Field experiments of success-breeds-success dynamics

Abstract

Significance Social scientists have long debated why similar individuals often experience drastically different degrees of success. Some scholars have suggested such inequality merely reflects hard-to-observe personal differences in ability. Others have proposed that one fortunate success may trigger another, thus producing arbitrary differentiation. We conducted randomized experiments through intervention in live social systems to test for success-breeds-success dynamics. Results show that different kinds of success (money, quality ratings, awards, and endorsements) when bestowed upon arbitrarily selected recipients all produced significant improvements in subsequent rates of success as compared with the control group of nonrecipients. However, greater amounts of initial success failed to produce much greater subsequent success, suggesting limits to the distortionary effects of social feedback.

Analytical sociology and computational social science

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Causality Illusion and Overconfidence in Predicting (Quasi)Stochastic Financial Events

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Strategies for Competition Beyond Open Architecture (OA): Acquisition at the Edge of Chaos

“…The self-selection drives some projects to grow disproportionately larger than predicted by random growth and leads to the power-law distribution. Alternatively as shown in Stony Brook University study that the age-old adage that "success breeds success" is a reality 23 even in the OSS community. A competitive DoD marketplace that is self-organizing, adaptive, and agile needs more than just OSA, but must also be engineered to support a dynamic open business model.…”