Tall Poppy Research Articles

Cutting tall poppies down to size lessons from the tyrants of ancient Rome.

Cutting tall poppies down to size lessons from the tyrants of ancient Rome.

Overcoming Tall Poppy Syndrome in New Zealand Using Moral Foundations Theory and Christian Humility

New Zealand has an unspoken commandment: ‘thou shalt not be a tall poppy’. A tall poppy is someone who stands out from the crowd, usually by excelling at one or more pursuits. Sadly, many New Zealanders are all too familiar with this phrase as they have been ‘cut down’ by those around them, taunted for their success and discouraged from celebrating their achievements. This social phenomenon of cutting down tall poppies is called Tall Poppy Syndrome and is present in many areas of New Zealand culture, such as sport, academic achievement, and entrepreneurship. Consequently, the church is not immune to this phenomenon. Tall Poppy Syndrome, whether within or outside the church, discourages excellence and prevents flourishing. This article engages Moral Foundations Theory to understand why Tall Poppy Syndrome exists in New Zealand, and then proposes Christian humility as a remedy for Tall Poppy Syndrome within the church. When humility and excellence can co-exist, then Tall Poppy Syndrome will no longer exist; thus the church could have an important role in enabling New Zealand to be a place where tall poppies can freely flourish.

High achievers, Schadenfreude and Gluckschmerz in New Zealanders and Chinese.

The willingness to support (or denigrate) high-profile individuals online was examined across cultures using the Tall Poppy Scale. A sample of 106 Chinese and 164 New Zealand Europeans answered an online questionnaire addressing their preference for high achievers to be rewarded or fail. Participants were asked whether they would vote to support reality TV contestants, and offered further information (about success or failure) on a debrief page. The Favour Reward scale predicted willingness to vote and support others. The Favour Fall subscale tended to predict time spent viewing achievement-related information on a debrief page. The Chinese sample did not prefer reward of high achievers, instead favoring their fall, but spent less time per click on the debrief page, suggesting they disliked recognizing individual achievement.

Farmers that engage in entrepreneurship for the “wrong” reason and the moderating role of cultural intolerance

In the agricultural sector, the Law of Jante—a Scandinavian form of cultural intolerance towards standing out, being different and overachieving (akin to the Tall Poppy Syndrome and The nail that sticks out gets hammered down culture found in other countries)—may play an important role by influencing when entrepreneurship is an acceptable strategic choice to adversity. Based on a three group, between-subjects experiment of 122 Swedish university students studying agricultural and rural management, we tested whether the advice our participants gave to a fictitious farmer to pursue entrepreneurial activity depended on information regarding the farmer's motivation to pursue entrepreneurship (experimental treatments included motivation scenarios based on necessity vs. opportunity driven vs. control). Moreover, we test whether entrepreneurial advice is moderated by the participants own “Jante-ness”. Unexpectedly, we found that our participants did not adapt the entrepreneurship advice they give to the situational context, nor does Jante play a moderating role; instead we found that Jante had a significant and negative main effect on the entrepreneurial advice given. This finding suggests that Jante is still very much alive and may play an important role in explaining relatively low rates of innovation and entrepreneurship in (Swedish) agriculture.

Attitudes towards favoring the fall of Tall Poppies: The role of Social Dominance Orientation, Authoritarianism, Political Ideologies, and Self-Esteem

ABSTRACT Individuals occupying high-status positions are sometimes victims of the tall poppy syndrome where people want to see them cut down to size. These attitudes reflect a tension between achievement, authority, and equality. In a pre-registered study (Study 1: N = 47,951), and a replication (Study 2: N = 5,569), of two representative New Zealand samples we investigated how social dominance orientation, right-wing authoritarianism, political ideologies and self-esteem predicted favoring the fall of the tall poppy. Novel findings showed individuals high in social dominance orientation favored the fall of the tall poppy. In both studies, high authoritarian aggression and submission, and low conventionalism (in Study 1 only) were also associated with negative tall poppy attitudes. So too were individuals with lower self-esteem and who were less conservative in their political ideology. These findings advance our understanding of how group-based hierarchy and inequality relate to attitudes toward individuals in high-status positions.

Waiter, there’s a fly in my coffee!

Waiter, there’s a fly in my coffee!

