I suspect if anything it’s somehow both, where rankings on each of the various ladders are correlated enough with each other that you can find a “general factor of status”, like psychometric g. Which, much like psychometric g (and probably more so) would be debatably a real thing, although I confess I don’t know enough statistics to understand those debates.
Like, confidence is high-status, but it’s not just high-status on its own, it also lets you “sell” whatever other status you have, taking you up those ladders. And of course there’s the halo effect—if you’re high-status on one ladder, people will attribute you with higher status on the other ladders they care about than if you weren’t.
I suspect if anything it’s somehow both, where rankings on each of the various ladders are correlated enough with each other that you can find a “general factor of status”, like psychometric g. Which, much like psychometric g (and probably more so) would be debatably a real thing, although I confess I don’t know enough statistics to understand those debates.
Like, confidence is high-status, but it’s not just high-status on its own, it also lets you “sell” whatever other status you have, taking you up those ladders. And of course there’s the halo effect—if you’re high-status on one ladder, people will attribute you with higher status on the other ladders they care about than if you weren’t.