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Height Bias, or Short Guys Finish Last.
This article was found
online and is presented here by kind permission.
Original Publisher: The Economist
Date: 23 Dec 1995
Sorting by height
When George Bush was America's president and Daniel Ortega was Nicaragua's,
Mr Ortega threatened to cancel a local peace deal that the Americans
had painstakingly brokered. Hearing the news, an enraged Mr Bush
grasped for an insult worthy of the offence. "That little man,"
he snarled repeatedly, dripping contempt. "That little man."
Actually Mr Ortega is 5 foot 10 inches (1.78 meters)
tall, which makes him a fraction of an inch taller than the average
American--and not that much shorter than Mr Bush, who is 6' 2".
Yet when Mr Bush was searching for an atomic but not obscene insult,
it was stature that he immediately seized upon. In that respect,
he was not being presidential: merely, rather, primate. For the
primate Homo Sapiens tends to sort its males by height.
Discrimination endures
Every boy knows, practically from birth, that being "shrimpy"
is nearly as bad as being a chicken, and closely related at that.
Call a man "little", and he is understood to be demeaned.
When Mr Bush called Mr Ortega "that little man", his primate-male
cerebellum knew what it was doing. It was engaging in what may be
the most enduring form of discrimination in the world.
The bias against short men hurts them. It is unfair.
It is irrational. So why is it not taken seriously? A serious question:
especially if you happen to be short.
First the bad news
On the advice of our lawyers, we pause here for a mental-health
notice. Tall men are invited to forge on, as are women (for whom
it is weight, not stature, that is life's bane--but that is another
story). Short men, however, proceed at their own peril. What follows
will depress them.
Height discrimination begins from the moment male
human beings become vertical. Give 100 mothers photographs of two
19-month-old boys who resemble each other closely, except that one
is made to look taller than the other. Then ask the mothers which
boy is more competent and able. The mothers consistently pick the
"taller" one. As boys grow, the importance of height is
drummed into them incessantly. "My, how tall you are!"
the relatives squeal with approval. Or, with scorn, "Don't
you want to grow up big and strong?"
Comparison is fast and fixed
Height hierarchies are established early, and persist for a long
time. Tall boys are deferred to and seen as mature, short ones ridiculed
and seen as childlike. Tall men are seen as natural "leaders";
short ones are called "pushy". "If a short man is
normally assertive, then he's seen as having Napoleonic tendencies,"
says David Weeks, a clinical psychologist at Royal Edinburgh Hospital.
"If he is introverted and mildly submissive, then he's seen
as a wimp."
Dr Weeks is 5' 2", so he may have an axe
to grind. But he can prove his point. Turn, for example, to the
work of two American psychologists, Leslie Martel and Henry Biller,
whose book "Stature and Stigma" (D.C. Heath, 1987) is
especially useful.
The perception is "less"
Mr Martel and Mr Biller asked several hundred university students
to rate the qualities of men of varying heights, on 17 different
criteria. Both men and women, whether short or tall, thought that
short men--heights between 5' 2" and 5' 5"--were less
mature, less positive, less secure, less masculine; less successful,
less capable, less confident, less outgoing; more inhibited, more
timid, more passive; and so on. Other studies confirm that short
men are judged, and even judge themselves, negatively. Several surveys
have found that short men feel less comfortable in social settings
and are less happy with their bodies. Dustin Hoffman, that 5' 6"
actor, is said to have spent years in therapy over his small stature.
Short men suffer most
The western ideal for men appears to be about 6' 2" (and is
slowly rising, as average heights increase). Above that height,
the advantages of extra inches peter out, though very tall men do
not, apart from hitting their heads, suffer significant disadvantages.
And medium-sized men do fine (though they typically will say they
would like to be taller, just as women always want to be thinner).
The men who suffer are those who are noticeably short: say, 5' 5"
and below. In a man's world, they do not impress. Indeed, the connection
between height and status is embedded in the very language. Respected
men have "stature" and are "looked up to": quite
literally, as it turns out.