Legal and financial constraints and firm growth: small and medium enterprises (SMEs) versus large enterprises

We investigate the impact of financing and legal obstacles on firm growth across different firm sizes before and after the global financial crisis (GFC). Using two enterprise surveys in Vietnam, we find firms facing higher financing obstacles have lower sales and employment growth. The smallest firms are the most adversely affected by financing obstacles. The legal obstacles impede the employment growth of SMEs more than large enterprises, which is attributable to the tendency of firms to avoid tall poppy syndrome and the scrutiny of tax officials. Furthermore, we find that the negative effects of financing obstacles on small firms' sales and employment growth reduce in the post-GFC period. We attribute it to a higher proportion of small firms being able to borrow from commercial banks after the financial crisis, partly due to the introduction of new policies supporting SMEs from the Vietnamese Government. Overall, our findings recommend to policymakers that improvement in access to finance is imperative for productivity increases and job creation for small and medium firms.

Where Has Cardinal Pell's Case Brought Us in the Australian Church?

Where Has Cardinal Pell’s Case Brought Us in the Australian Church? Frank Brennan SJ Pope John Paul II’s biographer George Weigel, writing the Introduction to Cardinal Pell’s Prison Journal, describes this writer as one who ‘had previously held no brief for Cardinal Pell’ and as ‘one who was a severe critic’.1 I plead guilty to both charges. Nevertheless, having attended parts of his two criminal trials and having studied all the publicly available transcript, I am convinced of Pell’s innocence of the criminal charges he faced, and I am further convinced that the Australian Royal Commission failed to accord him natural justice in their pursuit of a necessary big scalp for media delectation. Pell is a culture warrior inside and outside the church. In this role, he has triumphed; and in this role, he has suffered. I am a Jesuit who has adopted positions at odds with him inside and outside the church, and I probably will again. I am happy to respond to the question from the editor of Studies: ‘Where has Cardinal Pell’s case brought us in the Australian church?’ The Australian church, whether this means Pell supporters or Pell critics within it, is trying to move on from the trauma and publicity of trials and media titillation about all but impossible criminal sexual activity in a cathedral sacristy immediately after solemn Mass. The trauma and titillation have been fuelled by incompetent policing, improper prosecution, shoddy journalism, judicial failure and nefarious Vatican financial transactions. Since the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, there have been some necessary reforms. Laws have been enacted making it easier for complainants to bring civil proceedings claiming damages against the church for child sexual abuse by clergy and church personnel. The civil law now guarantees that a plaintiff has access to an entity capable of being sued. The usual limitation period of six years after attainment of adulthood has been removed. And deeds of release from liability can be overridden if a court thinks it just and reasonable to do so. These are welcome legal reforms. Victims not wanting to sue can access a government-administered national redress scheme similar to those set up Studies • volume 110 • number 437 36 by the church in the last thirty years, but with no church involvement in the administration or determination of claims. The Royal Commission trumpeted this reform, but victims are finding government bureaucrats no better than church bureaucrats in processing their claims. Since the Royal Commission and Pell trials, the church has lost most of its public standing and credibility when agitating for justice and the common good. Thus church leaders tend to confine their advocacy to matters relevant only to the church’s own self-interest over against the state. Secularists welcome this development, but it probably means reduced advocacy for the poorest and most marginalised members of society. There are times when a church voice can help. Or at least it did in the past. Pell faced criminal trials that were conducted under suppression orders. This meant the public was not able to follow the evidence in the trials day by day. The public was simply presented with a final verdict followed by an internationally-televised, live public sentencing, at which the trial judge had to operate on the basis that the jury had made the right decision. Once the suppression orders were lifted, three books with popular appeal were published, all critical of Pell and the church.2 Only now are books more attentive to the evidence and therefore supportive of Pell starting to appear.3 Pell has published his Prison Journal and conducted an international media campaign aimed at restoring his standing, particularly with the more conservative Catholics in the USA and the UK. Cardinal Pell: some background Cardinal Pell is the Australian who has been most highly promoted in the Catholic church. We Australians are noted for our egalitarianism and our irreverence towards those in authority. It’s known as the ‘tall poppy syndrome’. Any poppy that grows too tall is cut down to the size of others in the field. Pell has long been a divisive figure in the...

Appreciation of achievement and a behavioural preference to view failure: Schadenfreude online

The Tall Poppy Scale was used to examine individual differences in: 1) the appreciation of high achievers; 2) associated online behaviours. A sample of 165 New Zealand Europeans completed a decisional self-esteem scale and the Favour Reward and Favour Fall scales. Participants were then offered a debrief screen providing information about achievements or failures, and their interactions with the debrief screen were tracked. Participants with lower decisional self-esteem preferred that high achievers failed. Those expressing an interest in the failure of high achievers spent more time and clicked more on the debrief screen. Schadenfreude – interest (or pleasure) in the misfortune of others - was demonstrated behaviourally online.

Does the tall poppy syndrome exist in America?

Does the tall poppy syndrome exist in America?

