The Matthew effect
- Advantages accumulate over time.
- A small push at an early age, or a small advantage, leads a child to grow more and more relative to his/her peers.
- This is also known as the law of cumulative advantage.
- Most people downplay the role of circumstance and advantage in an individual’s success.
Meritocracy
Many areas which we consider to be pure meritocracies aren’t because of the Matthew effect. For example, hockey. The cutoff for team selections by age is January 1, so the most optimal birthdate for a child hockey player is right after January 1 because they’ll be older and stronger than their competition.
The majority of professional hockey players were born in January, February or March. Simply because they had this advantage at a young age, they were selected for better junior teams and received more attention from their coaches. They got in way more practice than their peers.
The 10,000 hour rule
- It takes about 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to become an expert at anything.
This is all well and good, but luck and circumstances still play an incredible rule. Gladwell analyzes the stories of Bill Gates and other software tycoons of that age to explain this.
- Bill Gates had massive exposure to computers as a teenager. Lakeside, UW, and new computers the likes of which nobody his age had access to anywhere. By the time he dropped out of Harvard he had more computer experience than probably anyone his age in the world.
“If you discount the role of luck and opportunity when retelling success stories, there are consequences for society including prematurely writing people off as failures.” — Dan Silvestre
From the book:
“Because we so profoundly personalize success, we miss opportunities to lift others onto the top rung. We make rules that frustrate achievement.”
The trouble with geniuses
There is a threshold when it comes to academic smartness. Studies have shown that despite what we might think, there is no noticeable difference in expected success between people above an IQ of 120. Even less so among those above 140.
This relates to the college idea. Once everyone applying is already super smart, with very high SAT scores, grades, and IQ, smartness no longer matters. More specifically, non-tremendous variations in smartness no longer matter. It becomes all about personality, traits, creativity, etc.
When the Termites (genius kids picked out by a researcher and followed throughout their lives) were analyzed for their ultimate success in life, there was no correlation between amount of success and their intelligence. The reason for the stark differences in performance was their social class growing up.
- A study following twelve families (mix of race and class) found that ultimately two styles of parenting were used.
- Middle-upper class: the involved and empowering parents. They get very engaged in their kids’ lives, shuttle them to their commitments, and teach them to be entitled in engagements with the world (which is a good trait to have in this world).
- Lower class: the disengaged and freedom-giving parents. They feel intimidated by the systems and structures around them, including their kids’ school. They don’t really stand up for themselves or speak up for what’s best for them. There are benefits to this parenting style, however.
Takeaways
- Never discount the power and importance of circumstance on a person’s success. It’s almost impossible for a person to be entirely self-made.
- There are patterns to success and they repeat themselves.