One has to feel a little sorry for Napoleon, a great general whose name is associated in popular history with humiliating defeat and a particularly demeaning personality trait, short man syndrome, or the Napoleonic complex.

But one has to feel even sorrier for the short men who are at risk of being accused of suffering from the disorder whenever they show signs of unseemly aggression.  What's especially condemning is that short man syndrome sounds so much like a real disorder, more than simply  a putdown.

But as it turns out, the very notion, first advanced by famed Austrian psychologist Alfed Adler, is flawed on two counts. The first is that Napoleon wasn't short, certainly not for his time. He was five feet, six inches. His was the aggression of your average-height conqueror.

But the bigger flaw is that short men are no more aggressive than  taller men, new research reports. If anything,  they're  less aggressive.

Since Adler, the notion that short men are more aggressive has become so established in mainstream consciousness, says Mike Eslea, that it's in the Urban Dictionary as Short Man Syndrome, among other reference books. But when Eslea, a psychologist at University of Central Lancashire in the UK, looked into the matter for a BBC documentary, he found quite otherwise.
 
“Actually the results tended to be that this is a myth because the short guys were less aggressive than the taller guys,” Eslea tells Media Life.

Eslea's researchers reached that conclusion by conducting an experiment with 10 men who were under five foot five inches and 10  men of average height. 

The subjects were not aware they were being tested for Short Man Syndrome.  Rather, they were told they were being tested for their reaction times and hand-eye coordination.

The experiment, which the researchers called the Chopstick game, involved two men facing each other across a table. The players effectively had a duel with chopsticks whereby the stated objective was to be the first to rap the others chopstick.

But one of the players in each pair was actually a stooge. He'd been instructed by the researchers to whack his opponent’s knuckles instead. In effect, he was told to cheat, the aim being to provoke a reaction.

The researchers watched to see who among the test subjects would fly off the handle, the short men or those of average height. They also tracked heart rates and testosterone levels.

If there was any validity to Short Man Syndrome, the shorter men would have been quicker to retaliate, smacking their opponents on the knuckles or worse. Testosterone levels would rise among all participants as the fight-or-flight syndrome kicked in, but they would stay elevated longer among the shorter men if they were in fact the more  aggressive.

The shorter men came out ahead, in terms of keeping their cool. They were found  less likely to hit back and become less angry compared to the men of average height, and their testosterone levels settled back down faster. 

This led Eslea to dismiss Short Man Syndrome as no more than a pervasive myth. Says he: "It doesn’t make any more sense to blame someone’s size for their aggressiveness than it does their hair color.”  

Meanwhile, elsewhere in popcult, the Will Ferrell comedy “Blades of Glory” topped the box office over the weekend with $33.0 million brought in, followed by the new Disney movie “Meet the Robinsons,” with $25.1 million in ticket sales. The graphic novel-turned movie “300” fell to No. 3 with $11.2 made over the weekend, pushing its four-week total to $179.7 million.

In DVD rentals for the week ended March 25, according to imdb.com, “Blood Diamond” topped the chart in its first week in release, pushing last week’s No. 1 “Casino Royale” to No. 2.

On iTunes for the week ended yesterday, “Beautiful Liar” from Beyonce and Shakira was No. 1 for the second straight week, with Avril Lavigne’s “Girlfriend” jumping up to No. 2.

In books, “In an Instant” by Lee and Bob Woodruff was No. 1 on the New York Times’ hardcover nonfiction bestsellers list for a fourth straight week during the week ended March 24, with Anne Lamott’s “Grace (Eventually)” entering the chart at No. 2.

“Two Little Girls in Blue” by Mary Higgins Clark was No. 1 on the Times’ paperback fiction bestsellers list, and also debuted at No. 2 on USA Today’s book chart for the week ended March 25.