Last year, shorter men appeared to be having a moment. A social movement, which had started in 2018 with a tweet by a young American comedian, was hitting the mainstream.

Jaboukie Young-White had been tired of “short” being used as an insult. “‘Short’ gave you Donald Glover,” he said, before also listing the actors Tom Holland and Daniel Kaluuya as successful, shorter men. “Short kings are the enemy of body negativity, and I’ll be forever proud to defend them.”

After percolating on TikTok and beyond, the “short king” tag last year grew into “short king spring”, a lighthearted, body-positive movement designed to big up smaller guys while also prompting a debate about arguably one of the last acceptable social stigmas: heightism.

Now, a year later, we learn that short men might be psychopaths, which feels like a bit of a plot twist, if not an actual backwards step.

The new study, which implies a link between height insecurity and a psychiatric condition, requires a bit of unpacking. Researchers at the University of Padua, Italy, had set out to find evidence to support the idea of a Napoleon complex, AKA small man syndrome, AKA a derogatory stereotype that holds that men compensate for short stature by being arseholes.

Other academics have dismissed the idea as a myth, the product of lazy assumptions (“oh look, that guy’s a terrible human being AND he’s 5ft 6in – must be that!”). But what might the purported first examination of the relationship between height and the symptoms of psychopathy reveal?

The researchers asked 367 American adults to complete an online survey known as the Dirty Dozen Dark Triad questionnaire. The “dark triad” traits are, in the words of the study, “psychopathy (ie callousness, criminality), narcissism (ie inflated sense of self, grandiosity) and Machiavellianism (ie pragmatic cynicism, duplicity).”

A dozen statements, which participants had to rate according to how strongly they identified with them, included: “I tend to manipulate others to get my way”, “I tend to be callous or insensitive” and “I tend to want others to admire me”. Participants were also asked how much they agreed with statements such as “I wish I were taller”.

The answers appeared to draw a link that, in the case of psychopathy, was stronger among men. “Shorter people, especially those who wish they were taller, are more characterised by [dark triad] traits,” said the paper’s lead author, Peter K Jonason, associate professor in psychology at the University of Padua.

It’s worth noting that only 142 of the people who took part were men of below average height (177cm). That’s not much to go on to draw such bold conclusions. I also think the authors’ suggested evolutionary reason for this link – that “psychological formidability may provide advantages in survival and mating domains that offset losses in physical formidability” – misses the bigger picture.

If shorter men do display any particular psychological traits, they’re more likely, in a society that still equates physical and social standing, to involve self-esteem issues than delusions of grandeur. It’s telling that we use the word “stature” to mean both things.

Enhanced psychological “formidability” doesn’t seem to help shorter men in the workplace, for example, where gene studies have shown a link between height and earnings, or in dating, where taller men have always tended to be luckier in love – a truth only entrenched by dating apps.

A few months ago I spoke to half a dozen men who had undergone cosmetic leg-lengthening surgery – a risky, expensive and painful procedure that involves hammering remotely activated telescopic pins through the leg bones.

Admittedly, I am no psychologist, and I did not submit them to the dark traits survey, but they didn’t come across as psychopaths. Rather they were men with insecurities and a pragmatic view about what being taller might mean for their professional and romantic prospects.

When surgery inched Lewis (not his real name) up to average height and he re-entered society, the transformation was more than physical. Dating in particular suddenly got easier. “Everything else about me is the same, but the way people treat me is so different,” he said. His only regret related to society. “I get sad looking back at how worthless I was made to feel.”

Napoleon himself might have shared the sentiment. He did perhaps exhibit some dark triad traits, but he wasn’t actually all that small. Biographers have variously estimated that he was either 5ft 7in or even 5ft 10in – above average. He blamed his own depiction as an angry small man on British newspaper caricaturists, who delighted in drawing him so. Like I said, heightism is entrenched.

It’s either anomalous or a sign of progress that the past three leaders of France, including the current president, Emmanuel Macron, have been below average height – and shorter than Napoleon himself. But before we prepare to celebrate another short king spring, let’s put to one side the question of Vladimir Putin’s stature and what it may or may not say about the state of his mind.

• Simon Usborne is a freelance feature writer and reporter based in London