Inferior
Feeling inferior means feeling less than other people: less smart, less attractive, less successful, less worth listening to. It's always a comparison, even when you don't notice making it, and the group you compare with changes the result. Students of the same ability rated their own academic ability lower at schools where the average was higher, in all 26 countries tested.1
- On the wheel: Ashamed, then inadequate, then inferior
- Nearby: Not good enough, like a failure, left behind
- Often comes: After scrolling, at reunions, in a new and talented group
- Often points to: Who you're comparing yourself with, and on what
Ranking the room
You walk in and place yourself. Near the bottom. In the meeting you stay quiet because everyone else seems to know more. A friend's good news lands as a small bruise, and then you feel bad about the bruise, which makes two.
"I joined a running club to get fitter. Everyone was faster, and after three weeks I stopped going, even though I was running farther than I ever had."
Adler and the "inferiority complex"
The phrase comes from Alfred Adler, an early psychoanalyst who broke with Freud. Adler wrote that feelings of inferiority are a normal part of being human, beginning in childhood, and that people spend much of their lives trying to make up for them.2 He kept "inferiority complex" for when those feelings take over and start shaping how someone lives.2
It's an everyday phrase now, with no entry in the psychiatry manual, and psychologists today are more likely to talk about low self-esteem or the effects of comparison. Adler's main point has aged well.
Almost everyone feels inferior to someone, about something.
Your pond changes how big you feel
Herbert Marsh and Kit-Tai Hau looked at 103,558 fifteen-year-olds in 26 countries who sat the same tests and answered the same questions about themselves.1 Students of the same ability rated their own academic ability lower when their school's average student scored higher, and that held in every one of the 26 countries.1 It's called the big-fish-little-pond effect.
Much of the feeling, in other words, is made by the pond the fish happens to be swimming in.
The running club in the example is a fast pond. The runner was a fine fish.
Then there's social media, the biggest pond anyone has ever built, where the fast swimmers are the ones who post their times. People who used Facebook more had lower self-esteem in a 2014 survey, and more exposure to people who seemed better off explained the link.3 Looking at profiles of people doing better lowered self-esteem right afterward, in a follow-up experiment from the same paper.3
Inferior, inadequate or envious?
Inferior is "they're better than me", and it's about the ranking. Inadequate is "I don't measure up to the bar", and it's about a standard. Envious is "I want what they have", and it's about the thing.
Envy at least points at something you want, while feeling inferior mostly points one way: down, at you.
Getting out of the ranking
- Name the pond. Who exactly are you comparing yourself with? A typical group, or the top of the field?1
- Compare on one thing. "She's a faster runner" is true. "She's better than me" leaps from one fact to a whole person.
- Use your past self as the other runner. The runner in the example was going farther than ever, and that comparison has a real answer.
- Mute for a week. If certain accounts reliably leave you feeling smaller, mute them for seven days and see what changes.
- Ask what you'd trade. Would you swap your whole life for theirs, or one slice of it? Usually it's a slice.
Who are you comparing yourself with, and on what, exactly? Write the one quality you're comparing, then one way you've grown on it in the past year.
Answer this with JoyQuestions people ask about feeling inferior
What is an inferiority complex in simple words?
A lasting sense of being less than other people, strong enough to shape how you act. Adler coined it.2 The psychiatry manual doesn't list it, but the feeling it names is real and common.
How do people with an inferiority complex behave?
Some go quiet and stay away from anything that invites comparison. Others overcompensate by bragging, competing hard or putting people down. Adler saw both as ways of handling the same feeling.2
Can you be arrogant and have an inferiority complex?
Yes, by Adler's account: acting superior can cover feeling inferior.2 Not everyone who brags feels small inside. Sometimes, though, the loudest person in the room is the one most worried about where they rank.
Related
- Inadequate: feeling you don't measure up.
- Like a failure: when one setback feels like a verdict.
- Envy: wanting what someone else has.