Tall Poppy Research Articles

Judgments of Deservingness: Studies in the Psychology of Justice and Achievement

This article presents a review and conceptual analysis of the concept of deservingness that incorporates the effects of personal values, perceived responsibility, ingroup-outgroup relations, and like-dislike relations. Selected studies show that reactions to another's success or failure and to the rise or fall of "tall poppies" or high achievers depends on the degree to which the positive or negative outcome is seen to be deserved; that individual differences in personal values and in value syndromes may be assumed to affect deservingness via the subjective values assigned to actions and outcomes; that group membership, status, interpersonal liking-disliking, and perceived moral character also affect judgments of deservingness; and that deservingness is a key variable that mediates how observers react to penalties imposed on the perpetrators of different kinds of offense. It is argued that the inclusion of deservingness goes beyond approaches in which perceived responsibility is accorded central status by adding a further link in the causal chain, thus enabling a more complete consideration of the effects of justice and value variables on how people react to positive and negative outcomes for both self and other.

What is a tall poppy among Web pages?

Search engines and indices were created to help people find information amongst the rapidly increasing number of World Wide Web (WWW) pages. The search engines automatically visit and index pages so that they can retum good matches for their users' queries. The way that this indexing is done varies from engine to engine and the detail is usually secret although the strategy is sometimes made public in general terms. The search engines' aim is to return relevant pages quickly. On the other hand, the author of a Web page has a vested interest in it rating highly, for appropriate queries, on as many search engines as possible. Some authors have an interest in their page rating well for a great many types of query indeed—spamming has come to the Web. We treat modelling the workings of WWW search engines as an inductive inference problem. A training set of data is collected, being pages returned in response to typical queries. Decision trees are used as the model class for the search engines' selection criteria although this is not to say that search engines actually contain decision trees. A machine learning program is used to infer a decision tree for each search engine, an information-theory criterion being used to direct the inference and to prevent over-fitting.

Time to Champion Our Tall Poppies

Time to Champion Our Tall Poppies

Measuring motivational gravity: Likert or scenario scaling?

Despite a growing body of findings that individualistic achievers incur punitive social costs in the workplaces of collectivistic and equalitarian cultures, little attention has so far been paid to measuring such motivational gravity in psychometrically appropriate ways. From egalitarian Australia, reports psychometric data from two organizational surveys, evaluating the 20‐item “Tall Poppy Scale” (TPS), a Likert instrument which measures attitudes towards high achievers in society, and the twin‐item “Motivational Gravity Scenario Scale” (MGSS), which focuses instead on behavioural intentions towards high achievers in one’s own workplace. In Study I, involving 80 employees of a retail chain, scores on the TPS were significantly and positively associated with social desirability effects on the Marlowe‐Crowne Scale, whereas the MGSS remained free of such confounding. In Study II, 47 employees of a major service organization rated the MGSS as significantly more satisfactory than did 49 university undergraduates, who preferred the TPS. Workplace scenarios may be more appropriate than the conventional Likert TPS for describing organizational cultures, but recommends the development of multiple‐item instruments for assessing individual differences in motivational gravity.

Tall poppies in sport: Attitudes and ascribed personality traits

Attitudes towards high-profile sport performers as well as their perceived personality characteristics were examined. Some of these performers (Group A) had received publicity for being gay, being HIV positive, or using steroids, while others (Group B) had not been portrayed in this way. Results indicated that attitudes towards the athletes in Group A were more negative than attitudes towards the athletes in Group B. Differences were also obtained with respect to ascribed personality traits, with athletes in Group A viewed as less rule-oriented, less self-controlled, less honest, less trustworthy, and lower in integrity than athletes in Group B. Findings are discussed in relation to values within Australian society and the institution of sport, as well as psychological mechanisms such as halo effects, social comparison processes, and “just world” beliefs.

Intensive family preservation programs: What are they?

This paper outlines the basic characteristics of intensive family preservation programs which have very recently been introduced into the child welfare systems of most Australian States. Typically these programs have been used to prevent placement or to assist families whose children are being returned to their care. Highly intensive and with 24 hour availability these short-term services draw on a range of theoretical approaches and are delivered in the family's home and natural environment. It is argued that Australia should avoid both the ‘cultural cringe’ and the ‘Tall Poppy Syndrome’ in assessing what intensive family preservation services may have to offer us.

