Overcompensation Effect

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What is Overcompensation Effect?

The Overcompensation Effect is a striving that does not stop when a felt lack is merely patched. It pushes past the lack, into extra effort, display, or a disguise, so the lack stays covered.

There came to light a remarkable relationship between somatic inferiority and psychic overcompensation, so that I gained a fundamental viewpoint, namely, that the realization of somatic inferiority by the individual becomes for him a permanent impelling force for the development of his psyche.

That sentence opens Adler’s chapter on the feeling of inferiority. One scan of the archive text prints “I” as “1”. The sentence here restores “I”. The everyday picture is a thin sole and a very high heel. The heel can help a person walk. It can also be a sign held up so that nobody looks at the sole. The sign does not thicken the sole. Narcissistic Rage is outsized anger after a slight to a grandiose picture. This page scores the cover, not the blow. Overconfidence Effect is a confident judgment that is off. A loud extra effort can be accurate. The volume is not the score.

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Overcompensation Effect in 3 Depths

• Beginner: A sharp lack, in looks, origin, or a skill, can sit under a display that is larger than the task. The display is a clue. It is not proof of a wound.
• Practitioner: Before you read a boast as talent, write the lack it might be covering, and write what would still be true if the display stopped for a week. A repair changes the lack. A costume does not.
• Advanced: Adler’s chapter builds a life plan on a felt minus, and he says the feeling is relative to the person’s situation and aims. The 2018 games score height in a safe taking move. They do not score a childhood, a job, or a clinic.

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Origin

The Overcompensation Effect, as this page uses the name, is Adler’s psychic overcompensation: realizing a bodily lack becomes a lasting push in the psyche. The preface of the English text is dated Vienna, 1912. Adler says he had already tried the same comparative method on organs, in the study he names Studie über Minderwertigkeit von Organen. A public catalog note on the 1917 English monograph dates that organ work to 1907 and says he joined the group around Freud in 1902 and separated around 1912. That monograph was not opened. This page does not quote it. The translators are Bernard Glueck and John E. Lind. The copy read here is the Internet Archive text of the Moffat, Yard reprint of the 1917 American edition. Chapter I is titled “The Origin and Development of the Feeling of Inferiority and the Consequences Thereof.” The overcompensation sentence is the chapter’s opening claim. Later in the same chapter he writes that some patients behave as if they were inferior, and that in all cases the striving sits on the feeling. He adds that the feeling must be read in a relative sense, as a relation to the environment or to the person’s own aims. A measured shortfall and a felt shortfall are not the same fact.

In other cases the patient behaves as if he were inferior. In all cases, however, his striving and thinking are built upon the foundation of the feeling of inferiority.

The translators’ introduction, which speaks of Adler in the third person, offers Demosthenes, called there a stammerer who became an orator, as a classical example. Plutarch was not opened. The example is an illustration in that introduction. It is not a counted life. The same introduction is also where a popular later name, the inferiority complex, gets its neighborhood. This page keeps Adler’s phrase, psychic overcompensation, as the alias, and does not rotate the popular name into the title.

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Key Points

Four splits keep a felt lack, a real repair, and a safe display from becoming one slogan about the brain.

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Applications

These four moves follow the split between a felt lack, a repair, and a display. They do not carry a coin rate into a class, a shop, or a household.

