mentality

crab mentality

A negative, selfish mentality characterized by a preference for others not to get ahead of or do better than oneself. It alludes to a phenomenon of a group of crabs in a pot, in which an escaping crab is pulled back down by the others so that none escape in the end. She dreamt of going to college and beginning a better life, but her parents' and friends' crab mentality constantly discouraged her from leaving the sordid life in which they were entrenched.
See also: crab, mentality

siege mentality

The belief that one is constantly under attack and must protect oneself from hostility. Don't be surprised if Ned reacts to you with anger—he has a siege mentality that makes it difficult for him to see anything positively. Many people living in that war-torn country have developed a siege mentality.
See also: mentality, siege
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.
See also:
  • crab mentality
  • burned out, to be
  • a back number
  • back number
  • be pushing up (the) daisies
  • be pushing up daisies
  • be pushing up the daisies
  • chips are down, the
  • binge-watch
  • smoke the peace pipe (with someone)
References in periodicals archive
Despite the gulf in quality between Everton and Manchester City, Delph sees no reason why the mentality between the two clubs can't be exactly the same.
It's not easy to come on in a game like that and have the mentality to deal with the occasion.
The 41-year-old, who played under Emery at Valencia, says the key to a winning mentality and a good season is results.
He verifies his mentality thesis by complex and intensive archival studies.
This crab mentality is a tale that may perhaps describe the intramurals, the competition to go up in the promotion ladder and the resulting discontent, jealousy and envy in blue-collar offices and other urban workplaces.
The MBA graduate from the University of Newport, USA, further said he believed that any entrepreneur and labor union should realize the importance of increasing productivity based on industrial mentality, including the awareness of competition, so they keep trying to improve the quality of products and services.
So it can be uttered without a trace of doubt that every Indians should develop artistic mentality or mental grooming for their personal enrichment in life.
"We've to have that mentality. "Everybody hates us, every wants us to fail and fall flat on our face.
He said PPBM's participation has brought DAP, Amanah, and PKR towards the reality that the three have to adjust towards reforming the Malay mentality.
Success begets success is the motivation behind perpetuating the herd mentality, and it's a more powerful force than many realize.
FORMER Blues boss Alex McLeish believes a failure to build a team with the right "mentality" led to Harry Redknapp's departure.
The author aims to show how to integrate the biological understanding of animals and plants, the philosophical understanding of mentality, and the linguistic understanding of the nature of mental structures hidden beneath linguistic expressions, to uncover the nature of possible forms of mentality, and he examines natural language to understand structural forms of possible mentality across humans and consider how possible forms of minds across non-human organisms and systems can be tracked by marking patterns of variations in a broad range of mental structures of natural language.
Also on Thursday, retired Archbishop Oscar Cruz lamented the rising cases of extrajudicial killings in the country and deplored the growing 'death mentality' of Filipinos, including the youth.
In the meeting, the minutes of which are certainly shuddersome, AKP parliamentary group deputy chairman Mahir E[pounds sterling]nal successfully described the abusive mentality that has driven the AKP's success so far with complete disregard for all sorts of principles and rules: "With a 150-year-old heritage, we have managed to bring all these issues closer to resolution in 13 years.
After the game, he was very happy in the changing room because our mentality now as a team, as a squad, is first the result, the collective situation, before our individual problems or targets.