Is Short Man Syndrome a thing?

Searching for explanations on why small people aren't rising higher

I hope by now I have illustrated how short people are looked down upon for positions of power. But why?

Does the apparent lack of professional respect we receive arise because us short folk are less amenable to teamwork? Are more hostile? Are particularly tetchy members of the workforce? This is a phenomenon colloquially known as Short Man Syndrome, where we apparently try to make up for our lack of height through expressions of anger or churlishness in our futile attempts to prove our worth.

As a person of (significantly) below average height, you are assumed to arrive into any situation with not just a chip, but an entire sack of potatoes on your shoulder. The most obvious manifestation of this in the cultural psyche, again, is in the arena of politics.

You may know Short Man Syndrome as the Napoleon Complex, which posits that the 5’6’’ French general’s aggressive military tactics were actually a symbol of his determination to tower over enemies through brute force because he could not do so with his physical presence, a concept coined by French psychologist Alfred Adler.

While Napoleon might have been Short Man Syndrome patient zero, Stalin was also apparently only 5’5’’.

It also came as quite a shock to me to find out that my height places me in the same Venn diagram as now-deceased Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe. I discovered this when I stumbled across his Wikipedia page. Under a section entitled ‘personal life’, it noted that “Robert Mugabe is a short man, measuring a little over 5’7’’”. Strangely, that line no longer exists on the entry.

In the modern era, former French president Nicolas Sarkozy is frequently ridiculed over his 5’5’’ frame.

“Does Nicolas Sarkozy have short-man syndrome?” a writer for The Guardian helpfully asked in a 2009 article. Their follow up question in the subheading: “why does President Sarkozy go to such ridiculous lengths to disguise his true height?”

The evidence? Allegations that Sarkozy’s team had arranged for only the smallest workers at a motor technology plant to appear next to him during a speech - a claim the French government denied, just so you’re aware.

Continuing the military theme for the French government’s actions - which either did or did not happen - the author continues: “Sarkozy's aides were keen to ensure no repeat of the D-day debacle in June when, just along the Normandy coast in Colleville-sur-Mer, Sarkozy had stood next to 6’1’’ Barack Obama and 5’11’’ Gordon Brown during the 65th anniversary commemoration ceremony.”

Adding to his diagnosis that the Small Sarko cover up is the product of yet more overcompensation, this time of the sexual kind, the writer notes that “French virility had been symbolically castrated by an Anglo-American height conspiracy”.

He goes on to describe Sarkozy as looking “ridiculous” already because of his height, and that attempts to look taller are “pathetic”. Sarko, it appears, is stuck between a rock he cannot reach, and a hard place he also cannot reach. He has just been lambasted for being something, then lambasted again for trying not to be it.

How real is the Napoleon Complex? Photo by Desert Morocco Adventure on Unsplash

If the photographers on the day did not capture his endeavours to look taller, they were also rubbish at their jobs, apparently.

If you think that’s me being harsh, or taking things out of context, here is the passage I am referring to in full:

“But, you might well be asking, why did Sarko bother to try to conceal the truth about his height? Surely the French president or his aides must realise that any attempts to conceal his relative shortness will make him look even more ridiculous than – with all due respect – he does already? Surely someone should tell him it is madness to stand on a little box in front of a lectern to give a speech (as he did in Colleville-sur-Mer), since any snapper worth their salt was going to photograph him not from the front but from the side – thus making his pathetic ruse globally apparent?”

He - because of course it’s a man - also describes Tom Cruise’s wife’s Katie Holmes’ decision to wear heels when she knew she would be appearing with Cruise in public as “selfish”, so at least his discrimination is indiscriminate; he’s not a fan of either powerful short men, or powerful women, apparently.

Would the writer consider wearing black or shapely clothing to try and look as slim as possible equally duplicitous? I somehow doubt it. While the article is partly intended as a witty cultural commentary, the piece does not have nearly the comedic charm to pull off its sheer rudeness.

Just to prove that the writer is better than me, he’s name dropped his height as well. Go on, guess what it is. 6’1’’? Bingo.

And in case he needed to illustrate his alpha male credentials further, he also picked having “clout with the Ivy's maître d’” as an example of why being tall would be a good thing. I hate to break it to him, but that’s not one of the things I feel I am missing out on by not being loftier, both in terms of stature and general attitude towards the rest of the human race.

This was all helpfully bolstered by a picture gallery of other small celebrities. In case you were interested, or had not previously had use of your eyes.

The likes of Fox News have also covered the ups and downs of Sarkozy’s up/down relationship with his wife -  Carla Bruni - in extensive detail, including how he stood on a higher step than her for a photoshoot. That Sarkzoy actually did so was confirmed by the magazine this time. The joke remains very much on the commentators though. Bruni is a former supermodel, which also probably explains why Fox News was frothing at the mouth to shoehorn her into their political coverage.

“At 5’5’’ tall, the diminutive Nicolas Sarkozy is known as much for his height - or lack of it - as any of his accomplishments as French president,” Fox writes.

Just re-read that sentence a couple of times. Just imagine that a) it was true, and b) it was said about you. Imagine working your entire life to achieve the highest office in the land, for your achievements to be reduced to a single physical descriptor and some hastily-photoshopped Tweets.

More amazingly, imagine being better known for how tall you are than the multiple charges of corruption that were levied against you. Seriously, what does a short guy have to do to get true recognition for his (alleged, at the time of writing) villainy?

I would love to be a fly on the wall as Sarkozy stumbles across such articles.

