4 ms·

Wrecked by Success? Not to Worry

35 points by barry-cotter 4y ago

barry-cotter 4y ago
> We examined the wrecked-by-success hypothesis. Initially formalized by Sigmund Freud, this hypothesis has become pervasive throughout the humanities, popular press, and modern scientific literature. The hypothesis implies that truly outstanding occupational success often exacts a heavy toll on psychological, interpersonal, and physical well-being. Study 1 tested this hypothesis in three cohorts of 1,826 high-potential, intellectually gifted individuals. Participants with exceptionally successful careers were compared with those of their gender-equivalent intellectual peers with more typical careers on well-known measures of psychological well-being, flourishing, core self-evaluations, and medical maladies. Family relationships, comfort with aging, and life satisfaction were also assessed. Across all three cohorts, those deemed occupationally outstanding individuals were similar to or healthier than their intellectual peers across these metrics. Study 2 served as a constructive replication of Study 1 but used a different high-potential sample: 496 elite science/technology/engineering/mathematics (STEM) doctoral students identified in 1992 and longitudinally tracked for 25 years. Study 2 replicated the findings from Study 1 in all important respects. Both studies found that exceptionally successful careers were not associated with medical frailty, psychological maladjustment, and compromised interpersonal and family relationships; if anything, overall, people with exceptionally successful careers were medically and psychologically better off.
- elefanten 4y ago
  Ah, but did they look at exceptionally successful enough careers?
- andreilys 4y ago
  This makes sense to me. The literature on status indicates that high status individuals/animals experience all kinds of positive effects on their health (especially when benchmarked against low status peers).
cryptica 4y ago
I think the real problem with success has nothing to do with psychological issues. It's that it often shields you from having to confront your blind spots, neglectful attitudes and delusions. Not having to face reality seems more like a positive thing in terms of mental health. It's like religion, it creates mental comfort. It's a comfortable abstraction which makes things seem better and simpler than they are. When you fail, you are forced to confront the causes of your failure; the things you didn't see or anticipate (your blind spots) and you start to see the world in higher resolution. After enough failures, starting anything can become difficult because you can see all the things which can go wrong and you realize that there are so many of them that you have almost no control at all over your own success. Almost all the variables are against you; if any of them doesn't line up exactly right, it's over. When you're successful, most of the variables tend to work in your favor, even those you don't see or understand... That's why most wealthy people still don't understand that the fiat monetary system is broken, for example.
- zamfi 4y ago
  Super anecdotal, but most people I know that fit your description had one success early in their careers and then rode that wave to future successes. That is definitely some people, and perhaps even many of the people who are the most visible (since that visibility is one way to ride the wave). But by far most of the successful people I know have confronted a ton of failure as well, and adapt to it quickly: they treat it as a noisy data point, take what they can from it (like updating blind spots, etc.), and move on. You don’t make 100% of the shots you don’t take, and precisely because there are so many variables you can’t control, you need to take many shots. The folks who see failures as inevitable and as barriers to success and who as a result don’t even bother to try…almost by definition cannot succeed. I think you may have the causality pointing the wrong way here.
- bobthechef 4y ago
- cs137 4y ago
  This is on the money, and it's a real problem. You see survivorship bias all over this economy, and it's manifested most strongly in the self-help and toxic-positivity cultures. People who succeed don't understand or know why. They might have earned their success (some did, some didn't) but being competent at something is orthogonal to knowing why one succeeded at it, over the hundreds of others who fell on their faces. They know the least about how the system works, because they won the lottery by having the whole edifice stay out of their way. On the other hand, people who failed tend to know exactly why they failed. This doesn't mean they understand the system either. Individually, almost no one does--successful or otherwise. Thing is, no one wants to listen to them. All they can tell you is what not to do, through a story with a depressing ending. It's very easy to write them off as bitter old washouts who never belonged in the game in the first place. In general, there's a conflict in our society that, I think, explains a lot of the weird dichotomies that emerge, including political ones, and it's this: holding an external locus of control and a negative view of society makes you correct, but isn't always conducive to ideal mental health. On the other hand, believing in an internal locus of control and holding a pleasant view of society, although it largely makes you incorrect, seems to increase the likelihood that you will enjoy positive mental health and therefore succeed. Classical decision theory holds that having more information leads to better decisions and higher utility; on the other hand, when it comes to locus-of-control and the nature of society, being correct is observably maladaptive. It's tough to say which is "better".
robocat 4y ago
Weird that it is split into two parts: “Study 2 served as a constructive replication of Study 1 but used a different high-potential sample: 496 elite science/technology/engineering/mathematics (STEM) doctoral students identified in 1992 and longitudinally tracked for 25 years.” Study 1 seems difficult due to sampling bias - if you only look at successful people you are missing anyone wrecked by success. I only read the abstract - so they must have a way of dealing with that issue within the paper. The people I have seen damaged by success is mostly due to unbounded ego: being humble seems like an antidote although is that cause (naturally humble) or effect (does trying to be humble also work).
cs137 4y ago
So much of what is called being "wrecked by success" is just regular old regression to the mean (which is not usually real regression--i.e., there is no underlying degradation--but simply the contrast between early skill-plus-outlier-luck and, later, mere skill-plus-average-luck). Most people are mediocre in their early years and get filtered out, even though a good percentage of them had the underlying talent and skill, and just never got lucky. Most of the ones who succeed once aren't going to succeed again, not because they're actually getting dumber but because non-success is the norm in this world. Wreckage by success can happen, but it usually requires some odious externality that the person is unable to handle. You see this in the arts and in the literary world, because authors start getting invited to the parties that become necessary to make connections (for reviews, resources, and future publication) and then turn into coke zombies who can't write anymore. You don't see it as much with math professors, because there is no incentive pulling them into that scene--with the latter, it's just regular regression to the mean.
- filoleg 4y ago
  >and then turn into coke zombies who can't write anymore They can also turn into coke zombies who are still able to write. Stephen King claimed that he was so out of it during that period of his life, he straight up doesn't remember writing Cujo at all[0]. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cujo#Background https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cujo#Background
  - cs137 4y ago
    Stephen King is a special case for all sorts of reasons. He's undeniably talented, which even his detractors will admit. (The complaint of literary snobs isn't that he's a bad writer, but that he puts his talent toward genres of writing they don't like.) His quality profile is also notably variable, which is also part of why he has so many detractors. He also came up in a time when publishing was more forgiving of idiosyncrasies and personal difficulties. (In today's world, a literary agent will fire and cancel you on Twitter if you get a pronoun wrong by mistake.) Finally, he was always a high-functioning drug addict, and there are a lot more of them than most people think (although it seems rare to stay high-functioning for more than a few years). The thing about King, love him or hate him, is that he loves to write. Most people, even among successful novelists, don't--and that's OK, because it's extremely difficult to do well, and the rewards are astronomically uncommon. I think this explains why he was able to write decent books even while battling these demons.

