Don’t fall victim to the Peter Principle

A man with white hair in a suit sitting at the head of an empty boardroom table, facing forward, back toward the camera. Dozens of empty chairs line the outer edges of the room; windows at the rear of the room show trees outside.

Photo by ER Productions/Getty Images

It’s fun stumbling upon psychological concepts in unexpected places. I remember first learning about the Johari Window (an obscure framework for thinking about the limits of self-knowledge) in the Robert Galbraith novel The Cuckoo’s Calling (2013). It happened again the other day. I was enjoying the action thriller Nobody’s Hero (2024) by M W Craven – my middle-aged version of brain rot – when the hero Ben Koenig invoked the ‘Peter Principle’ – the idea that people tend to get promoted to the point of maximum incompetence.

Koenig is already a curious character for anyone interested in psychology. He has Urbach-Wiethe disease, which has calcified his right amygdala – apparently rendering him incapable of feeling fear (a handy attribute for an action hero). By dint of his training with various special forces, he’s also a repository of fun psychological wisdom, such as the Peter Principle, which he draws on to explain why the assassins have chosen to murder a bunch of mid-ranking infrastructure experts, rather than their superiors.

I checked it out, and the Peter Principle is a genuine concept that originated with a bestselling, semi-satirical book of the same name in 1969, co-written by two Canadians, the educationalist Laurence J Peter and the playwright Raymond Hull. There’s a simple logic to their idea – you keep performing well, you keep getting promoted, until you reach a managerial role at which you struggle and so you don’t get promoted again. Various studies have confirmed there’s a truth to the logic, at least in the context of sales, the military and academia.

I’m going to add the Peter Principle to my mental dictionary of psychological concepts – and use it as a reminder not to rest on my laurels. We can’t assume that the skills and knowledge that served us well in the past will be enough for whatever challenges we face in the future.

by Christian Jarrett

FIND OUT MORE

The article ‘The Reason Why People Become Incompetent at Work’ (2020) by David Robson discusses the Peter Principle in more detail.

The Psyche Guide ‘How to Get Promoted as a Woman’ (2020) by Jan Hills offers practical advice specifically geared towards female employees.

NOTE TO SELFFOOD AND DRINK

The dissonance of meeting what you eat

A curious brown chicken looking at the camera with several other chickens blurred in the background.

Photo by Christin Hume/Unsplash

There were about seven birds of different colours that I used to see wobble around my neighbour’s urban chicken run. I frequently passed it on the sidewalk. Peering through the fence, I’d feel a bit of unease. I was a not-quite-vegetarian then: I’d given up some meat due to concerns about animal welfare, but still ate chicken. Yet here I was, charmed by these same feathered creatures.

What I felt was cognitive dissonance, a concept first described by the psychologist Leon Festinger in the 1950s. It’s the psychological discomfort someone experiences when what they know or believe is inconsistent with what they do. For instance, you might believe it’s wrong to lie but do it anyway, or know that a major corporation is harming people but still buy its stuff – and that might cause you some internal disharmony. Sometimes, people deal with that by rationalising their behaviour (eg, ‘everyone else does it’). Other times, they change.

A new paper by the researchers David Fechner and Sebastian Isbanner suggests that my increasing cognitive dissonance may have put me over the fence (so to speak) into vegetarianism. They compared several groups of people: those who ate meat and had no plans to change; those who were considering no longer eating meat; and those who had actually made the change. They found that cognitive dissonance (gauged by how uneasy, uncomfortable, etc one felt thinking about eating meat) was higher in the potential-vegetarian group than among the meat-eaters, and higher still among vegetarians.

Other factors differed too, such as how feasible a vegetarian diet seemed to them. But according to the researchers, the results suggest that cognitive dissonance helped to explain why some people who believed in vegetarianism’s benefits actually adopted it. When it comes to morally loaded behaviours, believing might not be enough. Our conflicts might have to stare us in the face.

by Matt Huston

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If you’re contemplating going meat-free yourself, the Psyche Guide ‘How to Go Vegetarian or Vegan’ (2022) by Reed Mangels explains how to do it in a planned and satisfying way.

The initial spark for my eventual dietary shift was the book Eating Animals (2009) by Jonathan Safran Foer.

NOTE TO SELFFOCUS AND ATTENTION

Embrace the monotony

Photo by Thomas Hoepker/Magnum

For most of my 20s, I couldn’t brush my teeth, ride public transit, or take a walk without listening to a podcast or audiobook. Silence, I thought, was a waste of time.

But since reading All the Beauty in the World (2023), I’ve been reconsidering my relationship to dull, seemingly empty moments. In the book, Patrick Bringley recounts his decade among the watchful guards of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Standing in the Met’s echoic halls for hours on end, day after predictable day, he found that, over time, his relationship to the work slowly changed. Initial enchantment with the art gave way to boredom – and then, enlightenment. He surrendered to the ‘turtleish movement of a watchman’s time’, stopped thinking about how much of his shift was left, and let the hours drift.

I think about Bringley’s experience when I have to engage in any long, monotonous task. It might be waiting in line or on hold, vacuuming, folding laundry, or chopping vegetables for dinner. I resist the urge to fill the time with music or podcasts and strive instead for what Bringley calls a ‘princely detachment’ from time, finding the luxury and nuance in the moment.