Legitimate earnings inequality and national welfare commitment: Correspondence between economic institutions and the pay 80,000+ people in 30 nations think legitimate for ordinary jobs and for elite jobs

In formulating views of just reward for high-status and low-status work, do ordinary citizens take cues from their nation's public stance on income inequality as institutionally embedded in their welfare state, i.e. their social welfare and labor market policies, their "welfarism"? How large a morally correct earnings gap flows from that? Our multilevel analyses (fixed effects, random intercepts) replicate prior research on the impact of individual characteristics and socioeconomic development. They open new territory with the discovery that public opinion on legitimate/just earnings of high-status occupations aligns moderately strongly with welfarism, ceteris paribus, with welfare state citizens advocating lower pay for the elite but not higher pay for working-class occupations: The welfare state is not (or no longer) a matter of helping the poor but instead of bringing down the elite, "cutting down the tall poppies". Data: World Inequality Study v2.1: 30 countries, 71 surveys, and over 88,000 individuals.

Prestigious Journals, Predatory Publishers and the Tall Poppy Syndrome in Medicine

Fringe medicine (euphemistically called alternative), their articles (sometimes called throw aways) and products (supplements) have peacefully but uncomfortably coexisted with traditional medicine. The advent of the internet and the spread of misinformation have made traditional medicine evaluate its approach on all medical information. Traditional or prestigious journals, not without their own failings, are now in competition with the internet which includes open access e-journals, which have given rise to predatory publishers, as well as medical misinformation. Doctors must determine which articles are trustworthy. A new hybrid article may emerge.

The Gendered Nature of Emotional Ambivalence Towards Coworkers and Its Relational Consequences

Coworkers are a source of mixed emotions yet research on emotional ambivalence—i.e., the co-existing and intertwining positive and negative feelings toward a subject—toward peers in work groups is scarce. We draw from the literature on competitive dynamics in peer relationships to explore how women and men’s emotional ambivalence is elicited by the presence of a “tall poppy,” a peer who disproportionately and visibly performs better relative to his or her peers. Informed by role congruity theory, we assert that men are socialized into peer relationships that embrace competition and camaraderie, so men tend to exhibit emotional ambivalence toward peers regardless of whether the focal coworker is a “tall poppy.” By contrast, women are socialized into a gender role that emphasizes harmony and equality so the presence of a “tall poppy” violates the female gender role, thereby eliciting more emotional ambivalence compared to when women work with equally matched peers. Experiencing emotional ambivalence then results in attempts to relationally distance oneself from the source of mixed emotions (e.g., ostracism, withdrawal). Two experimental studies—a behavioral laboratory study with students and an online experiment with working adults—both provided full support for these theorized relationships.

Legitimizing entrepreneurial success in an environment of Tall Poppy syndrome: Lessons from celebrity entrepreneurs in New Zealand

In this article, we examine the phenomenon of Tall Poppy syndrome (TPS) in relation to entrepreneurship in New Zealand. TPS is based on the concept that some peoples’ success elevates or distinguishes them from others, resulting in envy from others. TPS has been highlighted as an important element of New Zealand’s culture. This may clash with government initiatives, which often focus on building a high profile for aspirant entrepreneurs. In this article, we carry out a qualitative study into 11 such ‘celebrity’ entrepreneurs in New Zealand. The key question of our study is how being held up as a celebrity affects their practice. By introducing the celebrity element into our study, we contribute further understanding about the processes of social legitimacy for entrepreneurs. This has important implications for policy and practice, because if entrepreneurs are ‘allowed’ to be successful, this may encourage them to influence another generation of entrepreneurs to challenge TPS.

Tall Poppies of Control [President's Message

Presents the President’s message for this issue of the publication.

Workplace bullying among healthcare professionals in Sweden: a descriptive study.

Workplace bullying is a taboo event which occurs worldwide, although the prevalence varies significantly between and within countries. Nurses have been regarded an occupational risk group for bullying at the work place. Bullying in health and social care contexts is sometimes reported as frequent and, other times, as not occurring, which sparked our interest in mapping the occurrence of bullying in the health and social care system in Sweden. Thus, the purpose of the study was to examine the prevalence of bullying, and to discuss cultural traditions and environmental factors that affect bullying in workplaces. The sample (n=2810) consisted of employees at inpatient wards at four hospitals, and employees at municipal eldercare wards in Sweden. A questionnaire including NAQ-22 R was distributed and subsequently analysed with descriptive statistics using SPSS. The youngest group of respondents scored higher than the older groups. Using contrasting estimates of bullying, the prevalence varied between 4.1 and 18.5%, with the lowest prevalence in regards to self-reported exposure. According to the cut-off scores, NAQ-22 R, 8.6% of the respondents were occasionally exposed to bullying while 2.3% were considered to be victims of severe bullying. Work-related negative acts were more common than personal negative acts. The variations in prevalence of bullying as a result of contrasting estimation strategies are discussed from perspective of the 'law of Jante', the 'tall poppy syndrome' and shame. Bullying deteriorates the working conditions which may have an impact on quality of patient care.

