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In the gospel of Matthew there is a passage that goes, "for whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath." This is of course a restatement of the old folk wisdom that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. The sociologist Robert Merton appropriated the name Matthew effect to show that this effect is central in the shaping of many social phenomena and is not just applicable to the diminishing and accumulating of wealth. Circular causation. Once we start looking we find that variations of the Matthew effect popping up all over the place. In economics the Matthew effect is well known under the name of circular causation as depicted by the terms virtuous and vicious circles as popularized by Gunnar Myrdal. In psychology the Matthew effect is known as circularly determined syndromes as made popular by Karen Horney. Another name under which the Matthew effect is well known is 'a vicious cycle'.
In cybernetics this effect is part of what is referred to as positive feedback. In fact, positive feedback, as exemplified by sound systems on occasion, perfectly illustrates how the Matthew effect works. Normally a sound enters a sound system via a microphone, is amplified, and the amplified sound exits the speaker. But if the microphone picks up the amplified sound coming from the speaker as well, and amplifies the sound again, the sound is picked up and amplified over and over again, so that the sound builds upon itself till the sound becomes a horrible screech that we are all familiar with. This is what a Matthew effect does with social situations, it takes a small initial difference and amplifies it, as each successive iteration builds on the previous iteration, escalating minor initial difference into massive differences. Negative feedback. Strictly speaking negative feedback is simply positive feedback going in the opposite direction. In cybernetics, however, this term has come to be used to describe a situation where systems that are producing escalating output, can be stabilized by creating an exactly balancing de-escalation of output. In other words the escalation in one direction is held in balance by an equal and opposite escalation in the opposite direction. Matthew effects can of course be subject to attempts to reduce their impact by means of people creating Matthew effects in the opposite direction. Also naturally occurring Matthew effects can be found to be opposing and canceling out one another. However in the social world these forces are rarely found to be in balance.
Spiral causation. When talking about these kind of effects the words both 'circle' and 'cycle' seem to this site as somewhat confusing as both circle and cycle are most often used to refer to something that repeats exactly what was performed before. However, the Matthew effect refers to increasing accumulation with each iteration so that advantage or disadvantage is constantly escalating. Such systems are either approaching zero by spiraling in, or approaching infinity by spiraling out. The word spiral captures this idea much better than circle.
The Matthew effect in education. In his book "The Matthew Effect" Daniel Rigney give some examples of how the Matthew effect creates ever widening discrepancies of advantage in education. Here are some examples from Rigney's book: "In reading research, the Matthew effect refers to the hypothesis that 'while good readers gain new skills very rapidly, and quickly move from 'learning to read' to 'reading to learn,' poor readers become increasingly frustrated with the act of reading and try to avoid reading when possible. The gap is relatively narrow when the children are young, but rapidly widens as children grow older.'
...Developmental psychologists agree that native abilities interact with environmental advantages or disadvantages in the development of reading skills. Students that begin with high verbal aptitudes and find themselves in verbally enriched social environments are at a double advantage. Moreover, early success tends to create a virtuous circle, in which the young reader learns to read faster, more, and with better comprehension, building on early advantage to achieve even larger advantages relative to their peers... Meanwhile, students with more limited verbal abilities who also experience economic and social disadvantages are hit with a double 'double whammy'...which may well affect their later life chances in the reading intensive environment of an information society. Children who read slowly and without enjoyment read less... Poor readers are more likely than good readers to drop out of school and less likely to find rewarding employment. Thus reading disadvantages are often compounded, translating into economic and personal disadvantages; whether or not young students experience a reading spiral may affect not just their educational futures...
Researchers generally agree, however, that early differences between good and poor readers tend to persist into adulthood, and the poor readers rarely catch up. ...relatively small differences in reading ability and literacy-related knowledge and skills at the beginning of school often develop into very large generalized differences in school-related skills and academic achievement. In such 'chaotic' processes small differences in initial states can lead to great differences in final states. Matthew effects inhere in acquiring not only reading skills, but language-related knowledge and skills in general, including math skills... Thus educational Matthew effects may be operating across many different dimensions of cognitive development. Matthew effects also arise in the acquisition of computer skills. Moureau... observes that the more computer experts are called upon to exercise their skills, the more they learn, and the more expert they become. Similarly Sligo... finds that organizational employees with more education become more aware of computer information resources and use them more effectively than those with less education do, widening their relative advantage over the latter."
