The Status Game: On Human Life and How to Play It

by Will Storr

To get along and get ahead, we’d have to become more competitive, more materialistic and more self-focussed.

From 1980s onward

A 2006 survey of 2,500 UK children under the age of 10 found their ‘very best thing in the world’ was ‘being a celebrity’ (their second and third very best things in the world were ‘good looks’ and ‘being rich’).

By 2019, Google revealed users of Android devices alone were taking 93 million selfies every day.

Research suggests busyness itself has come to be considered a status symbol.

We can’t program everyone with a wholly new operating system, instructing them to accept players of any gender, race and sexual identity without prejudice.

members of minority groups would have to send between 70 and 94 per cent more applications than whites to receive the same number of callbacks. Britain was third on the list, at 55 per cent.

it’s now understood men and women are far more alike than different.

humans are designed to be maddened by others they experience as prancing about above them, their status unfair and on display.

they’re more qualified than the baby boomers and yet 20 per cent less wealthy than they were at the same age; the average millennial’s worth in 2016 was 41 per cent less than those of a similar age in 1989.

In 2019, 31 per cent of UK graduates were working in positions for which they were overqualified. In 1992 that figure was 22 per cent.

accusations of bigotry can be made, lowering the bar such that mere whiteness or masculinity are signs of guilt.

Taking these arguments from a status game perspective, I believe we can usefully settle on three dimensions for successful play: warmth, sincerity and competence.

When we’re in airport security queues or on the phone to call centres, we can remind ourselves the person we’re dealing with might be obstructive or rude, but we don’t have to take it as a challenge to our rank.

It’s easy to forget we have status to give, that it costs nothing and it never runs out.

Allowing others to feel statusful makes it more likely they’ll accept our influence.

In one study, telling a stranger they were ‘free to accept or refuse’ a request for money for bus fare increased compliance from 16 to 40 per cent.

if someone feels coerced into doing the ‘right’ thing, even if gently, they’ve only agreed out of dominance.

Psychologists find those with ‘complex,’ multiple self-identities tend to be happier, healthier and have more stable emotional lives.

Reducing our moral sphere means casting our eyes inwards, concerning ourselves mostly with our own behaviour instead of that of others. It means ceasing the casual condemnation of distant players living different dreams which we refuse to understand and are all too easy to belittle and hate.

Because the dreamworlds we live in seem real and true, we believe the moral convictions that comprise them are also real and true,

we’re more sensitive to signals of failure in our environment and that makes us more perfectionistic.

This means it isn’t a final victory we should seek but simple, humble progress: the never-ending pleasure of moving in the right direction.