In reading this blog post, I was struck by a disconnect between the author's description of the "genius effect" (as used in social psychology, he adds) and the abstract of the journal article he links to. Specifically, he says that people exaggerate the performance of others ("to grandiose, unobtainable levels") as a way of preserving self-esteem, but the abstract of the article states, "we suggest that the genius effect is not an attempt on the part of individuals to protect or enhance their self-esteem...but is instead due to the pervasive tendency of individuals to use the self as a standard of comparison in their dispassionate judgments of others."
It's true that the genius effect has been discussed in terms of motivated cognition, and I'm not in a position to say which interpretation is right (or right-er); social comparison theory isn't really my area. My point is, it's quite weird to attempt to provide evidence for your claim by linking to an article that shows empirical support for an explanation that is not just at odds with your own, but that reports the results of a series of experiments that were purposely designed to refute this claim.
Also, I'm not convinced that the genius effect is really the applicable concept here. He's talking about people being impressed by successes that seem magical (i.e., it's difficult to mentally simulate how the person did it) and that other people assume must be due to natural talent, but I don't see any reason why the genius effect (whether it be motivational or informational in nature) would be limited to those types of activities.
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At the risk of sounding like one of "those" people, it feels like he's mostly saying something obvious - that we are more impressed when people do things that are, you know, more impressive.
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