"Educational systems in Europe commonly assign high- and low-performing students to different schools; the American system reaches similar results by creating academic and vocational tracks within the same school. Kerckhoff and Glennie, following a cohort of tenth graders over ten years, report that tracking in high school tended to deflect lower-position students downward and upper-position students upward in their educational outcomes, dispersing the cohort more widely over time. They interpreted these results as confirming the Matthew effect. Suburban schools tend to spend more per pupil, enjoy better facilities, and attract better-qualified teachers and better-prepared students. Their students advance academically while students in poorer schools fall ever farther behind. And because learning is sequential, building on previous learning, those who fall behind at an early age may be permanently disadvantaged. The result, Kozol maintains, is the survival of the most favored, or in the words of John Coons, 'the cyclical replacement of the 'fittest' of one generation by their artificially advantaged offspring.' ...'it is the accumulation of (often small) advantages and disadvantages over the course of the first 18 years of life that leads to massive preparation differences by the time of college application,' and that both disadvantages and advantages are 'cumulative and reinforcing'...'the odds of getting into the pool of credible candidates for admission to a selective college or university are six times higher for a child from a high-income family than for a child from a poor family,' and similarly, the odds are 'seven times higher for a child from a college-educated family than for a child a child who would be a first-generation college-goer'..."
The accumulation of disadvantage or advantage comes in two different flavors. It can be absolute accumulation or it can be relative accumulation. Relative accumulation can be understood as two Matthew effects interacting and partially canceling each other out because they are acting in different directions. This is similar to the use of negative feedback to restore equilibrium in cybernetic systems. In this case, however, the two effects do not balance each other as in negative feedback but rather have a dampening cumulative effect. For instance it has been suggested that a vicious cycle in education could be softened by the following: "To counteract the self-perpetuating cycle of advantage and disadvantage, Bowen and his colleagues recommend a form of 'class biased affirmative action'... that benefits the disadvantaged, in contrast to hidden forms of affirmative action that have historically benefited the sons and daughters of the advantaged, such as admissions policies favoring legacies, the children of wealthy donors, and families without financial need." These social structures or systems could be termed as advantage gap closing measures or as Merton calls them countervailing forces. In such social conditions the children of the less well educated may get more education but not as much as the children of the highly educated, who get even more education. So in this case the children of the less well educated are still getting less education relative to the children of the highly educated. Similarly you could have a system that penalizes the children of the highly educated so that the children of the poorly educated could appear to be getting better education relative to those highly educated children. But in fact they would in reality still be getting increasingly worse education. Of course this is not what any reformers would want to do, but sometimes advantage/disadvantage is a zero sum game. If we wish to make the poor richer we have to take riches from the rich to give to them. The question to ask then is, "Can we give better education to the children of the poorly educated without diminishing the education being given to the children of the highly educated." The Matthew effect in motivation to learn. So the Matthew effect surely affects learning in institutions of learning but the Matthew effect goes deeper and is more central to the significance of the whole process of learning. Certainly far more than can be accounted for by mere widening discrepancies in the institutions of education. Learning itself as in what motivates people to learn is highly subject to the vagaries of virtuous and vicious circles (spirals).