The joy of pain

PurposeRecent research on word-of-mouth (WOM) has presented consistent evidence on the importance of secondary WOM (sWOM) on online user-generated content (UGC) and on diffusion of positive and negative commercial information. The purpose of this paper is to investigate what motivates consumers to spread, via electronic WOM communication, negative information about commercial entities adversity using malicious verbal narratives. Based on concepts related to the joy of pain (schadenfreude) and gloating behavior the authors propose a set of hypotheses designed to test two key moderators (perceived deservingness and entity’s status) as well as the process of spiteful dissemination like content assimilation, dissemination time and duration.Design/methodology/approachThe research consists on a series of four studies using different research methods (surveys and experiments) and a mix of quantitative and qualitative analyses.FindingsResults show that actively communicating about others’ adversity (i.e. gloating behavior) provides an outlet to the passive observation of others’ adversity (i.e. schadenfreude feelings). Results indicate that schadenfreude and gloating are linked to the perceived deservingness of a commercial entity and entity status (the tall poppy syndrome). Results also show that malicious feelings and gloating behavior cause consumers to disseminate information more widely, more rapidly, for a longer period and frequently distort its content.Research limitations/implicationsThe findings contribute to literature on WOM by introducing an approach that highlights the potential negative effects of WOM on the dissemination of commercial information that might harm the relevant commercial entity’s reputation and goodwill.Originality/valueThis study illuminates the prevalence of negative rhetoric in WOM and supports the theory schadenfreude motives as a trigger for gloating behavior in the form of disseminating negative, malicious and intense WOM regarding commercial setbacks. This research is the first to examine and demonstrates that when it comes to WOM communication, schadenfreude feelings and gloating behavior might play a central role in the dissemination of negative information and the two constructs’ role in understanding infostorms, the sudden flow of large quantities of negative WOM using strong gleeful exultation. This study is the first to examine these phenomena in the business setting.

Competition, Rivalries, and the Tall Poppy Syndrome in Medicine and Orthopedics

Social comparisons, although often subconscious, contribute to defining who we are. We constantly compare ourselves to new acquaintances, neighbors, friends (often through social media), professional colleagues, and people in the media. Comparison allows us to identify ourselves: our self image, intellectual and physical abilities, and financial and social standing.

The Tall Poppy Syndrome in Orthopedics and Medicine

The Tall Poppy Syndrome (TPS) is a metaphor which symbolizes viewing a poppy field and noticing one poppy towering above the others; a penchant by an individual, group or society exists to cut down this tall poppy so that all are equal and uniform. A “tall poppy†is defined as someone with fame, fortune, achievements or skills. The syndrome has been identified in many countries with their own metaphors or phrases since antiquity. The entity is relatively unrecognized in the United States perhaps because of the constitutional rights of the individual and capitalism which is based on meritocracy. Lack of recognition does not negate existence. Daily examples may be found in the industries of sport, business, entertainment and especially politics. TPS may be noted in medicine since antiquity as well. Nearly every new discovery, technique, or rivalry is a breeding ground for TPS. One of medicine’s greatest rivalries occurred between Louis Pasteur (France) and Robert Koch (Germany) regarding the germ theory of disease. Their rivalry leads to denigrating each other privately, and at meetings which would also draw in other doctors often with a dose of nationalism for good measure. Envy was described as an early root of TPS especially in people with low self esteem [1]. The envier lacked what the tall poppy possessed and had the option to improve (good envy) or denigrate or cut down the tall poppy (bad envy). Further psychosocial studies have extended behaviors to include deservingness and resentment as well as others [2].

Xavier Herbert. Requiem for Genius

In today’s global celebrity culture it’s hard to imagine a word more over-used and abused than ‘genius’. It is a slippery word with a long and contradictory conceptual history. Yet, in the Land of the Tall Poppy, self-confessions of genius invariably have paved a broad road to public ridicule and denigration. Xavier Herbert’s notion of genius was not static. It changed throughout his life and it evolved through his writing. He agreed with Carlyle that the first condition of genius must always be a ‘transcendent capacity of taking trouble’ and on this foundation he built his own concept of genius, as the unending ‘capacity for loving’. This article explores what genius meant to Xavier Herbert and how it translated into his fiction, before considering how our sense of genius today influences the way we respond to his most challenging fictions of love and hate, 'Capricornia' and 'Poor Fellow My Country'.