Malcolm Gladwell's The Matthew Effect

According to Malcolm Gladwell's interpretation, the Matthew Effect is that those who are successful are provided with special opportunities, which leads to further success. Success is based on “accumulative advantage” (page 30). Gladwell's quotation of the verse from the Bible says that those who have will be given more while those who have not will lose what they had. This is because people who are born with certain advantages will only have more of an advantage and the certain advantages will only spiral upwards from that point on.

A meritocracy is the system in which success comes from hard work and talent. Malcolm Gladwell thinks that Canadian hockey players aren't an example of meritocracy because they're chosen based on their date

of birth and ultimately their physical stature. The biggest nine and ten years old receive the most attention and best teaching. Those hockey players begin slightly better and that little difference causes an opportunity “that makes that difference a bit bigger, and that edge in turn leads to another opportunity, which makes the initially small difference bigger on and on until the hockey player is a genuine outlier” (page 30). Other factors that intervene are competitive teams, coaches, opportunities to play and practice, and opportunities to play games against other more competitive teams.