Devaluing achievement within a culture: Measuring the cultural cringe

Abstract Cultural cringe attitudes involve a downgrading of a nation's products and achievements in comparison with other countries and a belief that the quality of these products and achievements should be validated by overseas authorities. A 16-item measure of the cultural cringe in Australia was developed and administered to 289 high-school students in metropolitan Adelaide and 281 students at Flinders University. These subjects also completed measures concerned with national identity, identification with Australia, attitudes towards high achievers (“tall poppies”), estimated past, present, and future standing of both self and Australia, and global self-esteem. Results provided no evidence of a general cultural cringe in either sample. Consistent with social identity theory, subjects reporting Australian identity were less likely to devalue their culture's products and achievements and more likely to report positive identification with Australia than subjects reporting some other national identity. Cul...

Global Self-Esteem and Attitudes Toward the High Achiever for Australian and Japanese Students

This study compared two samples of Australian and Japanese University students in regard to global self-esteem and their attitudes toward high achievers, or tall poppies'. It was predicted that the Japanese students would show lower levels of global self-esteem than the Australian students and would be more in favor of seeing high achievers fall. This prediction was based on the assumption that construals of self tend to be more interdependent and less independent in the Japanese culture than in the Australian culture. Results supported this prediction and also indicated a negative correlation between global self-esteem and the favor fall' variable in the Australian sample, which was consistent with theoretical expectation and with previous findings

Australian and japanese attitudes towards the fall of high achievers

Australian and Japanese university students responded to hypothetical scenarios in which either a high or an average achieving student or golfer either maintained or failed to maintain their initial performance status. It was predicted that subjects in both cultures would feel relatively more pleased when the high achiever rather than the average achiever suffered a fall when compared with differences in the maintain condition (a tall poppy effect). This prediction was not supported, but results did indicate that the Japanese students saw the high achiever as relatively more assertive than the average achiever when compared with the Australian students, and that they also reacted more negatively in various ways when the stimulus person suffered a fall. Initially, the high achiever was envied more than the average achiever, and the difference was greater for the stimulus person who was a student, implying a relevance effect However, the golfer was especially favoured by the Japanese students. Results were discussed in relation to cross-cultural differences and the need to provide contextual information in hypothetical scenarios when investigating reactions to the success and failure of high and average achievers.

A vision splendid: Gifted education in Australia

For decades, Australians have been subjected to the “tall poppy” syndrome which has resulted in cutting back the education and nurturing of individual gifts and talents. Organizations such as the Australian Association for the Education of the Gifted and Talented, State Associations and the Commonwealth Schools Commission have contributed to the evaluation of provisions for the gifted and talented children. The approaches in each state and territory are varied, the current positions, policies, and practices reflecting the growth surge of interest in catering for the needs of the gifted.

Attitudes towards the high achiever: Effects of perceiver's own level of competence

Abstract This study investigated attitudes towards those who are conspicuously successful (tail poppies) and reactions when a tall poppy falls. High school students in Grade 11 answered a questionnaire designed to assess attitudes towards tall poppies, a modified version of the Rosenberg self–esteem scale, and questions about their own standing in class. Teachers' ratings of class achievement were also obtained. Students also provided their reactions to Ben Johnson's loss of the gold medal at the Seoul Olympics shortly after this event occurred. Results showed that students with low global self-esteem and low perceived self-competence were more likely to favour the fall of tall poppies and less likely to favour rewarding tall poppies when compared with those with high global self–esteem and high perceived self-competence. Students with low global self-esteem, however, were more likely to show sympathy for Ben Johnson (a fallen tall poppy) than students with high global self-esteem, although subjects in ge...

Attitudes towards high achievers in public life: Attributions, deservingness, personality, and affect

Abstract This study investigated subjects' attitudes towards nine vary prominent Australian public figures from the three domains of politics, sport, and entertainment. Results from a large sample of University students (N = 377) showed that subjects were more pleased about the success of the high achievers and more sorry, less pleased, and more disturbed about a hypothetical fall from their high positions. when the high achievement was attributed to internal causes, when it was seen to be deserved, and when the high achievers were judged to possess positive rather than negative personality charecteristics. High achievers were seen to deserve their high position more when their success was attributed more to internal causes and less to external assistance and when they were judged favourably as persons. Subject reported feeling more sorry, less pleased, and more disturbed about a hypothetical fall for which the high achievers were not responsible. Reviews results involving tall poppy attitudes, global sel...

