Is success based on genetics or circumstances/luck?

KyussBishop

A common unstated theme I've sensed in discussions about social equality between classes/people, is the implied statement that many people are poor because they are inferior in some way, and that people are (generally) wealthy, because they deserve it and have earned it (rarely that luck or circumstances play a part in it).

This article (which I'm basing this post on - so please read), does a very good job of explaining how this line of thinking, is related to Social Darwinism, and makes some interesting points about the psychology behind this (such as linking it to the Just-World Hypothesis).

Personally, I think that in todays society, luck and initial circumstances (that of your parents and your upbringing - particularly wealth that gets passed on to you) play a pivotal role in determining how successful you will be later in life, and that the skills people develop in order to be successful are not innate/genetic, but are largely shaped (and allowed to develop) by the circumstances of your upbringing. I think that peoples opportunities are not limited just by their personal innate traits, but (much more significantly) by the opportunities the resources of their family and of society can provide them.

This (to me) would imply that organizing society to guarantee a minimum level of provision of educational and professional opportunities, regardless of a persons means (since they may be from a disadvantaged background) is a good and desireable goal - but frequently you encounter opposition to these goals, and it often feels like part of the thinking behind that opposition, is based on the above type of (in my view, morally dubious) line of ideas.

What are others thoughts on this line of thinking, and in particular, other peoples use of this line of thinking to morally justify certain political aims/goals?

veetwin

A relative of mine was the product of an extra marital affair back in the 1960's. She grew up in the 1970's and 80's in a household with absolutely nothing and zero encouragement. Her siblings from a different father and the man she believed was her father are all absolute wasters with various addiction issues and have been in trouble with the law.

She on the other had went on to have an excellent Leaving Cert and went on to a first class honours degree. She now is an extremely sucessful executive in a financial company while her siblings are dole scroungers.

Suggests genetics are important?

KyussBishop

You can't really take anything useful from such a highly anecdotal case with very little context though, and use it to make a general statement about (a proportion of) the wider population - something less anecdotal would be needed to debate it properly.

clairefontaine

The article has it entirely backwards. Successful people are counter essentialist. In other words, they believe they can change things, can even change themselves, can transform circumstances, even crisis into opportunity.

They found one of the problems for example, with highly intelligent and gifted girls, is that unlike boys, they carry an essentialist way of thinking... That their success or good grades are due to who they are, so therefore if they don't do so well on a exam or particular subject, they tend not to try again. The affirmations they receive are along the lines of "Aren't you a bright clever girl." Whereas boys get, "Good job! Let's do even better next time."

Successful people are also skilled at managing failure, so they are practiced in determination and patience, and getting right back in the saddle.

Obviously success will also depend on the fertile nature of how much opportunity is in your environment and how you parents guide you through all the challenges of life.

My grandad used to say success is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.

KyussBishop

A lot of that actually backs the essentialist thinking that the article describes - by suggesting that the success is down to innate traits of the people who are successful, and that their avoidance of failure is down to personal merit, rather than (for some) potentially down to luck or fraud (such as deferring responsibility for failure onto others - a common tactic for climbing the corporate ladder, and for all sorts of economic/financial fraud).

See, that's actually backing the "they are successful because they earned/deserve it" line of essentialist thinking - in a way, it's kind of the reverse of what I was talking about: I was focusing on essentialist thinking aimed at the less well off, that is like essentialist thinking aimed at the successful.


That's a very interesting point on essentialist thinking with regards to education/grades though, and how that relates to gender; I read up on that a little, and found this:

Emotional communication is one factor that may play a role, as suggested by a study by Graham (1984) in which sixth graders performed and failed a geometric task.
After the failure, the experimenter either gave no response, expressed anger, or expressed sympathy.

Children in the sympathy condition were more likely to attribute their failure on the task to low ability than were children in the other conditions, and children in the anger condition were more likely to attribute their failure on the task to insufficient effort than were children in the other conditions.
These results suggest that sympathy in response to another’s poor performance communicates a sense of “I believe that performance reflects something fundamental about you,” while anger does not.
This result suggests one possible source of gender differences in academic self-perceptions, if adults are more likely to respond with sympathy to the difficulties of girls and with anger to the difficulties of boys.

Other differences in the ways adults tend to treat boys versus girls may also play a role in suggesting to children that gender differences are fundamental (see Pomerantz & Ruble, 1998, for related arguments).
For example, when fathers ask sons but not daughters for help with fixing things, or more quickly offer help to a daughter who is attempting to fix something, they may be communicating the notion that males are implicitly more capable at such activities and these differences in experience between the genders may contribute to actual differences in competence in these domains.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3082140/

That's pretty interesting really, as I've not looked at how people view things from the point of view of essentialism before - it can make a lot of sense out of some things.