“You’re short! Yes. I also happen to run one of the most respected countries in the world and am incredibly wealthy. Oh, did I also mention I have a supermodel wife? Yes, you’re right though, my life is very tough…”

I would imagine German chancellor Angela Merkel would have a similar reaction on discovering the ‘news’ that she is exactly the same 5’5’’ person she sees in the mirror every day. This fact is also - pun intended - overlooked when it comes to Merkel, but Merkel is a woman, which means pundits have far more important slings to throw at her, like how ugly, prudish or generally frumpy she is. Commentators would be far more likely to remark on her stature if they weren’t so busy talking about what outfit she is wearing every time she steps out in public.

I think we can safely add perceptions of height to the 8,332,713 ways our culture tells us not to instinctively picture women in positions of authority like politics. Not only do they have ovaries, which are troublesome to their temperament, such lofty ambitions could not possibly be contained within such meek bodies, could they?

The only thing that would make Merkel less likely to achieve in life would be if she were to be overweight. Both men and women suffer reduced education, job status, and income if they are short, but men suffer particularly badly from the height element of the equation, where women tend to be disadvantaged more than male peers over weight issues.

A 2016 study of 120,000 Britons published in the British Medical Journal suggests that a woman who is 6.3kg heavier than a comparable woman of the same height would earn an average of £1,500 less.

"This is the best available evidence to indicate that your height or weight can directly influence your earnings and other socioeconomic factors throughout your life," study author Professor Tim Frayling of the University of Exeter Medical School writes.

"This won’t apply in every case, many shorter men and overweight women are very successful, but science must now ask why we are seeing this pattern.

"Is this down to factors such as low self-esteem or depression, or is it more to do with discrimination?

"In a world where we are obsessed with body image, are employers biased? That would be bad both for the individuals involved and for society.”

Too right. Whether deliberate or not, biases do seem to exist though. Some short women do make a good fist at climbing up the professional ladder, only to become acutely aware of the outsized physical presence of those around them, and suddenly question whether there is a pattern here.

In her autobiography The Gatekeeper, reflecting on her time at the heart of British government, Kate Fall, former deputy chief of staff to prime minister David Cameron, describes another political adviser, Ed Llewellyn, as “not one to throw his weight around (in any sense; he is not a large man)…”

This should be as relevant an aside note as saying “oh, and Ed also likes poached eggs for breakfast”. But it speaks to a truth we know to be self-evident, but rarely acknowledge; physical presence is integral to the manifestation of what we recognise as power. Fall goes on to acknowledge this on several occasions later in the book, with regards to how she felt about her own body in the presence of other power brokers.

“Given that I am quite small and speak with a terrible lisp, I find the meetings quite daunting at times” she writes of her experience of a key regular gathering of top politicos in the British government.

“Watching the G8 leaders gathering is like viewing a very particular type of nature documentary,” she recounts of her time attending the leading event on the global political stage. “Power matters. So too, it seems, does size,” she continues, before describing Sarkozy - poor fellow, being singled out again - as “bobbing up and down” to try and get into frame for the group photographs.

Of a meeting with Barack Obama, conversely, she describes him as “tall and in control”. Of course, it is not inconceivable for an individual to exhibit one of those traits without exhibiting the other. But they are invariably joined up in our collective consciousness, reinforcing the impression that they go hand in hand, or are even inextricably intertwined.

Apart from being 5’2’’ myself and therefore envious of all of these powerful figures’ heights - even those variously described as miniscule or puny - I am highly sceptical of the idea that short people do not fill the upper echelons of society principally because we rub people up the wrong way, or because our own self-esteem issues hold us back.

The Exeter BMJ study posited that the tall/short income gap could be down to a whole range of factors, including the “complex interactions between self-esteem, stigma, positive discrimination, and increased intelligence”.

I would tend to agree that we cannot reduce the causes or effects to single issues. Again, pardon the pun, but there is no one-size-fits all on how short people take to being short, or how taller people treat those who are literally below them. Nature and nurture combine to depress the odds of advancement for people of below average height in a variety of interconnected and subtle ways. Some people get angry at that. Some people get sad. Some are broadly fine with it; they just feel the occasional urge to pen a Substack on it.

Combine a society that signals taller men as more worthy, reinforced by the biggest political players themselves, with our in-built biological impulse to respect physical power and our tendency to jump at the stereotype of short people’s overcompensation wherever we see it, and you’re probably halfway towards an answer as to why short people get paid less.

It’s an answer that includes - albeit only occasionally - short people believing that they do not stand a chance as a small fish in a pond of whales, retreating from the challenges success entails entirely of their own free will. But, as multiple papers suggest, it is also incumbent for employers to challenge their biases, unconscious or otherwise.

I would love to see a well-controlled study into whether a shorter candidate is looked upon unfavourably by putting the same two sets of information on paper for a recruiter to assess, the only difference being one candidate is listed as 6’ and the other as 5’5’’. Actually, that study already exists, from the Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics conducted by Linnaeus University psychology professor Jens Agerström in 2014.

The study confirms the idea that our assumptions about what individuals are capable of due to their height can drive us to bump shorter candidates down the pecking order, regardless of how the short individual behaves. Even when all other talents seem equal, we still tend to pick taller candidates.

“Previous research shows the existence of a height premium in the workplace with tall individuals receiving more benefits across several domains (e.g., earnings) relative to short people,” the paper notes. “The current study probes deeper into the height premium by focusing on the specific favourable traits, attributes, and abilities tall individuals are presumed to have, ultimately giving these individuals an advantage in hiring.

“In an experiment, we made a male job applicant taller or shorter by digitally manipulating photographs, and attached these to job applications that were evaluated by professional recruiters. We find that in the context of hiring a project leader, the height premium consists of increased perceptions of the candidate's general competence, specific job competency (including employability), and physical health, whereas warmth and physical attractiveness seem to matter less.

“Interestingly, physical height predicted recruiters’ hiring intentions even when statistically controlling for competence, warmth, health, and attractiveness.”