High-Status People Perform Poorly After Being Humbled

When high-status people suffer a humbling loss, their performance tends to decline dramatically, because they’ve become dependent on their rank to maintain a positive view of themselves, say Jennifer Carson Marr of Georgia Institute of Technology and Stefan Thau of London Business School. For example, a study of Major League baseball players shows that in the 58% of salary arbitrations where players lost, the higher a player’s status, the greater the fall-off in performance the following year. If you’re a high-status person, sometimes the best way to cope with a work-related humiliation is to get a job with a new employer where you feel respected, say the researchers, whose study appears in the Academy of Management Journal.