Status and perception
One of the most elegant height experiments was reported in 1968
by an Australian psychologist, Paul Wilson. He introduced the same
unfamiliar man to five groups of students, varying only the status
attributed to the stranger. In one class, the newcomer was said
to be a student, in another a lecturer, right up to being a professor
from Cambridge University. Once the visitor had left the room, each
group was asked to estimate the man's height, along with that of
the instructor. Not only was the "professor" thought to
be more than two inches taller than the "student"; the
height estimates rose in proportion to his perceived status.
Height matters
It is little wonder, then, that when people meet a famous man they
so often say, "I expected him to be taller." If you still
doubt that height matters, look around. At the palace of William
III at Hampton Court, London, you will see door knockers above eye
level: the better to make callers on the king (who was, in fact,
decidedly short) feel, literally, lowly. Or sit across from your
boss in his office, and see who has the higher chair.
More bad news for short guys
Perhaps heightism is just a western cultural prejudice? Sadly not.
In Chinese surveys, young women always rate stature high among qualifications
for a future mate. Indeed, the prejudice appears to be universal.
Aboriginal discrimination
In the 1960s and 1970s, Thomas Gregor, an anthropologist at America's
Vanderbilt University, lived among the Mehinaku, a tropical forest
people of central Brazil who were amazed by such new-fangled gadgets
as spectacles. Among the Mehinaku, attractive men should be tall:
they are respectfully called wekepei. Woe unto the peritsi, as very
short men are derisively called (it rhymes with itsi, the word for
penis). Where a tall man is kaukapapai, worthy of respect, the short
one is merely laughable. His lack of stature is a moral as well
as physical failing, for it is presumed to result from sexual looseness
during adolescence.
Tribal relations
"No one wants a peritsi for a son-in-law," Mr Gregor writes.
By many measures--wealth, chieftainship, frequency of participation
in rituals--tall men dominate in tribal life. They hog the reproductive
opportunities, too. Mr Gregor looked at the number of girlfriends
of Mehi-naku men of varying heights. He found a pattern: the taller
the man, the more girl-friends he had. As he explained, "the
three tallest men had as many affairs as the seven shortest men,
even though their average estimated ages were identical."
Big man all around
He went on to note that the Trobriand Islanders of the Pacific,
the Timbira of Brazil, and the Navajo of America were among the
many other traditional cultures that also prize male height. "In
no case have I found a preference for short men," he said.
Among anthropologists, it is a truism that in traditional societies
the "big man" actually is big, not just socially but physically.
Blame evolution
It is not hard to guess why human beings tend instinctively to defer
to height. Humans evolved in an environment where size and strength--and
good health, to which they are closely related--mattered, especially
for men. Indeed, they still matter, albeit less than they did. Other
things being equal, large males are more to be feared and longer-living;
an impulse to defer to them, or to prefer them as mates, thus makes
good evolutionary sense. Perhaps the impulse is softened in a modern
industrial society. But how much?
Modernism
Consider six aspects of a supposedly advanced culture.
1) Politics.
In all but three American presidential elections this century, the
taller man has won. By itself this might be a coincidence. And of
course some short politicians thrive (examples include France's
Francois Mitterrand and Britain's Harold Wilson). But the pattern
is still clear, and is also found in:
2) Business.
A survey in 1980 found that more than half the chief executives
of America's Fortune 500 companies stood six feet tall or more.
As a class, these wekepei were a good 2.5 inches taller than average;
only 3% were peritsi, 5' 7" or less. Other surveys suggest
that about 90% of chief executives are of above-average height.
Similarly for:
3) Professional status.
Looking at several professions, one study found that people in high-ranking
jobs were about two inches taller than those down below, a pattern
that held even when comparing men of like educational and socioeconomic
status. Senior civil servants in Britain, for instance, tend to
be taller than junior ones. Shorter people also have worse:
4) Jobs.
Give job recruiters two invented resumes that have been carefully
matched except for the candidates' height, as one study did in 1969.
