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I think trying to analyse status purely in 'practical terms' is somewhat to miss the core driver of it. As a species, we tend to 'status-seeking' behaviours I t
by pm215 6y ago
I think trying to analyse status purely in 'practical terms' is somewhat to miss the core driver of it. As a species, we tend to 'status-seeking' behaviours I think because we've evolved as primates who lived in medium-sized social groups where your position in the social hierarchy mattered a lot -- and judgement of others is exactly what defines your position. So part of your brain has evolved to make social comparisons, to obsess about what other people think of you, and to try to improve and act out your position in a hierarchy, even if objectively that behaviour in the modern world is not logically defensible or something that will make you happier.
- zxcmx 6y agoPassing as higher status gives you access to opportunities you otherwise wouldn't get. It's not a vestigial impulse, it is perfectly rational.
- pm215 6y agoYeah, sorry, I didn't mean to imply that it was always useless in the modern world -- as you say it's often effective. After all, we're still social primates operating in small groups! I think what I was trying to say was rather that to analyse this behaviour purely as "what is the rational reason for this action" gets you less far than looking at it as an emotionally-driven tendency that's driven by the part of our brain that is not the rational-conscious-thought part. Sometimes it's the rational thing to do, sometimes it's something we can construct a rationale for after the fact (our brains are very good at that), and sometimes it's genuinely a bad choice that a perfect rational robot would not make. But whichever of those any particular 'status-seeking' act falls into, I don't think many people are making the choice as a conscious purely reasoned cost-benefit tradeoff.
- chx 6y agoSpent: Sex, Evolution, and Consumer Behavior by Geoffrey Miller is exactly about this.