Behaviors and well-being

From Class Origin and Elite Position of Men in Business Firms in Sweden, 1993–2007: The Importance of Education, Cognitive Ability, and Personality by Erik Bihagen1, Magnus Nermo1 and Charlotta Stern, evidence supporting my contention that the bulk of success differentials resides within behaviors and values rather than, as was the case in the past, systemic discrimination. I have not read the report in full yet but the summary seems to bear this out. Sweden has the advantage of being historically pretty homogenous, thus stripping out most issues of differences in race and religion, leaving substantially discrimination based on class (and closely correlated, education).

The aim of the article was to study class origin effects on belonging to the organizational elite in large private Swedish companies between 1993 and 2007. We find a clear working class disadvantage. Decomposition analyses indicate that the social class gap in arriving at elite destinations between those of Service I and working class origins is due chiefly to differences in educational attainment, and only to a very small extent to which school one attends and which field one studies. Cognitive capacity is of rather minor importance net of schooling, but the importance of personality traits is of greater importance and increases over time. One striking result is that the importance of educational attainment for explaining the social class origin gap decreases markedly between 1993 and 2007. It was hypothesized that the ongoing expansion of the educational system would increase the importance of having a degree from more elite schools, but our findings do not support such a hypothesis. Instead, our analyses point to the increasing importance of personality traits over time. The results suggest that there is a change in the value of education and personality in the labour market, but as men of working class origins have disadvantages in both domains, the relative disadvantage of originating from the working class is rather stable. One interpretation of the apparently growing importance of personality traits could be that educational expansion inflates and undermines educational distinctions. Another interpretation would be that corporations in a post-industrial society increasingly demand members of the elite with a greater variation in skills such as extraversion.

An interesting finding is the way in which a ‘winning’ personality is associated with elite positions: even with all controls included, we find a clear personality gradient and a bonus for scoring high on most of the specified traits. This stands in contrast to cognitive ability, where higher levels are of importance to educational attainment, but where there is no net bonus of high values after controlling for achieved education. It seems that when it comes to elite recruitment, assuming that one has a university degree, it is better to be socially winning, including extraversion, than to be very smart. Elite positions, as we define them, often mean having a leading position, suggesting that leadership talents may be more closely associated with social skills than with cognitive skills. Also, it is plausible that personality is less easily measured than cognitive ability (Grönqvist, Öckert and Vlachos, 2010), which may mean that the importance of personality is even greater than what our analyses indicate.

If this proposition, that values and behaviors are the differentiator in achieved success (holding all other variables fixed), is born out, it forces to the forefront the challenging and prickly topic which I think is at the heart of future productivity - how do we recognize and measure the contribution of behaviors towards productivity, and how do parents transmit those values and behaviors.

I believe that books (and other narrative based instruments such as songs and ballads, poetry, hymns, social story-telling etc.) are a key element in that transmission. If this supposition is true, it calls into play to a much greater extent the issue of "quality" children's literature. It is not simply a matter of whether the books are well written but also the extent to which they assist in fostering and transmitting those values and behaviors conducive to future productivity, success and well-being.