I don't think it's arbitrary at all. You want to pick strong, resilient leaders/trade partners/partners/employees. If you had some magical way to order people

I don't think it's arbitrary at all. You want to pick strong, resilient leaders/trade partners/partners/employees. If you had some magical way to order people based on actual strength/resilience/grit, most people would (rightly) pick those highest on that scale. Unfortunately, the only thing we have to go on is apparent strength. So everyone learns to pretend, to whatever degree they think is necessary. Those who actually are that strong/resilient (for example, psychopaths monofocused on profit and power who don't care about working 80+ hour weeks) don't have to pretend so much. People who are more human (a euphemism for 'weaker', because everyone's terrified of the idea of someone actually being better than them) have to pretend more. But you see how the solution here can't just be to lower the bar of apparent strength- or even how it's not clear how you could possibly do that? Everyone still innately prefers to work with the more confident person, all else being equal! And for good reason! It's an okay heuristic! Even if you socially decree that 'it's okay to be weaker sometimes :) #behuman', people will just nod along and then go and reveal their preferences by who they choose to associate with anyway. And are they wrong? Do we want to rig things up so we select for CEOs who publicly show their weakness? I encourage you to try!