CHAPTER 1
The Upside of Under:
Why Underdogs Have Power
âThink and act like an underdog.â
â From Googleâs Core Values Statement posted in Googleâs German offices
âWhat was compelling was that they were the ordinary people, not the medical experts.â
â Montana Lt. Governor John Bohlinger
â...the little guy no one has ever heard of before, the guy who is with his truck, driving around and shaking hands and really has new vision and energy. People look at that and say, âWeâve got to help the little guy.ââ1
â California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (Referring to campaign of U.S. Senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts)
In late 2001, my husband was in the process of buying a dog boarding facility. As we toured one of the operations for sale, we noticed a large truck and about 20 dogs being unloaded and prepped for display to potential adoptive families. This was the facility ownerâs second dog adoption event following the success of a similar event several weeks earlier. At the first event, people had quickly adopted 30 dogs or more, so the owner thought heâd find additional demand for adoptions.
However, almost half of the dogs at the second adopt-a-thon didnât get adopted. Both groups of dogs were true underdogs, having lived in a shelter for months. But why did one group win and the other didnât? The dogs from the first adopt-a-thon came from New York City, and they werenât just any New York City dogs; they were â9/11 dogs.â These dogs had lost their owners on September 11, 2001, or people had been forced to give up the dogs because their homes had been destroyed or vacated due to proximity to the World Trade Center. The â9/11 dogsâ were considered the ultimate losers! Not only were they shelter dogs, but they were orphaned due to an unfair, tragic, and horrific event.
The people who quickly adopted the â9/11 dogsâ acted in alignment with our love of the underdog. Adopting those dogs made them feel like compassionate peopleâeven more compassionate than if they had adopted a âregularâ shelter dog. Whether dogs or people, we want to help the underdogâbut not all underdogs are created equal.
Do you remember cheering for any of the following people or teams? Singer Susan Boyle. The Butler University menâs basketball team playing against Duke in the 2010 menâs NCAA championship game. The Chicago Cubs.
Author Steven Kotler wrote âThe Playing Field,â a blog about the science of sports and culture for PsychologyToday.com. (Coincidentally, he is cofounder of the Rancho de Chihuahua dog sanctuary.) In his article âWhy We Love Losersâ2, he noted that we are inexplicably drawn to cheering for the underdog in sporting events and virtually all contests. Itâs in our DNA, at least in the United States; anyone can rise to greatness.
This love of the underdog is intriguing because it violates classic social psychology theory that suggests an important part of our self-worth derives from identifying with successful, high-status organizations and groups. A core tenet of social identity theory asserts that the accomplishments of the groups with which we affiliate are a crucial source of our self-esteem. We are better people (or at least we think we are) when weâre aligned with winners. Author Isaac Asimov put it this way: âAll things being equal, you root for your own sex, your own culture, your own locality...and what you want to prove is that you are better than the other person. Whomever you root for represents you; and when he or she wins, you win.â3
This explains the insufferable superiority that New York Yankees baseball and SEC (South Eastern Conference) football fans display; theyâre obviously burdened with low self-esteem and need to affiliate with winners to feel good about themselves.
All kidding aside, the literature on this topic is clear: when our team wins, we win. Have you ever noticed how people talk about their favorite team differently after a victory than after a defeat? Tune in and youâll see them identify with winners in all its selfish glory. According to a small experiment by Dr. Robert Cialdini, the fan of a winning team will exclaim, âWe beat Oregonâ or âWe crushed Michigan.â But if the fanâs team loses, the pronouns change. âThey lost to Ohio Stateâ or âOhio State won.â (Hate me if you must, but I am unabashedly identified with the Ohio State Buckeyesâand yes, some of my self-esteem derives from their accomplishments.)
Research shows that people tend to see individuals of high status as more influential, competent, and worthy than low-status (underdog) individuals or groups.4 The low-status individuals and groups are more likely to be targets of prejudice and negative stereotyping, and theyâre more likely to be seen as unworthy and incompetent.5
This makes our support for the underdog all the more curious. Why doesnât affiliating with underdogs hurt our self-esteem? In one study, sports fans whose favorite teams repeatedly suffer defeat show temporary decreases in mood and testosterone, and they even lose faith in their own mental and social abilities.6
This should cause us to sympathize more with Chicago Cubs fans. (The Cubs pro baseball team holds the record for the longest championship drought of any major North American professional sports team.) If you know and love any Cubs fans, Iâll let you draw your own conclusions.
THE UNDERWHELMING ASSET
If youâre a believer in the accepted âwisdomâ that powerful people only listen to other powerful people, or that they donât have any affinity for the âcommon man,â think again. In fact, the scientific literature reveals that high achievers, the âtall poppies,â often elicit envy and resentment from others, especially if their achievements are seen as undeserved.7
Now, our tall poppy friends might not care that others resent them. However, if theyâre ever in a persuasion encounter pitted against âmore deservingâ tall poppies, they may lose. What makes certain tall poppies more deserving? Because the influence target presumes they worked harder for their success. For example, in the case of a boot-strapping business owner vs. a business owner who inherited a business, the boot strapper has an advantage. (Note to all tall poppies: Make sure your achievements are meritedâthat you worked like a crazed weasel to achieve them! People notice the difference.)
I interviewed University of South Florida psychologist Dr. Joe Vandello who recently began studying the reasons people cheer for underdogs. (Once you understand why they do it, youâll realize how being the underdog is a persuasion asset rather than a persuasion liability.)