Fully 72% of the time, the taller man is "hired". And
when they are hired, they tend also to earn rather more:
5) Money.
In 1994 James Sargent and David Blanch-flower, of America's Dartmouth
College, analyzed a sample of about 6,000 male Britons whose progress
was monitored from birth to early adulthood. Short teenaged boys
made less money when they became young adults (aged 23) than their
taller peers--even after other attributes, such as scores on ability
tests or parents' social status, were factored out. For every four
inches of height in adolescence, earnings went up more than 2% in
early adulthood. Another survey, of graduates of the University
of Pittsburgh, found that those who were 6' 2" or taller received
starting salaries 12% higher than those under six feet.
Not only do tall people grow richer, rich people
grow taller. They enjoy well-nourished childhoods and better health.
The stature-success nexus further bolsters the social preference
for height. And that preference is expressed in a coin that is even
more precious than money, namely:
6) Sex.
Mating opportunities are, at least in evolutionary terms, the ultimate
prize of status. And here is the final humiliation for short men.
When 100 women were asked to evaluate photographs of men whom they
believed to be either tall, average or short, all of them found
the tall and medium specimens "significantly more attractive"
than the short ones. In another study, only two of 79 women said
they would go on a date with a man shorter than themselves (the
rest, on average, wanted to date a man at least 1.7 inches taller).
"The universally acknowledged cardinal rule of dating and mate
selection is that the male will be significantly taller than his
female partner," write Mr Martel and Mr Biller. "This
rule is almost inviolable." For short men, the sexual pickings
are therefore likely to be slim.
Is there any recourse of action?
Is there, then, no good news for short men? No: there is none. And
if, having read this far, you do not believe that height discrimination
is serious, you are no doubt a tall person in the late stages of
denial. Or, perhaps, you cringe at the thought of yet another victim
group lining up to demand redress. Surely the notion of SHRIMPs
(Severely Height-Restricted Individuals of the Male Persuasion)
as an oppressed social group is silly, and the idea of special protections
or compensatory benefits for short men preposterous? Actually, no--unless
all such group benefits are equally dubious.
What constitutes discrimination?
In general, the kinds of discrimination worth worrying about should
have two characteristics. First, bias must be pervasive and systematic.
Random discrimination is mere diversity of preference, and comes
out in the wash. But if a large majority of employers prefers whites,
for instance, then non-whites' options in life are sharply limited.
And second, bias must be irrational: unrelated to the task at hand.
If university mathematics faculties discriminate against the stupid,
that may not seem fair (not everyone can master set theory); but
it is sensible.
Pervasive and irrational?
In politically correct terms, people who share an unusual characteristic
that triggers pervasive and irrational aversion have a strong claim
to be viewed as a vulnerable minority group. Is the discrimination
against SHRIMPs, then, pervasive? Plainly so. Is it irrational?
Except in a few rare cases in which height might affect job performance,
obviously. Is it hurtful? Just ask any of the parents who clamor
to put their little boys on growth hormones. Will it disappear of
its own accord, as people become more enlightened? Be serious. Try
to imagine that a century hence, when genetic engineering allows
designer children, parents will queue up for shorter boys.
Not a coheisive minority
In some respects, indeed, SHRIMPs have it worse than members of
ethnic minorities. Jews, Asians and other ethnics often favor each
other for jobs, marriages and the rest. If they are disadvantaged
within the majority culture, they may at least be advantaged in
their own. But short men are disfavored by more or less everybody,
including other short men. If they want to flee, they need to find
another planet.
Issue just laughed off
Yet no country seems to have any anti-discrimination protections
for SHRIMPs. America now has laws that ban discrimination against
70% or more of its population, including women, the elderly, blacks,
Hispanics, Asians, Pacific islanders, Aleuts, Indians, and the handicapped--extending
to people with back problems or glasses. Britain bans discrimination
against women and nearly every ethnic or cultural group, Rastafarians
excepted. But SHRIMPs? The whole issue, if it ever arises at all,
is simply laughed off.