Bringley noticed patterns in the different kinds of Met visitors. Hanging up my laundry, I notice patterns in how different articles of clothing tend to wrinkle in the wash. Bringley developed an appreciation for artworks that he initially ignored. I pay finer attention to the unique composition of facial features on the faces of people I stand in line with. I am learning, I think, to appreciate the little things.

Of course, it requires constant practice to find the peace and richness in these stretches of time. But your reward comes, Bringley says, when an hour no longer feels an hour long, and you ‘hardly remember how to be bored’.

by Hannah Seo

FIND OUT MORE

For a thoughtful conversation on how to embrace silence, and the meaning that can be found in intimate moments of quiet, listen to the episode ‘How to Sink Into Silence’ from the podcast The Gray Area with Sean Illing.

The Psyche Guide ‘Solitude Can Be Profoundly Restorative. Here’s How to Savour It’ (2025), by the psychologist Thuy-vy Nguyen, offers expert guidance on treating alone time as an opportunity, rather than a boring interlude.

NOTE TO SELFGOALS AND MOTIVATION

Motivation is good, but discipline is better

Photo of a boxing match with a standing boxer in the ring and an opponent kneeling behind, lit by overhead lights.

Oleksandr Usyk walks away from defeated Daniel Dubois, 19 July 2025 Photo by Andrew Couldridge/Action Images/Reuters

In July this year, the Ukrainian boxer Oleksandr Usyk, aged 38, became the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world – for the second time! Combined with his 2018 undisputed cruiserweight title, this collection of accolades across weight classes is unprecedented in boxing history. His latest success led some commentators to compare him with legends such as Mohammed Ali, and prompted one journalist to ask him how on earth he stays motivated given all that he has achieved.

‘I don’t have motivation,’ Usyk said, ‘I have discipline.’ He went on to explain that motivation is temporary – you have it one day, but not the next. In fact, when he wakes up for training, he never has motivation, only discipline. ‘Motivation is good,’ he said, ‘but discipline is better.’

Usyk was stating succinctly something for which psychologists have long been gathering evidence. Whether it’s training for a sport, pursuing excellence at work, or seeking a healthier lifestyle, desire takes you only so far. That’s why we need to use devices grounded in discipline to support us, so that we don’t think about it, we just do it. What is discipline? It’s ‘related to high conscientiousness’, the sports psychologist Noel Brick tells me, ‘including being organised in our daily activities, an ability to control impulses … or completing activities out of a sense of duty.’ Approaches based on habit formation or implementation intentions ensure that we persist, almost as if on autopilot, regardless of our unreliable motivation levels.

Usyk’s comments reminded me of our Psyche Idea on another important distinction – between goals and commitments. Motivation might help you set your goals. But to get there will take discipline-based commitments. As Justin Kompf explained, ‘a goal is something that you want to do. A commitment supports that goal and is something you have to do.’

by Christian Jarrett

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For more insights into how to achieve your goals, read the Psyche Idea ‘To Meet Your Goals, Forget Willpower and Fill Your Toolbox’ (2022) by Marina Milyavskaya.

For a counterpoint to the idea that discipline is everything, check out this 2012 article I wrote about the psychology of drive and determination for One Life magazine.

NOTE TO SELFCOMMUNICATION AND LANGUAGE

The words that make an apology convincing

A photo showing a person holding a bouquet of mixed flowers wrapped in brown paper, viewed from above and behind.

Photo by Oscar Wong/Getty Images

My son was two and we had just been discharged from hospital following a nasty winter bug. His birthday was only a few days away with no time to plan for a big party, so I invited a close family friend and her kids to a teddy bear-making workshop followed by a pizza. She agreed, huge relief – the problem was solved. But then she cancelled last-minute because apparently her children had received a better offer from a popular classmate who hosted great parties! My friend realised quickly that her honesty had fallen flat with me and so she came over to apologise.

I was reminded of this event recently when I attended a lecture about the psychology of apologies by my colleague Shiri Lev-Ari. She described how research has shown that apologies are most convincing when they involve greater cost, such as in terms of money or time. My friend seemed to know this intuitively – she turned up on my doorstep (time cost) with a bottle of champagne (financial cost) at a time that would have likely inconvenienced her (effort cost).

Shiri wondered if this cost rule would extend to the words that we use when we apologise, and in her recent research that’s exactly what she found. People judged apologies involving longer words of explanation (I did not mean to respond in a confrontational manner) as more convincing than apologies involving shorter words (I did not mean to answer in a hostile way), presumably because they signal greater cognitive cost.

So, here’s my message to my friend: next time you need to apologise, do turn up with that that bottle of champagne but consider replacing your ‘real sorrow’ with ‘genuine remorse’.

by Alice Gregory

FIND OUT MORE

For more on the psychology of effective apologies, check out this TED-Ed video ‘The Best Way to Apologize (According to Science)’ (2022).

Are you sure you need to apologise? The Psyche Guide ‘How to Save Yourself Another Pointless Guilt Trip’ (2021) by Aziz Gazipura provides advice for those who feel guilty even when they might not have done anything wrong.