The Other Type of Outliers

Another application of Malcolm Gladwell's observations about outliers occurred to me on the drive home today.

For those of you who have not read the book, here is the key point (actually, it's the only point) made in the book. People like to speculate about whether success is due to being hardworking (internal causes) or lucky (external clauses). However, people who are just hardworking or just lucky are not going to be as successful as those who are both hardworking and lucky. Most of Gladwell's book is a series of case studies of true outliers like Bill Gates, showing that in each case they had both properties.

Of course, a series of non-random samples isn't proof of anything. But basic common sense suggests this should be true: those who have both internal and external causes in their favor are the most likely to be at the far end of the distribution.

What I was thinking about today was the other end of the distribution, about people who are extremely unsuccessful. The same reasoning as above applies. These should generally be people who have both internal and external causes of failure.

As one specific example of this, we could consider people who commit heinous crimes. Such characters are described in many novels, and each novel is in a way pontificating about whether the causes are internal or external. For example, is their behavior down to having an innately evil psychology (internal cause) or being in an environment which would push someone toward such behavior (external cause). It stands to reason that they should have both.