 2015 Excellent Research Award of the Teaching of Higher Education and 2013 Best Paper of Philosophy and Social Science from Shaanxi Province and 2013 Teaching Excellence Recognition Award from Shaanxi Normal University.