Australian Cultural History

Preface F. B. Smith and S. L. Goldberg 1. The cultural ambivalence of Australian Religion Partick O'Farrell 2. Anglicanism David Hillard 3. The roots of Australian anti-suburbanism Alan Gilbert 4. 'Countrymindedness': the spread of an idea Don Aitkin 5. Egalitarianism John Hirst 6. State education and culture R. J. W. Selleck 7. Intellectuals for export: Australia in the 1920s Helen Bourke 8. Men of wealth W. D. Rubinstein 9. Modern nerves, nervous moderns David Walker 10. Royal progress: the Queen and her Australian subjects Peter Spearitt 11. Festivals of nationhood: the international exhibitions Graeme Davison 12. Cultural history: the 'high' and the 'popular' John Rickard 13. Populism and privilege in Australian painting Terry Smith 14. Body politics Robin Grove 15. Self-levelling tall poppies: the authorial self in (male) Australian literature Dirk den Hartog 16. Louise Hanson-Dyer: the emergence of a patron Jim Davidson Index.

Attitudes towards the high achiever: The fall of the tall poppy

Abstract Three studies are reported that concerna attitudes towards a person in a high position (the tall poppy) and towards, the tall poppy's fall. The studies were developed in relation to theoretical analyses concerned with value systems, envy, social comparison, and other psychological processes. In Study 1,531 students in South Australian high schools responded to scenarios in which either a high achiever or an average achiever experienced failure. Results showed that subjects reported feeling more pleased about a high achiever's fall than about an average achiever's fall, more pleased when a high achiever fell to the average position on the performance scale rather than to the bottom, and more pleased and friendly towards a high achiever who fell to the average position than towards an average achiever who fell to the bottom. In Study 2, 361 university students responded to scenarios in which a high achiever or an average achiever cheated at an examination. Results showed that the students were more...

Wastage among the tall poppies.

Medical Journal of AustraliaVolume 151, Issue 5 p. 294-297 On the Medicopolitical Beat Wastage among the tall poppies John Best, John Best SydneySearch for more papers by this author John Best, John Best SydneySearch for more papers by this author First published: 01 September 1989 https://doi.org/10.5694/j.1326-5377.1989.tb101200.xRead the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Volume151, Issue5September 1989Pages 294-297 RelatedInformation

Smart-Alec Journalism: The Press Mishandles the Australia Games

A small group of influential Australians — sportswriters and columnists — were able to indulge in their favourite intellectual sports of knocking, sniping, cringing and swiping at tall poppies when the inaugural Australia Games were held in Melbourne from 26 January to 3 February 1985.

Doctor bashing: tall poppies or tall stories?

Doctor bashing: tall poppies or tall stories?

Agrarian Society and the Pax Britannica in Northern India in the Early Nineteenth Century

It has been customary to view the effects of the British annexation of the Ceded and Conquered Provinces (1801–3) in terms of an abrupt caesura. Upon the whirling anarchy of the North Indian scene there suddenly fell the Pax Britannica. A political revolution was worked almost overnight. The tide of Sikh expansion was checked and turned back, Jat power penned in Bharatpur, Sindhia driven across the Chambal to his matchless rock citadel at Gwalior, and the Oudh nawabi stripped of its Doab, Rohilkhand and eastern districts. The second line of the political elite could not long survive this dismantling of the superior political structure. Although, at first, expediency impelled the use of large-scale intermediaries, the assertiveness of British rule and its hunger for revenue could tolerate no more than could the Mughals the existence of tall poppies along the principal strategic highway of its power between Benares and Delhi; and on their part the number of magnates capable of keeping their footing and making the rapid adjustment from warlordism to estate management were few indeed. Within two decades of 1801 a large proportion of the established magnates had been swept from the scene, and the remainder were finding that the sun of official favour had gone down while it was yet day.