Matthew effect

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The Matthew effect may refer to related ideas depending on context:

Contents

[edit] Biblical

Matthew effect alludes to a line spoken by "the Master" in Jesus's parable of the talents in the Christian Bible:

"For unto every one 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." (Matthew XXV:29, KJV).

This line is sometimes taken in isolation as claiming "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer"; taken in context, it asserts that ambition and risk-taking will be rewarded, while those who fail to utilize the talents loaned to them will be punished.[citation needed]

[edit] Sociology

In sociology, Matthew effect was a term coined by Robert K. Merton to describe how, among other things, eminent scientists will often get more credit than a comparatively unknown researcher even if their work is similar; it also means that credit will usually be given to researchers who are already famous: for example, a prize will almost always be awarded to the most senior researcher involved in a project, even if all the work was done by a graduate student. An example is given by the story of the isolation of the antibiotic streptomycin by Albert Schatz in 1943, and the attribution of all the credit, including the award of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1952, to his supervisor, Selman Waksman. 20th century mathematician John von Neumann is frequently called the "father of game theory" or the "father of the computer," even though his influential publications were sometimes restatements of the ideas of his collaborators (see the First Draft).

The Matilda effect is the corollary to the Matthew effect: the work of women in science is often neglected. The Matilda effect was postulated by historian of science Margaret W. Rossiter in 1993.

[edit] Education

In education the term Matthew effect has been adopted by Keith Stanovich, a psychologist who has done extensive research on reading and language disabilities. Stanovich used the term to describe a phenomenon that has been observed in research on how new readers acquire the skills to read: Early success in acquiring reading skills usually leads to later successes in reading as the learner grows, while failing to learn to read before the third or fourth year of schooling may be indicative of life-long problems in learning new skills. This is because children who fall behind in reading, read less, increasing the gap between them and their peers. Later, when students need to "read to learn" (where before they were learning to read) their reading difficulty creates difficulty in most other subjects. In this way they fall further and further behind in school, dropping out at a much higher rate than their peers. Because of this they are not able to tap into education as a way to improve their lives, essentially becoming poorer while others become richer.

In the words of Keith Stanovich: Slow reading acquisition has cognitive, behavioral, and motivational consequences that slow the development of other cognitive skills and inhibit performance on many academic tasks. In short, as reading develops, other cognitive processes linked to it track the level of reading skill. Knowledge bases that are in reciprocal relationships with reading are also inhibited from further development. The longer this developmental sequence is allowed to continue, the more generalized the deficits will become, seeping into more and more areas of cognition and behavior. Or to put it more simply -- and sadly -- in the words of a tearful nine-year-old, already falling frustratingly behind his peers in reading progress, "Reading affects everything you do" (Adams, 1990, pp. 59-60)"

[edit] Social policy

In social policy the term was introduced by Herman Deleeck. It refers to the phenomenon, widely observed across advanced welfare states, that the middle classes tend to be the main beneficiaries of social benefits and services, even if these are primarily targeted at the poor.

The term is also used in a similar way in adult education to describe the distribution of adult learning across populations. In this case it refers to the phenomenon whereby adults who have the highest levels of initial education are most likely to engage in structured continuing learning, while those with the lowest levels of initial education are the least likely to engage in structured learning. All adults, of course, engage in incidental, informal learning throughout life for survival purposes.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

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