Falling from Great (and Not-So-Great) Heights: How Initial Status Position Influences Performance after Status Loss

Abstract

We investigate how initial status position influences the quality of task performance in the aftermath of status loss. We argue that despite the benefits of having status, high-status individuals experience more “self-threat”—challenges or contradictions to a central view of the self—and, consequently, have more difficulty performing well after status loss than do low-status individuals who experience a comparable loss of status. In a field study of professional baseball players (Study 1), we found that although low-status players' performance quality was unaffected by status loss, the quality of high-status players' performance declined significantly after losing status. In a high-involvement group experiment (Study 2), we found that high-status individuals who lost status were less proficient than both high-status individuals who did not lose status and low-status individuals who lost a comparable amount of status. However, supporting self-threat as the proposed psychological process, self-affirmation restored the quality of high-status individuals' performance (Study 3). We discuss the practical and theoretical implications of these findings.