The positive spiral path of learning is characterized by escalative accumulation of advantage in motivation. Intrinsic motivation or any kind of motivation works by means of the association of pleasure with the learning of information and the conversion of this information into knowledge. In this case the learner forms a conjecture based on this pleasurable experience that the learning of similar information will be likewise pleasurable thus producing the motivation to learn it. An expectation or anticipation of immanent pleasure fires the motivation. The beauty of this associated motivation as far as learning is concerned is that learning has a whole host of intrinsic pleasures innate to it. These intrinsic pleasures are fully discussed on our page about intrinsic motivation. When these pleasurable associations are first formed they tend to be weak and only slightly motivating but this changes as learner's conjectures about which similar types of learning will activate intrinsic pleasure, gradually become more and more generalized. Any motivation to learn is most assuredly an advantage and as such is subject to Matthew effects. It logically follows that if learners form conjectures that some learning will be accompanied by or followed by intrinsic pleasure or reward, conformation of this expectation will induce learners to generalize their conjectures to ever widening types of information that are less and less similar. Thus there will be a tendency for the pleasure that is associated with specific learning to widen and be associated with increasingly greater amounts of different sorts of information. This in turn should lead eventually to a kind of meta conjecture that all learning will be accompanied by or followed by intrinsic pleasure or reward. The more conjectures that learners build up, that somewhat similar learning will be accompanied by or followed by pleasure or reward and the more they are corroborated the larger the amount of learning we associate with pleasure. The more this happens the more it is generalized to other different forms of learning. At some point we formulate the conjecture that all learning will be accompanied by or followed by pleasure. From this point on any kind of learning that is accompanied by or followed by pleasure counts as corroboration that all learning will be accompanied by or followed by pleasure. Because the mechanisms inside us ensure that intrinsic pleasure during and after learning always occur, learning will in fact, always be accompanied by or followed by pleasure. The only problems lie in our fear of failure to learn, failure to learn to satisfy the other meta motivators and fear of failure to learn to satisfy the deficiency motivators. Ideally these fears should never appear in the context of the right kind of of environment. However, given the current environmental conditions in most societies they invariably do appear. If these fears can be overcome and learners thus can learn to satisfy the deficiency and meta motivators they will eventually form a conjecture that failure to learn is simply a stepping stone on the path to eventual success in learning. When this conjecture is formed and corroborated fear of failure to learn simply disappears and all learning leads to expectation of pleasure. This is like a great expanding spiral of learning activity starting with a conjecture that a particular bit of successful learning is accompanied by or followed by pleasure. Then as pleasure associations build the spiral begins to spin sweeping outwards as this conjecture is generalized to suggest that some types of successful learning are accompanied by or followed by pleasure. Then the spiral begins to accelerate in its spin in an outward engulfing sweep as the conjecture is formed that all successful learning is accompanied by or followed by pleasure. Finally the spin of the spiral becomes so fast as to appear as a dazzling outward burst as learners conjecture that failure to learn is simply a part of eventual success in learning. The desire to learn fuels its own success, which in turn overcomes and incorporates failure into success. With this comes the ability to postpone the need for immediate success in favor of an increasingly distant success and the ability to set goals that will inevitably attract failure along the way to success. Successful learning of this sort ultimately leads to an intrepid desire to know all things and learning becomes increasingly the central focus of life. As the process continues more and more intellectual activity is diverted into learning and learning how to learn. The desire to learn becomes a greedy, devouring, insatiable, expansion of spirit. The learner is propelled into a an ever expanding spiral where increased learning of both quality and volume of knowledge is assimilated with accelerating rapidity till full actuation of potential occurs where the process begins to slow then continue its outward expansion to infinity in a more orderly and elegant manner. In this way the person becomes a life long learner. John Holt although unfamiliar with the idea of the Matthew effect was very much aware that some people in western society had a very good attitude to learning toward. Such people are symptomatic of the effects of a virtuous circle of learning. In his book "What Do I Do Monday?" John has this to say.
This is the spirit of the very young child, and the reason he learns so well."