35 points by barry-cotter 4y ago

> We examined the wrecked-by-success hypothesis. Initially formalized by Sigmund Freud, this hypothesis has become pervasive throughout the humanities, popular press, and modern scientific literature. The hypothesis implies that truly outstanding occupational success often exacts a heavy toll on psychological, interpersonal, and physical well-being. Study 1 tested this hypothesis in three cohorts of 1,826 high-potential, intellectually gifted individuals. Participants with exceptionally successful careers were compared with those of their gender-equivalent intellectual peers with more typical careers on well-known measures of psychological well-being, flourishing, core self-evaluations, and medical maladies. Family relationships, comfort with aging, and life satisfaction were also assessed. Across all three cohorts, those deemed occupationally outstanding individuals were similar to or healthier than their intellectual peers across these metrics. Study 2 served as a constructive replication of Study 1 but used a different high-potential sample: 496 elite science/technology/engineering/mathematics (STEM) doctoral students identified in 1992 and longitudinally tracked for 25 years. Study 2 replicated the findings from Study 1 in all important respects. Both studies found that exceptionally successful careers were not associated with medical frailty, psychological maladjustment, and compromised interpersonal and family relationships; if anything, overall, people with exceptionally successful careers were medically and psychologically better off.

elefanten 4y ago
Ah, but did they look at exceptionally successful enough careers?
andreilys 4y ago
This makes sense to me. The literature on status indicates that high status individuals/animals experience all kinds of positive effects on their health (especially when benchmarked against low status peers).

cryptica 4y ago

I think the real problem with success has nothing to do with psychological issues. It's that it often shields you from having to confront your blind spots, neglectful attitudes and delusions. Not having to face reality seems more like a positive thing in terms of mental health. It's like religion, it creates mental comfort. It's a comfortable abstraction which makes things seem better and simpler than they are. When you fail, you are forced to confront the causes of your failure; the things you didn't see or anticipate (your blind spots) and you start to see the world in higher resolution. After enough failures, starting anything can become difficult because you can see all the things which can go wrong and you realize that there are so many of them that you have almost no control at all over your own success. Almost all the variables are against you; if any of them doesn't line up exactly right, it's over. When you're successful, most of the variables tend to work in your favor, even those you don't see or understand... That's why most wealthy people still don't understand that the fiat monetary system is broken, for example.

