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.

KEYWORDS:

• authoritarianism
• RWA
• SDO
• social dominance
• tall poppies

Acknowledgments

The New Zealand Attitudes and Values Study is supported by a grant from the Templeton Religion Trust (TRT0196).

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Mathew D. Marques: Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal analysis, Writing, Writing – Review & Editing, Visualization, Supervision

N.T. Feather: Conceptualization, Writing, Writing – Review & Editing, Supervision

Darren E.J. Austin: Conceptualization, Writing, Writing – Review & Editing

Chris G. Sibley: Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal analysis, Investigation, Resources, Data Curation, Writing, Writing – Review & Editing, Supervision, Funding acquisition

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data availability statement

The data described in the paper are part of the New Zealand Attitudes and Values Study (NZAVS). Full copies of the NZAVS data files are held by all members of the NZAVS management team and advisory board. A de-identified dataset containing the variables analyzed in this manuscript is available upon request from the corresponding author, or any member of the NZAVS advisory board for the purposes of replication or checking of any published study using NZAVS data. The Mplus syntax used to test all models reported in this manuscript are available on the NZAVS website: www.nzavs.auckland.ac.nz. Our Mplus syntax and output is also available on the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/dp92q/) and in the Online Supplementary File.

Open scholarship

This article has earned the Center for Open Science badges for Open Materials and Preregistered. The materials are openly accessible at https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/XZAQY.

Notes

1. In addition to valuing humility and other things the anthesis of being a tall poppy, New Zealanders like Australians, also place a high value on sport.

2. SES was assessed using the decile ranked (1 = least deprived, 10 = most deprived) NZ deprivation index (Atkinson et al., 2013).

3. Education was coded into an 11-level ordinal variable (0 = no qualification, 1 = Level 1 Certificate [basic knowledge/skills for work] to 10 = doctoral degree) based on the ten tertiary qualification levels in New Zealand.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Templeton Religion Trust [TRT0196].

Notes on contributors

Mathew D. Marques

Mathew D. Marques is a Lecturer in Psychology at the School of Psychology and Public Health, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia. His research uses social psychology to understand the role of psychological mechanisms such as trust, conspiracy theories, and ideologies in the formation of attitudes toward socially contentious scientific research. He also researches attitudes towards tall poppies.

N. T. Feather

Norman Feather is Emeritus Professor of Psychology in the College of Education, Psychology, and Social Work, Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia. His research spans many areas that include achievement motivation; expectancy-value theory; psychology of values; psychological impact of unemployment; balance theory; tall poppies; deservingness, justice, and emotions; schadenfreude; and relative deprivation. He was recently awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the International Society for Justice Research, adding to numerous other awards.

Darren E. J. Austin

Darren Austin is a PhD candidate and Associate Lecturer at the School of Psychology and Public Health, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia. His research interests include ideology and attitudes towards inequity and inequality.

Chris G. Sibley

Chris G. Sibley is a professor in the School of Psychology at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. He is the founder of the New Zealand Attitudes and Values Study, a 20-year longitudinal national probability study of social and political attitudes.