The negative spiral path of learning is characterized by escalative accumulation of disadvantage in motivation. Any kind of motivation, as pointed out in the previous passage works by means of the association of pleasure or displeasure with the learning of information and the conversion of this information into knowledge. In this case where motivation is diminishing or the learner is being unmotivated, unpleasant experiences or displeasure is associated with some learning. The learner then forms a conjecture based on this unpleasant experience that the learning of similar information will be likewise unpleasant, thus producing the motivation not to learn it or to avoid learning it. An expectation or anticipation of immanent displeasure fires the negative motivation or aversion. Learning especially in schools is subject to many unpleasant experiences which can easily become associated with the learning. When these unpleasant associations are first formed they tend to be weak and only slightly demotivating, but this can change if the unpleasant experiences are are repeated and become a continuing or chronic experience occurring simultaneously with learning experiences. This changes as learner's conjectures about what will activate unpleasant associations become more and more generalized. Motivation not to learn is most assuredly a disadvantage and as such is subject to Matthew effects. If learners anticipate that some learning will be accompanied by or followed by displeasure or unpleasantness, conformation of this anticipation will cause learners to generalize their formation of conjectures concerning this to ever widening types of information that are only slightly similar. Thus there will be a tendency for the displeasure that is associated with unique learning experiences to widen and be associated with more and diverse types of information. This in turn can lead eventually to the forming of a conjecture about the many learning conjectures. A conjecture could be formed that all learning will be accompanied by or followed by unpleasantness. The more conjectures that learners build up that somewhat similar learning will be accompanied by or followed by pain, punishment or any kind of unpleasantness, and the more such conjectures are confirmed the larger the amount of information learners become adverse to learning. The more this is repeated the greater the likelihood that this aversion will be generalized to dissimilar domains of learning. At some point learners could formulate the conjecture that all learning will be accompanied by or followed by pain or at least unpleasantness. From this point on any kind of learning that is accompanied by or followed by pain or unpleasantness counts as corroboration that all learning will be accompanied by or followed by suffering.
Because the unpleasantness that is associated with learning in this way is external to the learner the learner has some control over it. Unfortunately the younger a child is the less control he/she has over it and the more the child is at the mercy of the schools, teachers, and social conventions of the culture in which he/she lives. Also the further a child has been drawn into this cycle of becoming unmotivated, the more difficult it is to get out, even if external circumstances change to become more pleasant. Perhaps the worst kind of conjecture a child can develop is that failure in learning will always be accompanied by or followed by pain/punishment. This kind of conjecture is very common in children of school age. When this conjecture is formed and is corroborated, fear of failure presses in on the learner. With this comes the inability to postpone the need for immediate success, the inability to set goals, and the likelihood of trapping success in a web of failure. Unsuccessful learning of this sort ultimately leads to a fear of knowing and not learning becomes increasingly the central focus of life. As the process continues more and more intellectual activity is diverted into not learning and avoiding learning. The desire not to learn becomes a fearful, hideous, diminishing of spirit. The desire not to learn fuels its own failure which gradually overcomes and incorporates success into failure. The learner is propelled into an ever diminishing spiral where decreased learning of both quality and volume of information drops with accelerating rapidity till full diminishment to an inactive insanity occurs. At this point the process begins to flatten then continue its inward contraction to entropy in a more disorderly and inelegant manner. This is a secondary vicious circle for the de-motivation of learning. Starting with a conjecture that a particular bit of unsuccessful learning is accompanied by or followed by punishment. The spiral begins to reverse its spin dipping inwards as this conjecture is generalized to suggest that some types of unsuccessful learning are accompanied by or followed by punishment. The spiral begins to accelerate in its inward spin as the conjecture is formed that all unsuccessful learning is accompanied by or followed by punishment. Finally the spin of the spiral slows as we conjecture that failure to learn can be avoided by simply not learning or trying to learn. Ultimately entropy is reached resulting in fatalism, depression, paranoia and other forms of withdrawal from life. John Holt was also very much aware that many people in western society had a very bad attitude to learning. Such people are the unfortunate victims of this vicious circle of learning. In his book "What Do I Do Monday?" John Holt paints a sad picture of them.