Studying the appeal of the underdog had not been on Dr. Vandelloâs academic bucket list. âThis research is kind of a sidetrack to what I normally study,â he explained. âMost of my research deals with conflict-related themes. But one of my students who was collaborating with me on other projects would often meet me in my office after class. Weâd find ourselves talking about sports. We started wondering why people always root for the underdog. After all, it does violate accepted social science theory. I thought there would be a lot of research about it, but interestingly, thereâs not. So while itâs not my main course of study, Iâm looking at the phenomena of the underdog.â
In one of Dr. Vandelloâs research projects, he asked students to watch a video clip of a basketball game. The game was from a European championship, so his American viewers had no knowledge of which team was favored to win. The researchers manipulated the background story so that half the viewers were told the team in red didnât have a lot of resources and were not expected to win. The other viewers were told the exact oppositeâthat the team in yellow was the underdog. Both groups watched the same game.
Dr. Vandelloâs team then asked those in the two viewing groups which team they wanted to win the game. Not surprisingly, the group that was told of the red teamâs struggles wanted the red team to win, and those who believed the yellow team was the underdog rooted for the yellow team. Then they were asked to cite characteristics of each team.
âWe found that they believed the team with fewer resources and less past success had more persistence, guts, and heart than the other team,â reported Dr. Vandello. âThey thought that the underdog team, regardless of which team they believed it to be, displayed more effort. So, whoever the underdog is,â he summarized, âit changes how differently one views events.â
Trying hard, as an underdog does, invokes positive characteristics. Other research has shown that people give more positive evaluations to others when their performance is attributed to effort rather than ability.8
People love those who try hard more than those who have superior abilities. Plus the underdogs must be good and moral (we might surmise), or they wouldnât try so hard, right?
A JUST WORLD FOR ALL
So how does this impact you as an individual underdog in extreme influence situations? It gives you an enormous advantage. As Dr. Vandello said, most people view the world with the âjust world theory,â as itâs called in social psychology. That is, most people have an innate desire to live in a just world. They want equality and justice; they want the playing field to be level. And some people may want that more than others.
If you follow geopolitics, this explains why the United States will always be the object of disdain as the lone superpower. Many in the world are biochemically incapable of supporting any country with more resources than theirs, especially during times of international conflicts. Attempts to win over world public opinion will always be a âtension conventionâ because of our resources, so until America becomes a third world country, it wonât have many cheerleaders on the world stage. (Knowing thatâs partially whatâs required for world love and adoration, Iâll forego an international cheering section, thank you.)
âPeople who are powerful and wealthy probably have an even better sense of this than those who arenât in high-level positions,â stated Dr. Vandello. âIt gives them the opportunity to say, âLook, we help others too; we arenât the bad guys.â Social science indicates that people have a general aversion to inequality; they want to correct it. Helping the underdog is one way to correct it. Further, because underdogs have a lot of heart and grit, we see them as good and moral people. Therefore, it makes us feel more moral to help other moral people.â
New research to be published in Psychological Science supports Dr. Vandelloâs assertion that the powerful have a pressing need to help the underdog. Itâs because they may be aware of their own possibly nefarious nature; after all, the research supports the old notion that power corrupts. Specifically, power breeds hypocrisy because the powerful can feel entitled not to obey the moral rules of the underdog and the rules they ask others to follow.
In five experiments,9 researchers assigned 172 subjects high-power roles (e.g., prime minister) and low-power roles (e.g., civil servant). The subjects had to consider a series of moral dilemmas involving stolen bikes, broken traffic rules, and tax fraud. In each of the five experiments, the more high-power characters repeatedly showed moral hypocrisy. They disapproved of immoral behavior (for example, padding expense reports) and yet behaved badly themselves. For instance, when powerful characters were given an opportunity to self-report their success in a dice game, they cheated, reporting that they won more times than they actually did.
The researchers made note of a sense of entitlementâthat is, those who believed they were entitled to a high-status position tended to be more hypocritical than those who felt they were not deserving of power.
Current research even shows that CEOs who are highly paid are âmeaner than their peers.â Researchers from Harvard, Rice, and the University of Utah found that raising executive compensation packages âresults in executives behaving meanly toward those lower down the hierarchy.â10
Maybe some (not all!) of the high-power people who exhibit hypocrisy and an attitude of entitlement are aware of their sense of entitlement and are motivated to help the underdog to assuage their guilt. Maybe they know they should treat others more respectfully and find opportunities to help the underdog as a way to counteract their transgressions.
As an underdog, be aware that people in high positions often want to helpâfor whatever reasons that arenât always based on good morals.
PEOPLE BUY FROM UNDERDOGS
Recent research has found that underdog positioning also influences consumer behavior. Harvard University researcher Neeru Paharia, Harvard Business School professor Anat Keinan, Simmons School of Management professor Jill Avery, and Boston College professor Juliet Schor conducted a study of consumer products to determine whether underdog positioning works in the consumer goods marketplace.11 I interviewed researcher Jill Avery to find out if a kind of underdog branding product has the same characteristics as underdogs experience in sports and politics.
Avery noted that an increase in underdog branding as a marketing strategy is happening. âWe see brands across a wide variety of product categories (food, juice, beer, car rental, technology, etc.) using underdog brand biographies in todayâs marketplace,â she explained.
âUnderdogs are winning at the polls, at the Oscars (example: the movie Slumdog Millionaire), and on grocery shelves across America. This is because underdog stories about overcoming great odds through passion and determination resonate during difficult times. They inspire us and give us hope when the outlook is bleak. They provide the promise that success is still possible, a much-needed message in challenging social, political, and economic times.
âDuring recessionary periods such as these, people feel increasingly disadvantaged, making them even more likely to identify with the struggles of underdogs. Firms appear to be capitalizing on this; todayâs brands are seeding underdog stories for consumers to use during a cultural moment in history when consumers feel the American Dream slipping from their grasp,â Avery concluded.
THE VALUE OF UNDERDOG INSIGHTS
Former Iowa Congressman Jim Ross Lightfoot, who served for 11 years in the U.S. House ...