Read this Book: Status Game by Will Storr
Discover an invisible undercurrent that touches nearly everything
Before reading Will Storr’s book, Status Game, I never gave too much thought to the role of status in society. I don’t own any fancy watches or conspicuous luxury brand clothing. I live in an 850 sqft home in a forgotten neighborhood of Chicago and drive a Toyota Corolla. I generally keep a pretty low profile. The framework of the Status Game, however, helped me understand certain situations, people, and their motivations in a way that previously eluded me.
According to Storr, status is one of the key undercurrents that flows through many of life’s conflicts. Communists unsuccessfully tried to eliminate those with status, while Hitler and his propaganda machine leveraged our innate desire for status by telling Germans they were superior and should, therefore, take what was meant to be theirs. Even today, in our perpetually online world, status plays a major role as people post online in search of likes, attempt to gain followers, or spend time trolling others. Storr ultimately argues that status is an innately human motivator that subtly moves people even when they are unaware of its power.
I’m not sure who was the first to say this, but in the startup world, I’ve heard people say that if your app or business requires people to change a fundamental human behavior, it will likely fail. Storr notes that “we frequently measure our level of status by our capacity to influence.” If the desire to gain status is a fundamental human behavior, social media has amplified that desire, going so far as to create the occupation of “influencers.”
Much like Storr’s other book that I read just before this one, The Unpersuadables (about why people believe what they believe - read it!), Status Game is written in a structure I enjoy. Each chapter follows a person, sometimes a group, and illustrates the concepts through those examples. It’s an engaging style that makes this book hard to put down. I think this also might be one of the most highlighted books I’ve read in a while, which speaks to the density of insights and “aha” moments this book provided. My takeaway from this book was to be cautious of how status games can impact your thoughts and the motivations of others around you - particularly in the workplace and online. Becoming aware of status games is almost like seeing a new spectrum of light. It changes how you perceive the world.
Some of my favorite quotes from the book
On the ethereal nature and perpetual pursuit of status:
Cecilia Ridgeway describes experiments that tried to locate the point at which our need for status, once acquired, stabilises. ‘There was no point at which preference for higher status levelled off,’ she writes. The researchers thought one reason the desire for status is ‘never really satiated’ is because ‘it can never really be possessed by the individual once and for all. Since it is esteem given by others, it can always, at least theoretically, be taken away.’ So we keep wanting more. And more and more and more.
On humiliation:
They propose four preconditions for an episode to count as humiliating. Firstly, we should believe, as most of us do, that we’re deserving of status. Secondly, humiliating incidents are public. Thirdly, the person doing the degrading must themselves have some modicum of status. And finally, the stinger: the ‘rejection of the status to claim status’. Or, from our perspective, rejection from the status game entirely.
Humiliation has been described by researchers as ‘the nuclear bomb of the emotions’ and has been shown to cause major depressions, suicidal states, psychosis, extreme rage and severe anxiety, ‘inclusing ones characteristic of post-traumatic stress disorder’. Criminal violence expert Professor James Gilligan describes the experience of humiliation as an ‘annihilation of the self’.
Something I’ve seen happen in organizations a lot:
"Leaders, being human, are vulnerable to believing all this lovely status-boosting news. They often accept praise and agreement uncritically and fail to grow suspicious over the lack of bad news. Those who attempt to deliver it are often punished with a reputation for being difficult, overly negative or not ‘team players’. They can ultimately find their careers in jeopardy."
Stuck in their delusion, any news that flatters feels like truth, just as any counter-news feels like an unjust attack. Reasonable dissenters are cast as villains and penalised. Other players, now fearful, hold their tongue. This situation is not uncommon.
On the effects of wealth displays:
Social networks researcher Professor Nicholas Christakis led an experiment in which participants played in three online worlds, the first egalitarian, the second with midrange Scandinavian levels of inequality, the third with enlarged U.S. levels. Each set of players was randomly assigned to be rich or poor and given real money. They then had to decide whether to contribute to the wealth of the group, take advantage for their own selfish ends or defect. Surprisingly, what made the most difference to their behaviour wasn’t the level of inequality in their game, but whether or not the inequality was visible. When players’ wealth was hidden everyone, including the elites, became more egalitarian. But when wealth was displayed, players in every game became less friendly, cooperated ‘roughly half as much’ and the rich were significantly more likely to exploit the poor.
On the importance of connection and being useful:
When our lives begin to fail, then, our minds and bodies fail too: we can become sick, angry, antisocial and increasingly isolated. We are, writes Cacioppo, 'creatures shaped by evolution to feel safe in company and endangered when unwillingly alone'. But connection itself doesn't make for a successful life. We're rarely content to linger on the lowest social rungs of our groups, likeable but useless. We desire worth, acclaim, to be of value. There's an itch to move up. In the oft-quoted words of psychologist Professor Robert Hogan, humans are driven to 'get along and get ahead'.
This one was just so specific and something I have witnessed many times in my career:
One meta-analysis of over thirty studies found dominance to be one of the ‘most robust predictors of leader emergence, outperforming myriad others including conscientiousness and intelligence’. This is despite the fact that dominant-style leaders are usually less effective than the prestigious, being more likely to put their own interests before the group, less likely to seek advice and tending to respond to criticism with ‘ego defensive aggression’. They’re also overbearing, like to publicly credit themselves with the success of the group, tease and humiliate subordinates and are manipulative, compared to prestigious leaders who are more likely to be self-deprecating, tell jokes and publicly attribute success to the team. Tellingly, we’re especially prone to raising up dominant leaders when the status of our game is under threat. In studies, men and women have picked silhouettes of tall, bulky people with thin eyes and lips and a strong jawline as ideal leaders in times of war; in peacetime those with narrower frames were more popular.
This clarified a dynamic I never really understood that my wife would describe in female relationships:
‘girls and boys are equally aggressive but their aggression is different. Boys’ aggression revolves around the threat of violence: “I will physically hurt you” … but girls’ aggression has always been relational: “I will destroy your reputation or your relationships”.’
On the propagation of false beliefs, particularly among the intelligent:
intelligence is no inoculation. On the contrary. When brilliant people are motivated to find evidence to support their group’s false beliefs, they’re brilliant at finding it. Their superior intelligence simply makes them better at reaffirming their bent story of reality. When psychologists study how people’s religious, political and social identities affect their beliefs, they find that the more educated, numerate and intelligent they are, the more likely they are to endorse the fringe ideas of their groups. This goes for deniers of climate change, vaccination and evolution – the smarter a player is, the greater the likelihood they’ll reject scientific consensus.
This reminded me of the Ghengis Khan quote “It’s not enough that I succeed, all others must fail.”
Humans love to become superior: to win. Researchers find groups tend to prefer the simple fact of winning against other groups even if it means fewer benefits for its players. Sociologist Professor Nicholas Christakis writes, this finding ‘depresses me even more than the existence of xenophobia’. We want a lot for our groups, of course, but of even greater importance is creating a yawning distance of victory between us and our rivals. ‘What seems to be important to people is how much more members of one’s own group get compared to members of other groups, not how much one’s group has,’ he writes. ‘Not only must one’s group have a lot, it must have more than other groups.’
If you got this far, you should probably just read the book. If you do, hit me up! I’d love to hear your thoughts.