Ecological Fallacy And Matthew Effect

The problem of ecological fallacy in generalizing facts based on a belief system

Discuss about the Ecological Fallacy In National Culture Research.

It is seen that men drivers are generally more efficient than their women counterpart. The general assumption is that the men are more precise and efficient at driving. However, in individual cases it might be seen that a woman driver is exceeding the driving skills of other male drivers. This is an example of ecological fallacy.

Ecological fallacy is the problem of assuming a particular fact on the basis of a widespread belief. The widespread belief is that smoking causes cancer, however it might be seen that in a particular case even excessive smoking might not have caused cancer. So the idea that is perceived to be true by the larger section of the population may not be true in individual or smaller number of cases (Brewer and Venaik 2014).

There is a widespread belief about the scarcity of driving skills in women. There are few statistics which however show that the men drivers are involved in more number of accidents, but this is mainly because number of miles’ males drive is considerably more than women. So it can be taken at face value that a particular woman drives worse than a particular man. This fallacy may be a cause uninformed opinion as an individual woman may easily be superior in driving than anyone else. However, the perception of women as driver is changing for the better these days. Studies say that women are more likely to be obedient followers of traffic laws and they are more careful while driving.

According to studies men are paying more for insurance, that may be because of the perception about men that they engage in more reckless driving and risky behaviors on the streets.

“As widely believed women are still causing more accidents on the streets than men, proves study”

In the above headline the term “widely believed” has been used which denotes the ecological fallacy of assuming that the women drivers are less skilled in driving than the men. There may be some statistics which may show that in a particular region in a particular time frame women have caused more accidents but that does not signify that the women universally are more likely to cause accidents and the women drivers are individually less skilled.

A recent study has shown that the women are recently causing more accidents than men.”

The widespread belief about female drivers and the truth behind the statistics

In this headline the ecological fallacy has been corrected as the terms “as widely believed” has been removed. Now it seems more like that a particular study has found trends that the women may be causing more accidents in a particular area in a particular time frame which may be the case, therefore the problem of the ecological fallacy is solved in this second headline. Generalizing facts on the basis of widespread belief system is the phenomenon of “ecological fallacy”.

5. Two examples of suicidal prophecies
6. The fear of an interview at the office where a person has applied gave rise to the feeling that the interview would be botched up, in that anxiety the applicant starts to prepare for the interview in an unprecedented way. The person started watching YouTube videos, reading articles about probable questions at the interview being scared about the consequences that might follow if the interview is botched up. The individual works hard day and night to avert any untoward and unwanted situation at the interview. Ultimately when the interview day comes it is seen that the interview went perfectly because of the knowledge that the person received in order to avert the fear of the interview getting botched up.
7. A top performing international cricket team has an upcoming international match with another international team but which is smaller and having not many good records at the international cricket scenario. Therefore, the top performing cricket team assumes that they will win the match very easily and there are not much reasons to practice a lot. This leads to the behavior that the players do not practice and they take the cricket match very casually. This results in the top cricket team loosing on the match day in the hand of the smaller cricket team. Therefore, the assumption and belief of the players of the top performing cricket team about winning the match results in the reversal of the situation where they actually lose the match.
8. Description of each of these suicidal prophecies
9. In the first case the self-fulfilling prophecy of the fact that the interview will be botched up gives rise to the situation where the individual designs his behavior in a way that the prophecy is not fulfilled, it actually is reversed and the interview actually goes well. This can be an ideal case of “suicidal prophecy” (Jussim 2012). The theory of suicidal prophecy is that the self-fulfilling prophecy dies out because of the change in pattern of the behavior of the individual or the group of people which is caused by the idea of the self-fulfilling prophecy.
10. In the second case the suicidal prophecy is seen to be formulating in a team scenario. In this situation the self-fulfilling prophecy that “the smaller team is weaker therefore the stronger team will win” is defeated by the change in behavior of the players of the stronger team. The players do not practice seriously and shows an attitude of carelessness towards their commitment to the games, which causes the team to lose. This is a case of suicidal prophecy in terms of a group scenario.

Matthew effect is the name of the phenomenon which summarizes the idea that the beneficial section of the society gets more benefits and the weaker section becomes weaker. Or in other words it also summarizes the idea that “success brings success” with it (Azoulay, Stuart and Wang 2013). The concept was devised by Robert K Merton in 1968 and the name of the theory was derived from the biblical text “the Gospel of Matthew”.  In the Parable of talents, it is mentioned that “For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away. — Matthew 25:29, RSV.” In addition, “I tell you, that to everyone who has will more be given; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away. — Luke 19:26, RSV.” Therefore, the concept has been reprised and presented in the new form as the “Matthew effect”

One example of Matthew effect is the fact that the large industries keeps on adding to their wealth and becomes richer by the day. Apple which is a successful technological company continues to draw benefits from its success and increases its wealth by adding new products, new stores, and new software to its lineup.

The Matthew effect mentioned above can be described well by exploring the history in which the company Apple Inc. has grown by the day. The company started with a very humble beginning but saw the face of success by the innovation it brought with its products. This success was multiplied into more successes as time went by. Apple McIntosh computers became very popular, Apple iPhone became craze, and its software were in high demand. This is the ideal example of the fact that how the first instance of success brought further success to the company which enabled it to grow to a gigantic size, and today the company is the largest tech company of the world. Therefore, if success can be achieved once in a given scenario, automatically more number of successes follow. The case is the same with failure when a failure can result in a number of wrong decisions from the authority which may cause further failures. This is what is Matthew effect in terms of success and failure in any given context. Google also had a humble beginning in a garage, but as days passed by Google experienced many successes which helped the company to become the world’s largest company. The company still today takes failure as a challenge and even small failures are seen as major challenges that pose a threat to the growth of the company.

References:

Azoulay, P., Stuart, T. and Wang, Y., 2013. Matthew: Effect or fable?. Management Science, 60(1), pp.92-109.

Brewer, P. and Venaik, S., 2014. The ecological fallacy in national culture research. Organization Studies, 35(7), pp.1063-1086.

Jussim, L., 2012. Social perception and social reality: Why accuracy dominates bias and self-fulfilling prophecy. OUP USA.

Kagan, J., 2018. Galen's prophecy: Temperament in human nature. Routledge.

Loney, T. and Nagelkerke, N.J., 2014. The individualistic fallacy, ecological studies and instrumental variables: a causal interpretation. Emerging themes in epidemiology, 11(1), p.18.

Merton, R.K., 2016. The self-fulfilling prophecy. The Antioch Review, 74(3), pp.504-521.

Perc, M., 2014. The Matthew effect in empirical data. Journal of The Royal Society Interface, 11(98), p.20140378.

Sedgwick, P., 2015. Understanding the ecological fallacy. BMJ: British Medical Journal (Online), 351.