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Case Study

The counted case is Jill E. P. Knapen, Nancy M. Blaker, and Mark Van Vugt, “The Napoleon Complex: When Shorter Men Take More,” Psychological Science 29(7), pages 1134–1144, published online 10 May 2018, DOI 10.1177/0956797618772822. The PMC HTML was read. The Open Science Framework data file was not reanalyzed. The supplement was not opened. The authors say the popular Napoleon story has been attributed to Adler’s inferiority theory, and they cite a 1956 selection of his writings. That 1956 book was not opened. Their own frame is evolutionary, not the 1912 chapter. The pilot, at the University of Groningen, paid 60 participants, 43 of them women, €2 plus the coins they kept. An envelope held eight €1 coins for an anonymous other person. Men who reported having felt small left fewer coins for that person, b = −0.161, p = .013. Women did not, p = .996. Measured height did not predict the split, p = .939. There was no rival in the room. Study 1, at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, paired 42 men who were strangers, mean height 182.98 cm. They stood opposite each other for about 10 seconds, then split 18 poker chips worth €0.10 in a dictator game and again in an ultimatum game. Both men were given the allocator role, though each was told he had been chosen to divide the money. In the dictator game the allocator’s word was final. Mean chips kept were 12.62 (SD 4.05). Shorter men kept more, p = .008. Opponent height did not, p = .205. The Poisson model reverse-scored the chip count, so the printed slope is not chips per centimeter. In the ultimatum game the other man could reject the split and leave both with nothing. Relative height did not predict taking there, p = .519. When the opponent was taller than average, shorter men did not keep more, p = .846. Participants kept 2.38 more chips, on average, in the dictator game than in the ultimatum game. A taller opponent widened that gap, p = .014. Study 2 recruited 164 men in 82 pairs, in April waves of 2012, 2013, and 2014. Height was measured and read aloud. The dictator pot was 15 chips. Shorter men again kept more, p = .036, and the link remained after ethnicity, p = .039. “Do you ever feel small?” did not predict, p = .781. A hot-sauce task, 0 to 5 ml, with no insult beforehand, showed no height link, p = .749. Combining the two dictator games as a percentage of chips, shorter height still predicted keeping more, p = .005. That slope is on a standardized percentage. It is not a percent of income. The authors call this preliminary support for a narrow reading: shorter men, faced with a height cue, use a low-cost taking move, and they do not become more physically aggressive in the sauce task. They also write that they cannot clearly tell indirect aggression from simply being less altruistic. A footnote says Napoleon was of average stature for his time, citing Lugli and colleagues (2007). That paper was not opened. The lesson for this page is the shape of the result. A disadvantage can shift a safe display of taking. The same men did not show the shift when refusal was possible, and they did not show it as more sauce. Adler’s life plan, a childhood, and a career are outside these rooms.

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Boundaries and Failure Modes

The Overcompensation Effect, as the 1912 chapter lets us use the name, is a clinical reading of neurotic striving. The 2018 paper lets us use a second, narrower score: chip taking by shorter men when the other man cannot refuse. Two uses overshoot both texts. One exports 12.62 chips, b = −0.161, or any p value onto a class, a shop, a household, or another year. The other reads every boast, every luxury purchase, and every late-night practice block as proof of a hidden lack. The chapter is about patients whose striving is built on the feeling. It is not a rate. The translators’ Demosthenes line is an illustration. A person can practice a weak skill until it is actually strong. That outcome is ordinary compensation, and the chapter’s opening contrast is the push that does not stop at adequate. Pratfall Effect runs the other way: a visible slip can raise liking for someone already known to be competent. Hiding the slip is a different bet. The games add their own fence. The authors say the ultimatum game was assumed to feel like a risk of retaliation, and that this assumption was not tested. Grip strength was meant to be measured and the device failed, so other body cues sat in the room unmeasured. Felt small predicted the pilot and missed Study 2. Women were in the pilot only. The 2008 consumer abstract, PDF not opened, is a willingness-to-pay shift after a power recall. It is not a receipt, and it is not Adler’s sentence. No brain measure is in the chapter or the games. “Pathological” belongs, in Adler’s later clinical language, to an exaggerated power goal in some neurotic striving. It is not a diagnosis you can read off a résumé.

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Common Misconceptions

Three readings turn a clinical push, and one coin paradigm, into a law of show-offs.

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Related Concepts

These six pages sit beside the Overcompensation Effect. Each one asks a different question.

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One-Line Takeaway