The Matthew Effect: Why some are more successful than others

The Matthew Effect has been used for over 50 years to explain why some people become more successful than others – and why some people are born with an advantage in life. Bronwen Bain looked at the phenomenon in the context of academics and sport.

If you group television veteran Oprah Winfrey, basketball maestro Michael Jordan, theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, and Amazon innovator Jeff Bezos together, at first it would be difficult to find similarities between them. They all stand out in their respective fields but are in no way similar to each other.

However, the one thing they all have in common is the fact that they are born in either January, February or March. This, according to the Matthew Effect, gives them a natural advantage very early on in life.

In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell explains that the Matthew Effect was conceptualised by sociologist Robert Merton in the 1960s. It originates from the New Testament book of Matthew 25:29, which reads, “For unto everyone that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance. But from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.”

The Matthew Effect explains that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, or that those who have more will be given more. It can be applied in an academic context, as well as in business and sport.

Sarah Murray, a senior lecturer at Rhodes University, applied the Matthew Effect to literacy. South Africa does not rank high when it comes to children being able to read and write well, with 87% of grade 4s and 78% of grade 5s unable to obtain the lowest benchmark of a basic literacy test. Effective readers can decode and comprehend what they read and to do that, they need to practice until it becomes automatic.

Murray’s study explains that reading can be linked to the Matthew Effect because the more a person reads, the better they will get and the more they will be able to use it to their advantage. Children who read more will get into a positive feedback loop: the more they read, the better their vocabulary becomes, the more they can comprehend what they read, and the more they enjoy what they read. This will, therefore, create a gap, the Matthew Effect, between learners who are in the positive feedback loop and those who are not.

The Matthew Effect is also known as the Relative Age Effect (RAE) in sport after psychologist, Roger Barnsley, noticed a trend in age amongst members of the Canadian ice hockey team when he attended their matches. Gladwell explains: if the eligibility cut-off date for a sport is 1 January, then a child born on 2 January would be playing with someone who only turns the same age at the end of the year, giving them more time to physically mature.

The Relative Age Effect assists those born during the “right” time of the year because they will be in favour during selection, streaming, and differentiated experience. This refers to players who, at an early age, are seen as more talented and are chosen over those who are not, and they are given more experiences which gives them an advantage going forward in the sport, inevitably setting them up for success.

World Rugby conducted a study in 2015 that suggests that athletes who are born in the first three months after the eligibility cut-off date for a particular age group in sports are more likely to become elite athletes. The International Olympic Committee as well as FIFA have 1 January as the cut-off date, but countries like the United States and the United Kingdom use 1 September, and being born within the first three months of the cut-off date is what gives them an edge. The Relative Age Effect is more prominent in sports that are more physically demanding than non-contact sports and occurs more frequently with males than females.

Sport scientists Benjamin Jones, Gavin Lawrence, and Lew Hardy conducted a study in the United Kingdom in 2017 to determine whether the Relative Age Effect explained the over-representation of players born in the first three months after the eligibility cut-off date.

The study found that when the emphasis was placed on physical maturation, people born in the first three months fared better as they were physically more developed and had a competitive advantage. This is the result of the “survival of the fittest concept”, demonstrating that those who mature physically will fit the criteria outlined in the selection processes.

Mike Lambert, an Exercise Science and Sports Medicine professor at the University of Cape Town (UCT), says that the Relative Age Effect is a real phenomenon in sport, especially in youth sport where size contributes to performance. He says, “We have done research in the rugby youth tournaments in South Africa and out of a sample of 5740 players, 17% were born in January, 14% in February and 13% in March.” That means that from the 5740 sample, 2526 players are born in the first three months of the year and have an advantage.

Nina Rose Tidy, a 23-year-old medical student at Wits University in Johannesburg, was born on 10 February and has excelled both on the sports field and in the classroom. Tidy, who has always been viewed as an overachiever, matriculated with eight distinctions and received an honours blazer after getting full colours for academics, debating, athletics and rhetoric.

Tidy said, “I’ve been good at almost everything I try, whether academic or sport-related. While I definitely work very hard and have a competitive personality, I do feel as though I am able to grasp concepts quickly and can develop my talents without spending as much time on them as others might.”