Falling from Great (and Not-So-Great) Heights: How Initial Status Position Influences Performance after Status Loss
研究发现，高地位者在地位丧失后因自我威胁而绩效显著下降，而低地位者不受影响；自我肯定能恢复高地位者的绩效。
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.