All Being Equal

Does our historically homogeneous and egalitarian society stifle ambition and foster a dislike of the tall poppy?

- Marc Wilson

It would be surprising if Kiwis did not care about ambition, but, as with most things, neither should we expect everyone to be equally ambitious. Large-scale surveys suggest about a quarter of us think being successful, ambitious and influential is very important. For just under 5%, it’s supremely important.

Generally, the more years of formal education you receive, and the more you earn, the more ambitious you are. Men are more ambitious than women. Young people are more ambitious than older people, and, although many people may think that Aucklanders are more go-getting, Dunedinites are the most ambitious of us, followed by Wellingtonians, with Aucklanders third. National Party voters (and perhaps MPs) are pipped only by Act Party supporters in the ambition stakes. Statistically, Act is in a whole Dragons’ Den of its own, in fact.

But we don’t just care about the pursuit and rewards of ambition; almost twice as many of us think that equality and fairness are very important, and they are the guiding principles for one in five of us. That is because we are, historically at least, a bunch of hand-wringing egalitarians who not only look askance at anyone who dares to be a tall poppy, but also apply the same standard to ourselves.

Indeed, although the notion of the tall poppy dates back a couple of thousand years, and has meaning across the English speaking world, much of the research on it has focused on New Zealand and Australia. Australian social psychology professor Norm Feather was so interested in what he saw as a peculiarly Antipodean habit of “cutting tall poppies down to size” that he spent years studying it.