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RESEARCHERS

The Science of Tall Poppy Syndrome: Why Friends Cut Down Your Success — and Why You Learn to Hide It

3 the researchers behind it — "Don't get too big for your boots" and "who does she think she is?" feel like isolated put-downs. Research tells a different, more systematic story: T

The Tallest Poppy Research Initiative, Canada

Rumina Billan

Known for:The Tallest Poppy research: documenting tall-poppy cutting among working women in Canada, identifying friends as the primary source and milestone-hiding as the dominant learned defense

Key findings

  1. 2022

    Friends — not colleagues, bosses, or family members — are the single most common source of tall-poppy cutting for working women, a finding that contradicts the popular assumption that competitive professional environments are the primary arena for success-suppression. ↗

  2. 2022

    Milestone-hiding — actively concealing achievements and successes from social circles to preempt being cut down — is the dominant learned defense strategy documented among women experiencing tall-poppy dynamics, representing a self-silencing pattern with measurable wellbeing costs. ↗

Flinders University, Australia

Norman T. Feather

Known for:Pioneering psychological research on Tall Poppy Syndrome, schadenfreude, and the role of resentment in responses to high achievers perceived as undeserving

Key findings

  1. 1994

    Established Tall Poppy Syndrome as a measurable psychological and attitudinal phenomenon, demonstrating that resentment of high achievers — and pleasure at their downfall — is a systematic response linked to perceptions of deservingness and arrogance, not random cruelty. ↗

  2. 2005

    With Nairn, found that tall-poppy attitudes in Australia and New Zealand are meaningfully tied to egalitarian national identity — people who strongly identify with their nation's egalitarian values show greater approval of cutting down those who stand out, situating the syndrome in cultural identity as well as individual psychology. ↗

University of Kentucky

Richard H. Smith

Known for:Research on envy, schadenfreude, and social comparison — including the finding that perceived similarity to a successful target amplifies envy, explaining why peers and friends are more likely to feel threatened by each other's success

Key findings

  1. 2000

    Demonstrated that perceived similarity between the envious person and the envied target is a key amplifier of envy — the more alike we are to someone who succeeds where we also strive, the more painful and threatening the comparison becomes, directly explaining why tall-poppy cutting is concentrated in peer and friend groups rather than among strangers. ↗

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