Matthew effects on the development of life long learners. Our motivation to learn and thus the possibility of our becoming life long learners is subject to Matthew effects. It is the accumulation of motivational advantages early in life that can set the spin of the learning spiral to being virtuous or vicious, thus influencing the type of Matthew effect that occurs. Of course we are all subject to the many adverse elements in the current education system, in current parental misguidedness, and in counter productive social structures. All of these adverse influences on our learning can send us spiraling into vicious cycles of anti learning. But at the same time we are all also subject to the countervailing forces of the intrinsic interest that our brains have evolved to be receptive to. What this site would like to suggest is that there should be interventions into these Matthew effects to lode the dice in favor of virtuous spirals over of vicious spirals. These can be accomplished on a sociological level by changing the underlying values of societies. It can be accomplished on a political level by providing legislation that tips the balance in areas of poverty and education etc. Or it can be accomplished on a personal level by parents and teachers intervening to drive intrinsic interest into functioning more often and more fully. If interventions can be made in this way it is possible we could have whole societies that not only remain desirous of learning throughout their lives but ordinary peoples who actively learn in academic domains all their lives. General learning. Interventions can provide an educational environment that is devoid of aversive experiences and encrusted with pleasurable experiences. Parents should obviously be careful in administering punishments etc., taking care that punishment or other unpleasantness does not coincide with self initiated curiosity, exploration, creativity and the absorption of information on the part of children. Teachers and schools would be well advised, with this in mind, to likewise limit punishment and any other unpleasant experiences that might occur in classrooms. Encouraging interest. Interventions can provide an environment where initial weak intrinsic interest can be allowed to flourish. Although it is often inconvenient for parents and almost impossible for teachers to let children sate their curiosity by allowing unlimited exploration when interest appears in its initial weak form, this is perhaps the the most essential way in which parents and teachers can help in the formation and escalation of intrinsic motivation. Sometimes children need only to be left to their own devices and sometimes they need assistance to procure resources. The need for this letting be and the providing of resources for the particular form of learning called creativity is more easily understood by parents and teachers. But child creativity can cause parents and teachers to raise their expectations and push, which is the exact opposite of what is needed. Ideally this kind of intervention should only be about allowing time (letting be) and providing resources when they seem to be required. Confidence in learning. Interventions can provide an environment where confidence in the individual's belief in their own ability to learn and change themselves, is facilitated. Having confidence they can learn is essential for making learning pleasurable for children. The best way to facilitate this confidence in learning, is not to praise the child, or even the work of the child, but rather to praise the effort put into doing it. Praise of improvement, praise of persistence, praise of the strategies used to learn are all better than the more normal sort of praise in producing confidence in the child concerning his/her ability to learn, to improve, to become more intelligent. While this kind of praise may not seem as pleasure giving as praise of the person or praise of the work, it is more sustaining of intrinsic motivation in the long run when used well by parents and teachers. Fearless failure. Interventions can provide an environment where punishment and social embarrassment are not associated with mistakes and failure. Fear of failure is essentially a vicious circle in itself. Punishing or embarrassing children for mistakes or failure although quite common in parenting and schools is nevertheless both unnecessary and ineffective in learning or even discipline. If we wish children to be motivated, the building of unpleasant associations with mistakes and failure has to be avoided at all cost. It should be fairly easy for both parents and teachers to refrain from punishing or embarrassing children for their mistakes and failures. Preventing children from calling one another stupid and dumb is less easy, but good examples and care giver disapproval can make a significantly large difference in this. Informational criticism. Interventions can provide an environment where criticism is not personal, but rather informationally instructive, enabling improvement. In confident normal people criticism that provides information, that can lead to change, is never perceived as being unpleasant and is always perceived as pleasurable, unless it is delivered in an unpleasant manner. Parents and teachers should keep in mind that criticism should not be about the person. It can be about the work, in which case it should be technical criticism. Such criticism should contain hints or the seeds of how to improve the work. Or criticism can be about the effort put into the work. In which case it should take the form of, "If you wish to accomplish this you should (work harder, put in more effort, try different strategies, or persist longer etc.) Cooperative learning. Interventions can provide an environment where learning is a pleasurable cooperative experience instead of an unpleasant competitive one. While both competitive and cooperative learning can be enjoyable, competitive learning can easily turn vicious and nasty. On the other hand, cooperative learning tends to remove much of the unpleasantness that can be associated with learning. As well as this, cooperative learning tends to always be pleasurable, thus further enhancing the associations of learning with pleasure. Enabling students to help and teach each other is an excellent formula for making any learning pleasant. Contagion of interest. Interventions can provide an environment that excites the formation new contagious intrinsic interest by means