Tall Poppies
Admissions processes are conformity tests.
Tyrant Talk
There’s an anecdote from Herodotus’ Histories in which Thrasybulus, tyrant of Miletus, is sent a messenger by Periander, tyrant of Corinth. The messenger asks Thrasybulus for advice on a ruling. Instead of responding to the messenger directly, Thrasybulus stood him up and walked him to a nearby field of wheat. Thrasybulus walked the field cutting the best and tallest ears of wheat. Then sent him on his way.
Periander, upon having the episode related to him, understands the meaning. Thrasybulus was metaphorically pointing out that a wise ruler must have the foresight to remove those prominent enough to pose a real threat to their power.
Livy copied the theme with a nearly identical anecdote of another famed tyrant: Tarquin the Proud, the last king of Rome. This time, his son Sextus (who later blew up this whole monarchy business because he couldn’t keep it in his pants) was the one asking for advice. Tarquin was more of a poppy guy, so he demonstrated with those. Thus we get the origin of the phrase “cutting the tall poppy.”
"The nail that sticks up gets hammered down”
So we have here two competing forces: exceptionalism and conformity.
We see this all over the world. In America, it’s crab mentality. In Japan, it’s “The nail that sticks up gets hammered down.” In the Nordic countries, there’s the Law of Jante, which goes like this:
The ten rules state:
You're not to think you are anything special.
You're not to think you are as good as we are.
You're not to think you are smarter than we are.
You're not to imagine yourself better than we are.
You're not to think you know more than we do.
You're not to think you are more important than we are.
You're not to think you are good at anything.
You're not to laugh at us.
You're not to think anyone cares about you.
You're not to think you can teach us anything.
It make sense that this behavior would be enforced from the top down. Why do we a see a tendency for it also be enforced from the bottom up?
Groups with less internal conflict have more time and resources to advance as a whole. In order to accomplish things as a group, we must have common purpose. Too rabid a streak of individualism (as we’re seeing in some parts of the world right now) pulls the group in every direction, halting forward progress for the group as each individual pursues their own.
This adds a second layer to the continuum of conformity and individuality: individual and group success. In my previous post on the The Tullock Paradox, I talk about the central contradiction involved in granting individuals the power of the collective as leaders: they still retain individuality. A leader that breaks solidarity in their own interest does so at cost to the collective.
Remember, the example we started with was tyrants. There’s a brutal pragmatism to this behavior. Why? Well, you only have so many resources, and so much time. Time spent fending off opponents is time not spent accomplishing one’s goals, so if you’re going to invest energy in dealing with them, it best be for good.
In business, leaders benefit from Machiavellian behavior. Anti-cooperative strategies may even promote deferential behavior, and vice versa (playing into the Interpersonal Complementarity Hypothesis).
If leaders benefit so much from non-cooperative behavior, but groups have the tendency to punish individualism, then there’s a paradox. How do individuals advance to leadership through the crab bucket? A hint may come from politics, where like leaders who are “similar to me but more of a leader.” This is an odd inversion of the tall poppy: a conforming performer. As we’ll see in the next section, I mean performer in every sense of the word.
Forward Filtering and Prestige Laundering
Now more than ever individuals can leave groups that may know them well and expect their conformity. It’s extremely simple to atomize and disappear into society at large. Conformity isn’t so easy to establish in a sea of anonymous faces. When everyone comes from a different background with contrasting norms, it instead must be protected.
In a world of anonymous individuals, how do we judge who is a trustworthy investment of time and resources? We create a system that is intended to gauge the degree to which an individual conforms to our desired standards. A hiring process, an admissions panel, a portfolio review, a vibes check. These are forward filtering mechanisms. Filtering because they sort the wanted from the unwanted. Forward because they occur before admission to a cohort.
Filtering mechanisms allow groups to check and make sure someone just arrived from the street, or the other side of the world, meets the standards of conformity for the community.
A counterargument for this is that these mechanisms allow us to test for merit, not “culture fit”. If you’ve interviewed at a tech company recently, you’ve heard the term “culture fit”. Universities actively seek “cultural diversity” during the admissions process. I would argue that level of prestige (extremely important in evaluating merit) is a baseline for group culture. Some research suggests that cultural fit might be a stronger predictor of longevity at an organization. Multiple studies have shown that the halo effect is impactful in organizational selection, and that it becomes more important the more qualified a candidate is.
“Merit” is a very difficult thing to evaluate anonymously. In the “Hiring” section of my article Defensive Decisionmaking and Moral Cover I point out the frequent tendency of filtering mechanisms to cite prior filters as reasoning for admission to avoid blowback. This sets up the basis for Prestige Laundering, whereby passing one filtering mechanism allows an individual to pass multiple, creating a “fast track”. We musn’t forget legacy either.
So ability (merit) and conformity (culture) are vital in filtering. This is evocative of standardized testing and technical interviewing as filtering mechanisms. Standardized testing is still controversial as it hasn’t been shown to be strongly correlative with success, at least in comparison to other quantitative measures like GPA average. Though they do become better predictive tools at higher levels of education. Similar to the halo effect, there’s a winnowing as individual data becomes increasingly arbitrary with each filter you pass.
What I am getting at here is that these filters are arbitrary from the beginning. You aren’t asking how meritorious an individual is, you’re asking how many hoops they are willing to jump through in order to be a part of your group. How likely are they to conform, and after they are in the group, (especially in the case of hazing) how likely they are to become dependent on it.
Hazing is the perfect model for this behavior. In the beginning, be harassed, do the grunt work, conform. Only after do you get to have fun, be an individual, and lead.
Conclusions, Comportment
This is the barrel of crabs. This is the Law of Jante. This is the tall poppy. Do whatever arbitrary thing the in group deems necessary for admission, gain their respect, enjoy the benefits. If you try to pursue individualist avenues from the outset without demonstrating your deference, be prepared to be struck down.
I’m winding down for the night, but there’s a second half of this article coming sometime in the future that will highlight the peer-to-peer nature of norms policing, and would have made more sense to pair with tall poppy intro, but I wrote what I wrote and here we are! 1 day, 1 post.
For next time, I want you to think about how we behave in the absence of filtering mechanisms. In pure anonymity (the Internet is a key example), how do we as individuals evaluate and police conformity amongst one another? The big thing we’ll be looking at is how we use outward behaviors as predictive markers for individual qualities. E.g. the connection between seriousness and professionalism in the western mind. I’ll leave you with this question: must we be serious in comportment to be taken seriously?
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