Your Brain at Work: Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus, and Working Smarter All Day Long

by David Rock

Status explains why people will queue for hours on a frosty morning to get a signed copy of a TV celebrity’s new book (a book they might have no plans to read). Status explains why people feel good meeting someone worse off than themselves, the German concept of schadenfreude. One brain study showed that reward circuits were activated when people saw others as worse off than they. Status explains why people love to win arguments, even pointless ones. Status explains why people spend money on underwear from a designer fashion store, when similar clothes are available for a fraction of the price. It explains, at least in part, why thirty million people today play online games with no obvious benefits except playing for points to raise their status compared to that of others. Status probably even explains how Google, one of the world’s richest companies, gets thousands of people to work for free, doing work that computers can’t do: they get people to compete with one another on tasks such as labeling a photograph.