Imagine that you heard the interview of the last winner of the Loto, holding this speech: “If I won, it is because I played the numbers that really have a meaning in my life, and because I believed in my lucky star. I never got discouraged, despite the failures and always replayed the same numbers, week after week. You too, find your good numbers. Hang on and never give up, because if I have could win, then you can too”. You’ll probably smirk because you know winning the Lotto is just pure chance and that almost all people who apply the same method every week of their life will never win.
And yet, a similar discourse is served up to us every day in the media, which likes nothing more than to interview successful people – athletes, artists, entrepreneurs – and ask them for their recipes for success. Just recently, the director and actor Jean-Pascal Zadi declared on France Inter : “If I had a César, everyone has a chance […] because I am really the last of the lousy people”. Invariably, the recipes for success are the same: work or training, believing in it and never giving up. These are undoubtedly important ingredients for success. But they are not enough, indeed, this list has two blind spots: genetic predispositions and chance.
The influence of genetics on cognitive and physical abilities
No athlete can reach the very top level without exceptional physical abilities, largely due to their genetic predispositions. The same is true for artists, entrepreneurs, intellectuals, who can only succeed at the highest level if they possess skills and talents that also depend in part on their genetic heritage. Although genetic influences on cognitive faculties are more controversial than on physical abilities, they are now established beyond reasonable doubt by a body of converging evidence.
Recent studies by no means say that people’s fates are set in stone in DNA. But simply that DNA also plays a certain role, in interaction with all family, social and environmental factors. Without the right predispositions, the most hard training and work will undoubtedly improve the performance, but will never allow to reach the very high level or international recognition.
Asking only winners propagates survivorship bias
Recipes for success also often overlook the role of chance, which is so important in our lives. How many entrepreneurs, athletes, artists, competition winners owe their success to having grasped an idea during a conversation or reading, to having been in the right place at the right time, to have met the right person, to have come across the right subject, that a better-placed competitor had an accident on the course or to have yourself escaped all the grains of sand that can derail the machines better oiled, the best predispositions and the hardest work? For a winner, how many losers who had the same chances at the start and who failed because of countless factors beyond their control?
The problem is that the media, by only interviewing the winners, gives a totally distorted view of the situation: this is known as the survivor’s bias. And the recipes given by the winners are above all a story that they reconstruct to give meaning to their journey, but where chance and predispositions are rarely invoked. This systematically biased discourse on recipes for success has consequences. By making people believe that anyone can achieve anything if they believe in it, work hard at it and never give up, it can inspire many people to set illusory goals, to make a lasting commitment in ways doomed to failure, when they could be more successful by devoting themselves to goals better suited to their predispositions and opportunities. Moreover, this discourse tends to unnecessarily blame people who fail, by placing the sole responsibility on them for not having worked hard enough or for not having believed in it enough.
We won’t convince the media to pay as much attention to the losers as to the winners. The best one can hope is that both journalists and interviewees become aware of the survivorship bias they are feeding, that the stories they tell are incomplete at best, and the harmfulness of injunctions. to the success they convey.