What is a Crab Mentality? Why does it exist in humans? And how to overcome it when you feel it nipping.
The Crab Mentality is a selfish mindset, but one that many people suffer from or become a victim of at some point.
The best way to describe Crab Mentality is with the phrase, “If I can’t have it, you can’t have it,” and is termed ‘crab mentality’ because of behaviour observed in crabs caught in a bucket.
In theory, these trapped crabs could escape one after the other, but each time one tries to climb out, the others undermine its effort and prevent it. Often, the crabs are actively malicious, such as waiting until the escaping one is almost free before pulling it back. In the end, this will lead to the collective deaths of all the crabs, rather than allowing as many as possible to escape to their crabby freedom.
The crab mentality analogy extends to humans to describe a group’s actions when they attack the self-confidence of a colleague who achieves or gets the opportunity to achieve more success than them. This is usually because of negative emotions such as jealousy, envy, resentment, bad competitiveness, conspiracy, and spite.
The goal is to stop the other party from progressing, pursuing their dreams, and capiatlising upon opportunities, eventually making them lose their ambition.
Most of us have witnessed this at play, either in our own lives, or in the actions of colleagues, acquaintances or family members.
It isn’t necessarily always malicious. People may genuinely believe they are helping to protect the safety of their friend by dissuading them from taking what they perceive as a big risk, not realising that what they are actually doing is imposing their own fears and limiting beliefs on another.
But in many instances there is deliberate malintent, as an individual acts to ensure that others do not ‘get ahead’ of them, exercising behaviours that undermine another’s confidence, challenge their reality and even sabotage opportunities.
And because it can be so subtle, and because we inherently trust that friends and family have our best interests at heart we often don’t notice crab mentality in action. Indeed, it can often be at play precisely when we need others to be spurring us on and filling us with self belief – such as when weighing up potentially life changing decisions like taking a new job that feels a little intimidating, or moving to a new city or country where there will be more possibilities to follow our dreams.
So wide-reaching is Crab mentality that it has even been observed within nonprofit organizations, where great fundraising concepts are shot down by other members because the idea wasn’t theirs, or because it will take resources away from their own less effective initiatives.
Indeed, in any office setting we often see coworkers envious of others’ progress instead of helping each other grow and develop, which would clearly be of more benefit to the greater good.
Why does Crab Mentality exist in humans?
There’s a phenomenon that psychologists describe as ‘The Fixed Mindset’.
People with a fixed mindset have the inaccurate belief that they have reached the peak of their creativity, intelligence, and character.
For them, there’s no more room for improvement. As a result, they are likely to avoid further challenges and accept unsatisfactory conditions or inefficient processes as ‘just the way things are’, rather than put in effort to improve things. They’re more likely to give up than try harder, they ignore feedback, and the success of someone around them is threatening to what they believe is their peak. So, rather than take up the challenge to work on themselves, they will play down others’ progress and try to discourage them. This is how they believe they will remain on top.
The Fixed Mindset is therefore the genesis of the crab mentality in people. They are usually unwilling to go beyond the boundaries that they set for themselves or expand their thinking. Often, they aren’t even satisfied with the circumstance or situation they’re in at the time, but they just don’t believe that they are capable of changing things by themselves. They prefer to remain in their comfort zone, and as long as they are in that position every other person must also stay stagnant to maintain the status quo.
There are many reasons why such people may choose to remain stagnant: Insecurity, fear, lack of motivation, limiting beliefs, bad habits, etc. Fundamentally, they don’t seem to believe that people can create something positive for themselves, and they don’t enjoy seeing people try it. Because, if it were possible, but they didn’t do it first, then what does it say about them? Instead, they will attack the self-confidence and source of motivation of other people, to stop them from ‘having ideas above their station’, and eventually going past them.
We see this playing out when people downplay others’ achievements, criticise, undermine and discourage their peers.
Crab Mentality from those closest to us
The truth is, too many people are victims of the crab mentality without realising.
This can be because it is coming from people that are closest to them, or even someone they look up to for advice and guidance. Often, we attach greater weight to the counsel of those older and more experienced, but their words might be influenced by the regret that they didn’t achieve more in their earlier years, subconsciously playing out to keep the next generation operating within the same limits.
The individuals in question might genuinely believe that their words and guidance are what’s best, but indirectly and unintentionally they’re limiting others and limiting the full potential of future achievements.
It’s an all too common fact that too many people lose their ambitions and goals because of their environment and the people that surround them.
If you’re able to recognise crab mentality in action you can find ways to counter it, especially if you live or work in a competitive environment.
Being a Victim or Instigator of the Crab Mentality
It’s clear that a Crab Mentality is not healthy or useful for either party. Sabotaging people and making sure that everyone remains at the same level doesn’t benefit anyone, and is contrary to the very concept of human progress.
The instigator might feel positive about themselves when they are successful in pulling others down, but it is a short-term feeling. It is an unhealthy strategy when it comes to the long-term wellbeing of individuals. Even if they experience the short-term illusion of being happy and a good dose of dopamine, it isn’t possible to sustain the feeling of happiness over someone else’s downfall.
Someone who is acting out their crab mentality is only displaying their fears and jealousy. They are expanding on their own feelings of insecurity and unworthiness to instil the same feelings of self doubt in others.
In life, no one is really at the ‘peak of it all’. There will always be people that are more skilled, smarter, wiser, richer, luckier, and more successful at any one thing. Even if you manage to get to the top of one field, you can’t be the best at everything. This is the fundamental problem with comparing your life to that of others.
Comparing affects your self-worth and how you see yourself. No matter how big and successful you are, you’ll always feel inferior to someone. This is why people would want to go the length of making someone fail or remain in a position so that they can feel good about themselves.
On the other hand, if you’re a victim of the crab mentality, you also need to free yourself (maybe even more so than an instigator).
You have to get yourself out of that situation because as long as you remain there you will be limited by its boundaries. You will always have people trying to pull you down, and their words and actions will, over time, become embedded in your own mind as reality. This is why many people end up losing their ambitions when they become exposed to the crab mentality.
When you are a victim for too long you become used to the environment, give up on your dreams, and before you know it, you’re pulling others down with the same crab mentality that held you back.
What to do if you’re a victim of crab mentality?
Sometimes finding yourself in an environment where you’re limited by others might not be your fault, but if you remain in that environment, or you don’t take steps to reshape it, then you have yourself to blame. It will be best if you can be the architect of your own environment in which you can grow and thrive.
While it might not be possible to get up and leave a situation – especially if we’re talking about family, or a job you otherwise love – you can start with the people around you. Find new groups or peers of a similar mindset, or even more positive than your own. Identify and minimise the negative influences around you. Find mentors and coaches that will expand your realm of possibility, pushing and encouraging you to grow.
The more negativity and limiting voices you keep around you the more potential for them to negatively influence you and keep you back. Identify these dream crushers and stay very far away from them (irrespective of who they are). If it is indeed a very close family member then learn to take their advice with a big pinch of salt, and avoid talking to them about the particular topic that activates their crab mentality.
Once you’ve extracted yourself from that negative circle then you can start to rebuild your environment with positive people and influences that spur you on, inspire you, and help you develop a positive and forward-thinking, growth mindset.
Author Bio
Grace Scott is a political journalist, writer at Australia assignment help, and a traveler from Kirton. She also writes for https://www.bestessayservicereviews.com/. She loves to explore new people, places, psychology, write and estimate international politics. Find Grace on Facebook.
