12 ms·
Psychological Constellations Assessed at Age 13 Predict Success 35 Years Later
- pfdietz 7y agoHah! I was a subject in that first study.
- chromy 7y agopdf: https://www.gwern.net/docs/iq/smpy/2019-bernstein.pdf https://www.gwern.net/docs/iq/smpy/2019-bernstein.pdf
- olliej 7y agoOk so I see no controls for income/family wealth, etc If anything I see selection for wealth: the samples in one of the bigger studies selected from “the 15 best STEM graduate training programmed”, which is broadly a proxy for wealth. More over they don’t have negative samples: afaict their “study” was to take the top X% of students from some already wealth biased institutes and compare their performance to the overall average for everyone. What they should have done is compare the performance of the X% of the class they sampled from with the performance of the remainder of that class. Then we could compare more similar starting points. Obviously we would generally expect some correlation between skill when younger to 35 years later, but I would expect the entire group to do significantly better than the general average. Eg a person who got into Harvard because of their family history, and gets a C, is likely to do better than a person with a 4.0 from a state university. (General averages, obviously there can be outliers in every direction)
- iandanforth 7y agoThis is junk science that can best be used to reinforce existing stratification or create/justify a self-fulfilling prophecy of success. Best to ignore it and move on.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- burpsnard 7y agoTheir method would miss the likes of Blake, Van Gogh, Galileo, ...
- sokoloff 7y agoSMPY identifies outlier ability via standardized testing taken before age 13 (for cohorts other than the very last one). All of Study 1 was selected this way. This may have some very loose correlation with wealth. Is there a correlation between SMPY eligibility and getting into elite universities? Probably, but it doesn’t seem like an improper one. Is there a correlation between elite universities and life outcome? Sure. Does that make the longitudinal study from age 11/12 into adulthood useless or content-free? Not in my opinion. Only Study 2 was done on cohort 5, which was selected as grad students already at elite universities.
- lostdog 7y agoA couple of funny tidbits from the paper: > Of the 677, we were unable to find 27 males and 15 females in our Internet searches (we could not confirm their identities in our contact-information database). Given our method and criteria (Table 1), however, we believe it is unlikely that we missed an individual with a truly illustrious career. ... Our reasoning was that, if someone were truly eminent, then that person should be publicly conspicuous and therefore discoverable through online searches. And a finalist for the irony in naming things award: > We used Publish or Perish software (Harzing, 2007) to collect information on each participant’s number of publications, number of patents, and h-index.
- itronitron 7y ago>> if someone were truly eminent, then that person should be publicly conspicuous rather doubtful, for a variety of reasons, but probably unlikely to affect their numbers
- icedchai 7y agoI try to keep a low profile, stay off of social media, and leave a minimal fingerprint. I was a "gifted child" of the 80's. I took the SAT when I was in 7th grade, and did better than above average high school seniors. I have "stealth wealth", most of it from savings and stock market investments. I don't like to draw attention to myself.
- rolltiide 7y agothis study isn't gauging wealth at all. which I think is refreshing, but limiting. and I think it also highlights how we are trained that "success" is some arbitrary form of linear or exponential wealth advancement that is assumed to be permanent
- hos234 7y ago"Impactful" individuals are those that impact society "e.g., full professors at research-intensive universities, Fortune 500 executives, distinguished judges and lawyers, leaders in biomedicine, award-winning journalists and writers". "stealth wealth" is not impact.
- goodmachine 7y agoThis is not the astrology paper I was looking for.
- starpilot 7y agoIt's interesting how "success" means "selective, high-workload, white-collar career" in this study. In other cultures, it just means having friends/relationships and not being stressed all the time. I suspect many of these successful types are failures in this regard.
- eanzenberg 7y agoSalty
- corndoge 7y agoWhat's more interesting is that the word "success" doesn't appear in the title or abstract at all, the functional word is "eminent", and their definition is definitely more complex than your summary: "Eminent individuals were defined as those who, by age 50, had accomplished something rare: creative and highly impactful careers (e.g., full professors at research-intensive universities, Fortune 500 executives, distinguished judges and lawyers, leaders in biomedicine, award-winning journalists and writers)."
- asdf333 7y agooooh touché
- hogFeast 7y agoYep, I really don't think that makes it better (can anyone explain why it is always psychologists who invent these kind of measures? Is there some test we can perform at age 13 so we can identify people who will go on to do this kind of research? A follow up paper perhaps, this will surely add to the "eminence" of the authors). I have met my fair share of Fortune 500 executives, the majority are borderline braindead. Equally, I am unclear what "award-winning" journalist/writer might mean...it clearly doesn't mean success in any general way..."eminent" is just a very weird definition. Equating "eminent" with "highly impactful" and "creative"...dear God, are the authors actually human? What is especially bizarre is this is a paper from psychologists who, presumably, should understand that equating success with other people thinking you are successful (which "eminence" clearly measures) is a fairly dysfunctional habit...the irony never ends.
