Tall poppy syndrome

Three stages are named and listing all three is the point, since fear, impulse and act are the same thing at different degrees of expression and most instances never reach the third. Visibly is the operative qualifier, since what triggers the response is the visibility of the excelling rather than the excelling itself, which is why the remedy people reach for is concealment. Marsh places the term beside crabs in a pot and treats both as expressions of something more general, an impulse to even out advantage that appears in many or most cultures wherever inequality is perceived. Those perceived to be unfairly advantaged are strongly or forcibly encouraged to make restitution, and the same attitude attaches to advantages that can be neither helped nor shared. The impulse is not simply malice, which is where her treatment departs from the ordinary reproach. Aimed at a structure the same levelling drive is the centrifugal force she counts as healthy, the pressure working against ponzi schemes of celebrity, wealth and power. Aimed at a person it becomes this. The distinction between the two entries is worth keeping. Crabs in a pot describes a group holding back whoever tries to leave it, and tall poppy syndrome describes an attack on someone who has risen above peers, so one is about escape and the other about elevation. Envy supplies the mechanism in both cases, being the wish to right a perceived injustice in the allocation of glory.

Tall poppy syndrome is a well established expression in Australia and New Zealand and has been studied by Norman Feather, whose research found that people take pleasure in the fall of high achievers particularly where the achievement is seen as undeserved. The Law of Jante names the Scandinavian equivalent and crab mentality the Philippine one. Behavioural experiments record costly punishment of high earners in public goods games. Marsh's contribution is the connection to the centrifugal force, since treating the levelling impulse itself as healthy and locating the fault in its being aimed at an individual accounts for why the same societies show both strong egalitarianism and this behaviour.