Even American songwriter Randy Newman could not have predicted the rumpus he stirred up with his satirical 1970s hit Short People. To this day, it is illegal in the state of Maryland for radio stations to air the song, which includes such lyrics as 'Short people got no reason to live'.
Maybe the authorities are right. The diminutive among us have enough to contend with. Now, fresh evidence shows that being small is a distinct disadvantage at work, at least in the US.
True, some shorties overachieve by way of a sort of compensatory Napoleon complex. A study once showed that short police officers were more aggressive than their taller peers. But otherwise, the so-called complex has received little scientific attention. Indeed, most psychologists do not take the subject of height very seriously, and most sane people would be dismayed to learn that a feature unrelated to performance could have an impact in a performance-orientated environment like the workplace.
But, impact it has, as a report published in the Journal of Applied Psychology demonstrates. By averaging the results of four studies, researchers found that an individual who is 1.8 metres tall could be expected to earn US$5,525 ($43,000) more per year than someone who is 1.65 metres, even controlling for gender, weight and age. Nor does the effect wane as one establishes professional human capital: the rewards of height actually increase over time.
As one would expect, the effect is more marked in interaction-orientated work, such as sales or management, than in less social jobs, like engineering or computer programming. But only marginally so.
What explains the phenomenon? Evolution, mainly. As sociobiologists point out, it is to a creature's advantage to recognise the link between height and power; basic perceptual research confirms that humans have evolved in this direction: they instinctively equate size with value or status. Presidential candidates who win, for example, are perceived as taller than those who lose.
Even the same candidate is transformed: in the 1988 Canadian federal election, voters judged Brian Mulroney, the winner, to be shorter before the election than after it, as reported in 'The rise and fall of politicians', published in the Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science.