thefreetrendz
Is Success A Product of Luck or Hard Work?
During the covid-19 lockdown, this headline about Success, Luck and Hard work went viral. Nearly half of men say they do most of the home schooling, 3% of women agree. I bring this up not to debate who's right but because it's a great example of something called egocentric bias.
Most people think they do most of the work. For example, researchers have asked authors of multi-author papers what percentage of the work they personally did. The result for the percentages sum is on average 140%. When couples are asked to estimate how much of the house work they do, the combined total is almost always over 100%.
Now you might think this is because people want to appear more helpful than they actually are, but that's not it. When couples are asked what fraction of the fights they start or how much of the mess is theirs, the total is again over 100%.
People think they do more of the work but they also think they cause more of the problems. So why is this? I think it's simply because, you experience and remember vividly all of what you do but not all of what everyone else does.
So naturally you overestimate your own contributions and underestimate others. I think this bias leads us to underestimate the influence of other things on our lives, like the role luck plays in our success.
Let us use hockey players for example, if you ask a professional hockey player how they managed to reach the National Hockey League (NHL),
Is Success A Product of Luck or Hard Work?
During the covid-19 lockdown, this headline about Success, Luck and Hard work went viral. Nearly half of men say they do most of the home schooling, 3% of women agree. I bring this up not to debate who's right but because it's a great example of something called egocentric bias.
Most people think they do most of the work. For example, researchers have asked authors of multi-author papers what percentage of the work they personally did. The result for the percentages sum is on average 140%. When couples are asked to estimate how much of the house work they do, the combined total is almost always over 100%.
Now you might think this is because people want to appear more helpful than they actually are, but that's not it. When couples are asked what fraction of the fights they start or how much of the mess is theirs, the total is again over 100%.
People think they do more of the work but they also think they cause more of the problems. So why is this? I think it's simply because, you experience and remember vividly all of what you do but not all of what everyone else does.
So naturally you overestimate your own contributions and underestimate others. I think this bias leads us to underestimate the influence of other things on our lives, like the role luck plays in our success.
Let us use hockey players for example, if you ask a professional hockey player how they managed to reach the National Hockey League (NHL),