What accounts for this peculiarity? America's
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which oversees the anti-discrimination
laws, now boasts a man who has given the subject some thought. He
is Paul Steven Miller, who is 4' 5" tall. To be exact, he is
an achondroplastic dwarf. Medically speaking, a dwarf has a recognizable
genetic condition marked by short limbs, average-sized trunk, moderately
enlarged head, and so on. This is regarded as a disability in America,
and is legally protected against discrimination.
Who's in and who is out
Mr Miller favors protections for such little people. But he opposes
extending protections to the "normally" short --men like
America's former labor secretary, Robert Reich, who is 4'10"
and hears no end of it. (Bill Clinton, looking at a model of the
White House made from Lego, commented: "Secretary Reich could
almost live in there.") Why protect Mr Miller but not Mr Reich?
Because, Mr Miller says, one cannot protect everybody. "It
would be totally unwieldy to let everybody in." Quite true.
But convenient, too, to draw the line so as to include him but exclude
a raft of other claimants. Convenience is not a principled reason
for leaving short men to suffer their fates.
Blurred lines of inclusion
Indeed, it is hard to find any principled reason. Most of the obvious
excuses for excluding SHRIMPs from the list of disadvantaged groups
do little but show how arbitrary is the concept of any "group".
For example, one might argue that there is no obvious line that
demarcates a man short enough to be a SHRIMP. True enough; but in
a world where blood mixes freely, there is equally no clear way
to distinguish, for instance, an "Hispanic" from an "Anglo",
or an American Indian from a "white" man.
Not arbitrary inclusion
Perhaps a "minority group", then, must be an ethnic or
hereditary grouping? Plainly not. If women, homosexuals and people
in wheelchairs may be minority groups, then surely short men can
qualify. American Hispanics have nothing in common except the "Hispanic"
label itself (they are mostly identified solely by their names).
At least SHRIMPs are all detectably short.
Evolution of conciousness
In the West, the past quarter-century has been an era of awakening
group consciousness. Blacks and women, Asians and indigenous peoples,
homosexuals and the disabled--one by one, all have come to embrace
group-based identities and protections. The obese are now reaching
for group status; and, in truth, they too have a case. So why not
short men? Logically, there seems no other way out.
Wee men of the world, unite!
Accordingly, The Economist demands that the European Convention
on Human Rights grant SHRIMPs the protections that other disadvantaged
minorities have already won. The United Nations should hold global
conferences on the status of SHRIMPs. American federal contractors
should be checked for height, to see that SHRIMPs get their fair
share. Employers should bend over backwards to recruit and promote
SHRIMPs, and should be fined for allowing workers to disparage them.
Elite universities should make sure that they include sufficient
numbers of SHRIMPs among their students and faculties. Not least,
newspapers that snidely refer to short men as "SHRIMPs"
should be subjected to long lawsuits, and the authors concerned
should be sent for sensitivity training (even if they are only 5'
7", and write anonymously).
Sociology and politics don't mix
Then again, perhaps not. Knowing that short young men earn less
money than other young men is, certainly, interesting. Knowing that
only 9% of American Hispanics, as against 24% of non-Hispanics,
hold a university degree is also interesting. But what do such facts
imply? One does well to remember that they are mere statistical
compilations, averages that blur together individuals who have virtually
nothing in common. A "Hispanic", for instance, is a mere
Spanish-sounding name masquerading as a human being. A SHRIMP, similarly,
is no more than a mark on a tape measure. To convert adjectives
into pronouns--as in "a SHRIMP", or "a black"
or "an Asian" or "a homosexual"--is to seize
upon a single element of a person's make-up and cast into the background
everything else. This kind of thinking may be useful as a tool of
social analysis; as a basis for public policy, however, it is treacherous.
For centuries, short men have shrugged their shoulders and carried
on. They, at least, still see themselves, and are seen by others,
as variegated individuals, not as a monotonal social group.
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