of social contagion. Parents and teachers can invite children to become interested in new domains of information by expression of their love and enthusiasm for that type of information. By doing this they become role models of interest. Making information attractive to children other than through this social contagion is also possible. If new information is presented in a way that is simple, credible, unexpected, concrete, emotionally connected or narrative it will tend to become interesting to children. Teachers and parents can make use of some or all of these elements to lure children to initiate new interest by thus making the information more desirable. Building knowledge. Interventions can provide an environment where new information is firmly connected with previous information and is thus made understandable and pleasurable. Information that connects to and is made understandable, by the unique knowledge in each individual child, is the most pleasurable information for each individual child to learn. Finding ways to connect new information to each individual child has then to be a large part of the job of parents and teachers. Also obviously children should be encouraged to find ways to connect to new information themselves, and not just try to simply remember it. This is the reverse of teaching by rote and trying to cram information into memory in order to pass exams. Although passing exams might be pleasurable the repetitive acts of going over and over material is extremely unpleasant for the brain. Learner's choice. Interventions can provide and environment where learners have a choice in what they learn, so that the learning is made pleasurable. While trying to force children to learn information that they are not interested in, is a fairly useless activity, it can be made pleasurable to the children simply by giving them some choice in what they will learn. In other words, information becomes pleasurable to learn even when children are not interested in it, if they are able to choose it over some other information. The problem with implementing this, is the fact that we have all been led to believe that there is some basic knowledge that we all need to know. This is not true, but it is so ingrained in our culture that it often has to be taken as true. Teachers and parent then should try to provide as much choice in what is to learned as seems possible for them. This is a much easier task for parents than for teachers who are usually restricted by the education system they are working under. How to learn. Interventions can provide an environment where, learning how to learn, is the only compulsory domain of information. Great care should be taken with this intervention to ensure the learning of this type of information is always able to draw on its own intrinsic pleasure. Learning how to learn or learning strategies for learning, is a very intrinsically pleasurable activity because it is associated with all learning, but this can still be disrupted. Learning how to learn should have its own virtuous circle, if it is to be truly effective. Also avoidance of unpleasant associations with it, is essential. The learning of how to manipulate communication and information storage technology is of prime importance in learning how to learn. Learning to talk, to read and to write, give a progressively greater advantage the earlier they are learned. Likewise, the use of books, libraries, and increasingly the use of search engines and social networks on the in internet, should all be learned as early as possible in life. Conjectural information. Interventions can provide an environment where speculation and conjecturing about the future is embedded in items of information, that are presented for learning, making them pleasurable. In the world of science fiction this is called 'a sense of wonder'. It is the bridging of the imaginary and the fantastic with the probable, the possible and the impossible. It is the awe we feel in the presence of possible massive restructuring of what is currently understood to be reality. Of course we write and create the future by our actions, but part of that is speculation about what may be possible in the years to come. While all conjecture is creative and thus pleasurable this kind of speculation about distant futures is especially pleasurable and should play a part in what all parents and teacher both covey and allow. Learning by doing. Interventions can provide an environment for hands on exploration that affirms such exploration as being pleasurable. Although not all learning can be learning by doing, this hands on approach to leaning has many advantages in making learning pleasurable. Concrete examples, seen with the learner's eye, felt by the learner's fingers etc., provide understanding on a basic level that is very intrinsically pleasurable. Also learning by doing involves far more senses and makes many more connections making understanding and recall far more likely, both of which increase the amount of intrinsic pleasure available from the learning experience. Learning by doing, for this very reason, is very contagious and children should be encouraged to learn in this way. Parents can easy facilitate this kind of learning and teachers should encourage it, within the limits allowed by the system in which they are working. |
Learning's
Infinite Expansion and Entropy
The Matthew effect.
Positive
feedback.
Relative
Matthew effects.
A virtuous
circle, the positive spiral path of
learning.
"The person who
is not afraid of the
world wants understanding, competence, mastery. He wants to make his
mental model [map of reality] better, both
more complete in the sense of having more in it, and more accurate, in
being more like the world out there, a better guide to what is
happening and may happen. He wants to know the score. Like the thinker
in Nietzsche's quote, he wants the answers. Even if they are not the
answers he expected, or hoped for, even if they are answers he
dislikes, they advance him into the world. He can use any experience,
however surprising or unpleasant, to adjust his mental model of the
world. And so he is willing, and eager, to expose himself to the
reality of things as they are. The more he tries the more he learns,
however his trials come out.
A
vicious circle, the negative spiral
path of learning.
Needs Interest Method Reality Keys How to Help Creative Genius Future What is Wrong Theories Plus
B. F. Skinner Intrinsic Motivation Intrinsic Schools
