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Daniel Rigney: The Matthew Effect as Social Spiral

Article: http://www.cupblog.org/?p=2699

This article is written by Daniel Rigney, author of The Matthew Effect: How Advantage Begets Further Advantage, a book discussing the sociological phenomenon called “The Mattew Effect.” The term was first used by a Columbia University sociologist named Robert Merton; it described a common pattern that was found in social systems: “advantage tends to beget further advantage.” The Matthew Effect is best summarized by the statement “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.” Merton’s study pertained to the distribution of prestige within scientific communities showing that scientists who studied in more prestigious graduate school programs were more likely to gain more awards/grants/other advantages than those who were in less prestigious programs. Though the people in the less prestigious programs weren’t any less competent than those in the more prestigious programs, they had fewer opportunities for advancement.

The Matthew Effect is considered to be a “social spiral.” It resembles a positive feedback loop which describes a process of growth where processes feed upon themselves. This helps to explain why wealth, for example, tends to keep building on itself making the rich richer. The Matthew Effect is very relevant in many aspects of our life, however, it is not absolute. This means that though it accurately describes many and most situations, there still exist scenarios in which people go from “rags to riches.” These occurrences are more atypical, though, and often are drawn out or slightly exaggerated to help support the idea that we live in a land of equal opportunity.

This directly relates to what we are learning in class about the power laws and rich-get-richer phenomena. We discussed this in terms of web pages and how the probability that a page will increase in popularity is directly proportional to its current popularity [Easley, Kleinberg 548]. This is essentially the exact same thing as the Matthew Effect. Popularity builds upon itself whether it is in terms of web pages, a person’s individual popularity, wealth, etc. The Matthew Effect also introduces the opposite, the poor getting poorer, which is something that was less touched upon in class. However, it is easy to see, using the principles we learned in class, that this would make sense for the same reasons that the rich will get richer. In terms of wealth, those who are poor are more economically vulnerable and likely to experience setbacks that will make them poorer. It all relates to this upward or downward spiral that causes wealth or popularity to build upon itself. The Matthew Effect provides yet another example of this phenomenon that we have been discussing throughout networks on the web and in the world.

 

 

 

 

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