zamfi 4y ago
Super anecdotal, but most people I know that fit your description had one success early in their careers and then rode that wave to future successes. That is definitely some people, and perhaps even many of the people who are the most visible (since that visibility is one way to ride the wave). But by far most of the successful people I know have confronted a ton of failure as well, and adapt to it quickly: they treat it as a noisy data point, take what they can from it (like updating blind spots, etc.), and move on. You don’t make 100% of the shots you don’t take, and precisely because there are so many variables you can’t control, you need to take many shots. The folks who see failures as inevitable and as barriers to success and who as a result don’t even bother to try…almost by definition cannot succeed. I think you may have the causality pointing the wrong way here.
bobthechef 4y ago
cs137 4y ago
This is on the money, and it's a real problem. You see survivorship bias all over this economy, and it's manifested most strongly in the self-help and toxic-positivity cultures. People who succeed don't understand or know why. They might have earned their success (some did, some didn't) but being competent at something is orthogonal to knowing why one succeeded at it, over the hundreds of others who fell on their faces. They know the least about how the system works, because they won the lottery by having the whole edifice stay out of their way. On the other hand, people who failed tend to know exactly why they failed. This doesn't mean they understand the system either. Individually, almost no one does--successful or otherwise. Thing is, no one wants to listen to them. All they can tell you is what not to do, through a story with a depressing ending. It's very easy to write them off as bitter old washouts who never belonged in the game in the first place. In general, there's a conflict in our society that, I think, explains a lot of the weird dichotomies that emerge, including political ones, and it's this: holding an external locus of control and a negative view of society makes you correct, but isn't always conducive to ideal mental health. On the other hand, believing in an internal locus of control and holding a pleasant view of society, although it largely makes you incorrect, seems to increase the likelihood that you will enjoy positive mental health and therefore succeed. Classical decision theory holds that having more information leads to better decisions and higher utility; on the other hand, when it comes to locus-of-control and the nature of society, being correct is observably maladaptive. It's tough to say which is "better".

robocat 4y ago

Weird that it is split into two parts: “Study 2 served as a constructive replication of Study 1 but used a different high-potential sample: 496 elite science/technology/engineering/mathematics (STEM) doctoral students identified in 1992 and longitudinally tracked for 25 years.” Study 1 seems difficult due to sampling bias - if you only look at successful people you are missing anyone wrecked by success. I only read the abstract - so they must have a way of dealing with that issue within the paper. The people I have seen damaged by success is mostly due to unbounded ego: being humble seems like an antidote although is that cause (naturally humble) or effect (does trying to be humble also work).

cs137 4y ago

So much of what is called being "wrecked by success" is just regular old regression to the mean (which is not usually real regression--i.e., there is no underlying degradation--but simply the contrast between early skill-plus-outlier-luck and, later, mere skill-plus-average-luck). Most people are mediocre in their early years and get filtered out, even though a good percentage of them had the underlying talent and skill, and just never got lucky. Most of the ones who succeed once aren't going to succeed again, not because they're actually getting dumber but because non-success is the norm in this world. Wreckage by success can happen, but it usually requires some odious externality that the person is unable to handle. You see this in the arts and in the literary world, because authors start getting invited to the parties that become necessary to make connections (for reviews, resources, and future publication) and then turn into coke zombies who can't write anymore. You don't see it as much with math professors, because there is no incentive pulling them into that scene--with the latter, it's just regular regression to the mean.

filoleg 4y ago
>and then turn into coke zombies who can't write anymore They can also turn into coke zombies who are still able to write. Stephen King claimed that he was so out of it during that period of his life, he straight up doesn't remember writing Cujo at all[0]. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cujo#Background https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cujo#Background
- cs137 4y ago
  Stephen King is a special case for all sorts of reasons. He's undeniably talented, which even his detractors will admit. (The complaint of literary snobs isn't that he's a bad writer, but that he puts his talent toward genres of writing they don't like.) His quality profile is also notably variable, which is also part of why he has so many detractors. He also came up in a time when publishing was more forgiving of idiosyncrasies and personal difficulties. (In today's world, a literary agent will fire and cancel you on Twitter if you get a pronoun wrong by mistake.) Finally, he was always a high-functioning drug addict, and there are a lot more of them than most people think (although it seems rare to stay high-functioning for more than a few years). The thing about King, love him or hate him, is that he loves to write. Most people, even among successful novelists, don't--and that's OK, because it's extremely difficult to do well, and the rewards are astronomically uncommon. I think this explains why he was able to write decent books even while battling these demons.