- mysterydip 7y agoWouldn't the larger the study, the less statistically-possible success is? There's a set number of fortune 500 executives, for example.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- moosey 7y agoThe next question is how do we build as many people with traits like this as possible, and I assume it to be high quality education with a low stress home life. This is something that the US economy is not currently achieving, based on happiness and education metrics. What should not be learned from this is that there are high caliber people, but instead that these traits call be learned, and I'm certain that there are schools teaching them, but I assume that those are quite foolishly only offered to specific subsets of people here, and that we will see further advancement in other societies as they find solutions to that exact problem by advancing educational practice through scientific experimentation on a national scale.
- lopmotr 7y agoThere absolutely are high caliber people. We know that IQ is the most powerful predictor of success and that you can't train it into people by any known means so it would be a waste to treat everyone like these geniuses.
- alasdair_ 7y ago>We know that IQ is the most powerful predictor of success and that you can't train it into people by any known means One very simple way of increasing IQ is to repeatedly take IQ tests. There is a noticeable uptick in recorded score for people who take the same type of test the second time within a twelve month period.
- emmelaich 7y agoThat suggests a method for finding the "true" IQ; keep taking the same kind of tests until your score plateaus.
- moosey 7y agoIn order to understand my position on "IQ", you should read the book "Hacking Darwin", which actually covers the question of what IQ is at length. I hope that it alters your position on IQ a little bit, what aspects of it are hereditary, and how the nature of life can alter it.
- 8bitsrule 7y agoI would guess that giving the establishment the finger would not bestow eminence.
- nurettin 7y agoIt did fine for George Carlin
- larnmar 7y agoThere are always multiple establishments. If one establishment doesn’t suit you, you can always go right next door to the other establishment labelled “the anti-establishment” and enjoy the company of like-minded individuals as you sneer at the other establishment and congratulate yourself on your independent-mindedness. Nowadays the anti-establishment is bigger and richer than the actual establishment, which is why we all wear t-shirts to work and sneer at those who have to wear suits. Are there groups that exist outside both the establishment and anti-establishment? Sure, but they’re weird and scary and if you join them you’ll definitely be banned from polite society.
- 8bitsrule 7y agoWell, OK, there's an exception to every rule... although that may be prominence not eminence. I can thank George for helping us to understand why our 'eminent' leadership have been so remarkably silent about the many pressing issues of our time. Silence and eminence have always been such good buddies.
- Zak 7y agoPaywalled. It's on sci-hub. https://sci-hub.tw/10.1177/0956797618822524 https://sci-hub.tw/10.1177/0956797618822524
- kats 7y agoSummary: If you did well on the SAT or attended graduate school, you were more likely to become a professor or receive NSF grants.
- alasdair_ 7y ago>Summary: If you did well on the SAT or attended graduate school, you were more likely to become a professor or receive NSF grants. This seems to measure people who have bought into "the system" in a particular way, rather than measuring exceptional people. Paul Graham's essay today (http://paulgraham.com/lesson.html http://paulgraham.com/lesson.html) seems especially apt. These people have learned to hack certain standardized tests.
- larnmar 7y agoStatistically, most people who score low on standardised tests don’t do it because they’re too independent-minded to be part of the system, man! Statistically most of them just aren’t that bright.
- alasdair_ 7y ago> Statistically, most people who score low on standardised tests don’t do it because they’re too independent-minded to be part of the system, man! Statistically most of them just aren’t that bright. As measured by standardized tests?
- larnmar 7y agoNo, just intrinsically.
- throwawaydkgmgm 7y agoAnd how do you accurately measure 'brightness' without a standardized test, pray tell?
- 7y ago
- potatofarmer45 7y agoLooking at the comments, there needs to be a distinction between the "eminent" career vs what people define as "success" in the title. The success in this paper is the equivalent of the Forbes 30 under 30 rankings except it's when you're 48. There will be genuinely eminent people who run a fortune 500 company, illustrious careers in academia, but the methodology of simply searching for someone years later has clear problems. What if you were to win a Nobel prize at age 55 or 60 (very common). You may have contributions earlier but didn't meet the criteria. On the reverse, like with Forbes 30 under 30, there are always people who master personal branding and PR over substance. Lot's of news articles about you doesn't equate to being eminent in the usual definition of the world- just well known. FYI, I'm not disputing their thesis or suggesting their results are wrong, I just find it odd that evaluating people at age 48, they couldn't find an algorithm much better than Forbes 30 under 30 which we all know has a lot of BS. I'd be curious to the results at age 75.
- knzhou 7y agoThe methodology is much much better than Forbes 30 under 30. In Forbes you pay to nominate yourself. The list is accordingly mostly people in obscure startups seeking to use it to attract publicity. The "eminence" in this study is based on what people actually did.
- perl4ever 7y agoDon't most people who attain the highest levels of executive positions peak around 60-65, i.e. near retirement age? Without definitely knowing the typical age of a CEO, that's my stereotype. And the candidates for president of the US seem to be trending even older these days.