The ‘best little boy in the world’ hypothesis (Pachankis and Hatzenbuehler)

What drives it

If who I am might be rejected, what I do can earn a place. Being busy and accomplished also gives a reason to stay out of dating and away from questions, and Tobias described his ‘prodigious list of activities’ as his most important everyday defense. For identification it gives a name to success that feels hollow, or that the person can’t stop chasing.

How it shows

Work

First in and last out, praised as flawless, frightened of any review short of glowing. Taking on every project so no evening is free for questions about a girlfriend.

Relationships

Parents who bragged about the grades and never asked about dates. Choosing partners who look impressive on paper. Feeling worth loving only when things are going well.

Self

Notice what happens to how you feel about yourself in the week after a setback, and whether rest feels earned or dangerous.

What tells it apart

Contingent self-worth: Contingent self-worth is the general pattern of worth riding on success in a domain. The best little boy idea is one proposed origin of it in sexual minority boys, with hiding as the driver, and it fits better when the striving began around the time the person sensed they were different.

Perfectionism: Perfectionism has many roots, from a demanding parent to temperament. This lens may fit better when the standards arrived with early hiding and loosened after coming out.

Impostor phenomenon: The impostor phenomenon is feeling like a fraud despite success. A best little boy may feel that too, with an added sense that the success is covering for something else.

A test

Ask the person when the push to excel began and what was happening with their sense of being different at that age. If the striving lines up with the years of hiding and achievement still props up their self-worth, the hypothesis may describe them, bearing in mind that it rests on a single study.

Go deeper

One book, one talk and one study, each on another site.

• Read: The Velvet Rage, Alan Downs, 2005, second edition 2012. Written for gay men by a clinical psychologist, from his practice and his own life. He traces adult shame back to a boyhood of feeling different and sets out three stages of moving out of it. It is widely read and many readers say it named something for them. The stages come from his clinical work and haven't been tested in studies that we found. A related idea, that some gay men make up for stigma by achieving, was tested later by Pachankis and Hatzenbuehler (2013). It says little about women, bisexual or trans people.

How strong the research is

weak. One study tests it directly (Pachankis and Hatzenbuehler, Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 2013). Among US college men, 136 sexual minority men based their self-worth more on academics, appearance and competition than 56 heterosexual men did, with modest differences. The longer they had hidden their orientation when younger, the more they invested in these areas. In a nine-day diary, self-worth tied to academics went with more time alone, tied to appearance with problem eating, and tied to competition with more dishonesty, arguing and distress. The authors name the limits: the two groups came from different kinds of campus groups, which could explain the difference, the men were younger, more educated and better off than most, and women were not included. A search found no replication of the full study.

Where it comes from

Named after Andrew Tobias’s memoir The Best Little Boy in the World, first published in 1973 under the name John Reid. John Pachankis and Mark Hatzenbuehler, ‘The social development of contingent self-worth in sexual minority young men: an empirical investigation of the “best little boy in the world” hypothesis’, Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 2013

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