New Zealanders are probably the most self-deprecating people in the world. We might even be number one on the self-deprecation table – but of course, I couldn’t say that. Just making the claim would, ironically, contradict it.
The fact that we’re a small isolated country at the bottom of the world seems to have created a culture in which boasting about yourself is akin to murder. While you could boast about other people or things, you could never do likewise for yourself. That’s because we suffer from Tall Poppy Syndrome: a phenomenon where anyone who deems themselves better than others is immediately cut down to size. A poppy, after all, is a type of red flower. And so a ‘tall poppy’ is simply a poppy that is taller than others – one, you could say, that thinks itself superior to those it physically lords itself over.
Not surprisingly, most people don’t tend to like people who think they’re better than others. Such an attitude creates a feeling of resentment and instantly marks out the offending party for subtle – or not so subtle – ostracism. While working in New Zealand, I once had a colleague who had spent several of his formative years in the United States. Despite having returned to New Zealand for university, he still maintained a cockiness that he had probably picked up stateside. He would boast about his Volkswagen Golf, his new iPhone and pretty much everything else in his life, while constantly putting others down. Ironically, while he might have acted the way he did in a bid to impress others, all he succeeded in doing was rubbing everyone the wrong way. Tellingly, after he left the company, he became known as “Cancerous Tumor”.
Tall Poppy Syndrome in practice
While there is a certain upside to this mentality – namely, the fact that people are less likely to be arrogant and full of themselves in public – the downside is that it has a self-censoring effect on people. A lot of New Zealanders feel extremely uncomfortable when it comes to talking about themselves, as they’re afraid they’d come across as arseholes, and so they tend to go the other extreme and put themselves down at the earliest opportunity. You only have to watch an interview of Jermaine Clement, one half of the New Zealand folk comedy duo Flight of the Conchords, on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon to see Tall Poppy Syndrome play out on US prime time television. Whenever Jimmy tries to give him a compliment, you can see him squirming in his seat, as if he’d been lobbed a verbal grenade. Compliments just don’t work in New Zealand – especially not from American talk show hosts known for possibly laughing too easily.
The upsides of putting yourself down
While putting oneself down might seem needlessly masochistic, you could say there’s a social function to it. By humbling yourself, you’re showing that you don’t think you’re better than anyone else. And so right away, you’re making yourself more relatable to others, while also making yourself a little vulnerable. There’s also much humor to be mined in self-deprecation, as people tend to like those who know how to laugh at themselves.
And the downsides
The problem comes, though, when it goes too far. When I was in business school, I remember a careers advisor telling the lecture hall that New Zealanders are notoriously bad at selling themselves. When we’re in job interviews, we tend to downplay our achievements and attribute our successes to the contributions of others. In other words, the careers advisor said, we’re shooting ourselves in the foot.
He also pointed out that when it comes to job interviews, New Zealand men act like women from other western countries. By this, he meant that while men in general tend to be cockier and more self-assured than women, New Zealand men are so self-deprecating in interviews that they don’t inspire much confidence in the interviewer. And so if a lot of women struggle to talk themselves up in professional situations – which can have a negative impact on their career earnings and advancements in a world enamored with confident people – their struggles are shared by both New Zealand men and women alike.
France and self-deprecation: a match made in Limbo
While variations of Tall Poppy Syndrome exist in other countries, it’s far from a universal phenomenon. One only needs to look at the United States to find the opposite extreme.
(Of course, I’d just like to say that I don’t think that Americans are necessarily arrogant, and most Americans I know are nice people. It’s just that being confident and talking up one’s achievements is much more the norm over there, but doing so in New Zealand would land you in prison.)
And now, having lived in France for half a year, I was surprised when a colleague asked me why I put myself down all the time. It had never occurred to me that I was doing this – and that’s probably because it comes so naturally to me that I didn’t even register myself doing it. I suppose this cultural practice, as it were, is so strongly ingrained in my psyche that I just do self-deprecation subconsciously. But as one of my colleagues asked me why I was doing it, I only learned there and then that French people aren’t self-deprecating at all.
While France isn’t the United States, where self-promotion is widely acceptable and where there is relatively little animosity towards outwardly successful people, the western European nation is also a lot less reflexively self-deprecating than New Zealand. While French people don’t talk themselves down like New Zealanders do, they also don’t talk themselves up. While French people may talk quite enthusiastically about places they’ve eaten and exhibitions they’ve visited, they don’t talk about their money, skills or achievements as people may do in some other countries. My theory is that there’s a lingering Catholic influence that makes people view bragging about their achievements as a major faux pas. And so just like in New Zealand, showing off impresses no one but alienates everyone. Yet unlike New Zealanders, French people don’t go out of their way to recount embarrassing stories about themselves or say that they generally suck.
In other words, compared to New Zealanders, French people are refreshingly neutral when it comes to self-promotion. I must admit it took me way longer to realize this than it probably should have. And, to be honest, I still struggle not to be self-deprecating since it comes so naturally and since I do believe that there are certain benefits to self-deprecation – especially the humor and relatability that it can engender. But I suppose that in cultures where self-deprecation isn’t the norm, putting yourself down would only make those around you uncomfortable, which is ironically the opposite effect that a “self-deprecator” is attempting to achieve.
So hey, when in Paris, do as the Parisians do.
