Interplay of self, epiphany, and positive actions in shaping individual careers

In this work, we model an individual social career by a finite-size trajectory along a hexagonal lattice moving only forward. At each bifurcation, the individual makes a free-will choice to follow one or the other branch within an uncertain outcome. Considering that those choices are determined by an individual self built from endogenous characteristics, we assume they are random following a binomial distribution. As a result, the individual ascends or descends on the social scale via random progress through the series of bifurcations made at the encountered junctions. The related stochastic process is found to be diffusive. For different selves coming from different points on the social scale, progress does overlap. In addition, we include the possibility of continuous transition across the lattice caused external influences as an epiphany. The occurrence of a quantum leap resulting from an affirmative action opportunity is also included. We also treat the case of a social group being acted by a collective epiphany as with education. The results highlight the key effect of epiphanies and quantum leaps to promote upward mobility across social classes.