On coasts around the world, fishermen fill a bucket with crabs, walk off to catch more, and do not bother with a lid. The crabs will not escape. They keep each other in.
Whenever one crab climbs close to the top, another grabs hold and tries to climb over it. Both usually fall back to the bottom. People call this “crab mentality,” and it is also known as crabs in a bucket.
The odd part is that a crab alone in a bucket keeps trying to get out and eventually does. The behavior appears only when there are several crabs together.
Why they do it
The site Learning Mind points out that crabs did not evolve in buckets. They live where the sea meets the shore, in shallow pools and on slippery rocks, where waves crash over the rocks. Crabs there cling to each other so they are not swept out to sea. In a bucket they do the same thing, and clinging is a survival response under threat. So the self-defeating pull-down is a normal reaction in the wrong place.
The human version
The phrase has long been borrowed to describe people. Learning Mind sums up crab mentality as “if I can’t have it, neither can you.” It points to loss aversion as one explanation. Neuroscientist Dr. Tara Swart is quoted as saying “we are wired to avoid loss, twice as much as we are to get a reward.” Another person’s success can feel like a loss, so some people would prefer that everyone lose than only themselves. The same article ties it to imposter syndrome, the feeling of not being good enough.
It can show up at home. Someone gets a promotion or buys a house, and family or friends say they always had it easy. An old saying in eastern philosophy puts it this way: “The nail that sticks up should be hammered down.”
At work
PeopleShift, a consultancy, ties the pattern to tall poppy syndrome, a workplace culture in which successful people get attacked and cut back down. If one member of a group is highly recognized, others may go after them. It says the habit stops success and discourages achievement.
Pay systems can feed it. A performance approach that forces ratings into a normal distribution creates a “zero-sum” game, where the better my peers do, the worse I do, so everyone has a reason to undermine higher-flying colleagues. PeopleShift advises anyone in such a culture to try changing it or to leave, because living where undermining is normal drains people and wears down their wellbeing and confidence over time.
Learning Mind offers four ways to stop: avoid being taken in by curated social media, be grateful for what you have, support successful people around you, and put your effort into your own goals. Its closing argument: “Let’s celebrate success for the many, not just a few.”
Sources
- The Tall Poppy Syndrome and Crabs in Buckets – PeopleShift
- Crab Mentality Explains Why People Are Not Happy for Others – Learning Mind
