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More on Micro-Cultures, Financial Success, and the “Nature vs. Nurture” Question

November 9, 2018 No Comments

Friday, November 9, 2018

Delray Beach, Florida.- On October 18, I posted an essay www.markford.net/success-in-life-its-all-about-micro-culture about the relationship between success in life and something I call “micro-culture.”

The main points I made in that essay:

* What matters most in human development is not one’s macro-culture but one’s micro-culture. Let’s call that the 40 or 50 people that surround you from birth to age, say, 16.

* Let’s make it 49 people, bringing in the social biological concept of the 7-person limit of influence. (7 x 7 = 49)

* Micro-cultures that value hard work, intelligence/education, and financial success produce financially successful adults. Micro-cultures that lack these values produce adults that struggle or fail financially.

Since then, I’ve had some further thoughts:

* Culture is not just about values but also about expectation. It’s not just that certain micro-cultures value hard work, intelligence/education, and financial success, it’s that their members are expected to live those values.

* Another factor in determining success is an individual one. I call it self-sorting (for lack of a better word). The idea is that within any environment – academic, social, or business – people tend to sort themselves along a line from the back end to the front end. This is their pecking-order comfort zone. They do this regardless of how active or competitive the environment is.

* I am not sure whether one’s pecking-order comfort zone is solely determined by individual circumstance or whether it may be one of the values of the micro-culture. I’ve got to do a bit of research on that. But it’s possible that it is a cultural value. And if it is, that’s interesting, right?

I’m still working on this. But the more I think about it, the more I think it is the seed of an idea that I should develop into a monograph. Maybe even a book.

Hmmm. Stay tuned…

Success in Life? It’s All About Micro-Culture

October 18, 2018 No Comments

There’s a longstanding nature-versus-nurture debate among social psychologists. Wrestling with it doesn’t get you very far, because it’s not a real question. Nature matters. Nurture matters. But what matters most is micro-culture.

(Micro-culture is a term that doesn’t yet exist. I’m making it up to denote the close circle of people that surround and influence you during your formative years.)

What you accomplish in life – in terms of every aspect of success, from mental health to longevity to self-satisfaction to your career – is due much more to micro-culture than to any other single factor. So why haven’t researchers figured that out?

To wit: A recent University of Minnesota study has academics scratching their heads.

Led by epidemiologist Theresa Osypuk, the study followed the lives of youngsters born into poverty in the 1990s. Some of them were given vouchers that allowed them to move out of public housing and into better neighborhoods. And what happened to the kids who made the move? The researchers found that the girls were far less likely to drink heavily than the girls left in the housing projects. But the boys binged more.

As the WSJ put it, “The findings challenged the assumption that behavioral risks increase with economic hardships and that poverty affects women and men the same way.”

How could that be?