I agree with the central thesis 4.2 that social status is defined by Person X’s perception of the positive feelings Person Y has towards Person Z. I also agree with the elaborations in 4.3 and 4.4. I have a tangent question about 4.3 and 4.6 that I comment on separately. But I think your innate status-drive claim of 4.5 doesn’t hold, and the convergent learning (plus other factors) is the more likely explanation. I will reply to your arguments in order and conclude with a specific counterexample and some speculation of my own.
Universality
You can’t have it both ways with the universality. Generality of behavior as proof of genes and variability as proof of genes. First, you say status-drive is universal:
I do think there’s something special and specific that the genome builds into the brain for status drive [and] if something is not a human cross-cultural universal, then it’s unlikely to be directly related to an innate drive.
versus saying
how reliable it is, the person-to-person variability...
If there is inter-person variability, that reduces how universal it is, no? This is more of a nitpick though, because I do not disagree with the examples given.
You also mention other sources for your claim.
how early in life status-seeking starts, how reliable it is
This could also point to status awareness being learned early, which would also explain its universality as we are exposed to social cues very early and existentially depend on the care of other people very early on.
the general inability of people to not care about status
This is evidence, but a weak one because people tend to cling to the status quo, which seems likely explained by a more general mechanism.
if, in my thought Θ1, I imagine that Person X finds Thought Θ2 to have [positive / negative] valence then my brain assigns [positive / negative] valence to Thought Θ1
But your hard-wired brain has no way of rewarding this thought specifically! There is no input to the steering system that can distinguish between these thoughts. It can not even distinguish what a person or agent is initially and has to learn that based on cues such as faces and coherent behavior.
And you mention counterexamples yourself I want to flesh out.
Taylor Swift
suppose instead that I learn that Taylor Swift knows who I am and thinks fondly of me. Then that would feel way way more exciting to me!
Explaining this contrast does not require an extra ingredient if you go by learning and predicting outcomes: Your brain will reasonably predict that attention by Taylor Swift might come with a lot of upsides!
High Status
there might be an adaptation mechanism—if you have a lot of status...
That would be easy to explain as learned behavior—it is just less beneficial to you yourself to be respected if you don’t need the attention—but it would be hard for an adaptation mechanism to lock on.
I want to end with...
A Counter Example
I’m a counterexample. I feel no status-regulating emotions (that I’m aware of). I have often wondered about it. Is it a genetic thing? Is it related to my introversion? One possible explanation I came up with is that I somehow feel high status (without being aware of it). A high-status person doesn’t need to worry about other people’s status and can magnanimously be nice to everyone (and feel even more high-status in response). But that would also be counter to your hypothesis because I required another wheel to explain it.
I asked ChatGPT about it and it suggested that it might be related to my Big 5 type. It speculated that I might be low in neuroticism and high in openness and agreeableness—which I am! It also suggested neurological mechanisms by which status-blindness might be mediated. For example
Individuals high in neuroticism often exhibit a more pronounced response to stress.
Agreableness may be mediated by higher levels of oxytocin and lower cortisol.
I think these point to interesting ways in which genes do influence status regulation.
You can’t have it both ways with the universality. Generality of behavior as proof of genes and variability as proof of genes. … If there is inter-person variability, that reduces how universal it is, no?
Sorry if it wasn’t clear. I want to distinguish two things:
Variability across people who grow up in a similar culture and environment — As a rule, I think that kind of thing is often evidence of innate drives rather than convergent learning, because if adopting a certain habit or preference is a robustly good idea, why would only some people do that? (I can think of exceptions; this is just a general rule.)
Variability across cultures — As a rule, I think that kind of thing is usually evidence that innate drives are not directly incentivizing the behavior in question, but rather it’s a learned cultural norm.
I think status drive exists in all cultures, and I also think that within a culture, some people are more intrinsically motivated by status than others. Those both point towards an innate drive, IMO. That’s what I meant, although of course you’re entitled to disagree.
I’m a counterexample. I feel no status-regulating emotions (that I’m aware of).
For any innate drive, there is (and has to be) an innate parameter converting its output into units of valence. And, like any innate parameter, we should expect this parameter to be at least somewhat different in different people (and to be heritable).
Take hunger drive as an example. I think in some people, if the hypothalamus has evidence of slight malnourishment, it translates into strong valence boost for a-plan-to-eat-soon; in other people, the setting of some important parameter is lower, so if the hypothalamus has evidence of substantial malnourishment, it translates into a modest valence boost for a-plan-to-eat-soon. For example, my own children seem to feel almost no desire to eat when they’re hungry; instead they just get progressively more cranky, for quite a while. (I’m sure if they went a whole day without food, they would feel hungry like anyone; also, once they actually start eating, then they “realize” they were hungry.) A more famous example is the well-known differences among dog breeds in food drive. Another example: I think some people just inherently feel pain to be more aversive and distressing than others, in general, holding the physical injury fixed, because of innate “connection strengths” in their brain (or innate sensitivity of the peripheral nerves or whatever). I sometimes get very morally outraged when people misattribute those kinds of innate differences to strength-of-character or whatever.
So by the same token, I think there’s a human-universal calculator in (probably) the hypothalamus that calculates how much evidence of me-having-high-status are evinced by a certain thought, and there’s a conversion factor F such that X units of status-evidence converts to F·X units of valence, and I guess your brain happens to have a low F (so low that the status-calculator has no noticeable downstream effects at all), whereas most other people have somewhat higher F, and some people have much much higher F.
(More realistically, there are probably several innate adjustable parameters that can affect status-drive—not just the one final “conversion factor into units of valence” step, but also stuff upstream of that.)
For example, my own children seem to feel almost no desire to eat when they’re hungry; instead they just get progressively more cranky, for quite a while.
Can relate. Same with my kids. Many responses to stimuli seem to be expressed less for my kids and me.
I’d say this points more to a general sensual input weighing though and less to a specific status thing (which would be hard to weight as such abstract things have no absolute grounding).
But your hard-wired brain has no way of rewarding this thought specifically! There is no input to the steering system that can distinguish between these thoughts. It can not even distinguish what a person or agent is initially and has to learn that based on cues such as faces and coherent behavior.
As mentioned in §4.5.2, I hope to prove you wrong by spelling out a very detailed model of this in the near future. :)
Great post! I love the whole valence sequence!
I agree with the central thesis 4.2 that social status is defined by Person X’s perception of the positive feelings Person Y has towards Person Z. I also agree with the elaborations in 4.3 and 4.4. I have a tangent question about 4.3 and 4.6 that I comment on separately. But I think your innate status-drive claim of 4.5 doesn’t hold, and the convergent learning (plus other factors) is the more likely explanation. I will reply to your arguments in order and conclude with a specific counterexample and some speculation of my own.
Universality
You can’t have it both ways with the universality. Generality of behavior as proof of genes and variability as proof of genes. First, you say status-drive is universal:
versus saying
If there is inter-person variability, that reduces how universal it is, no? This is more of a nitpick though, because I do not disagree with the examples given.
You also mention other sources for your claim.
how early in life status-seeking starts, how reliable it is
This could also point to status awareness being learned early, which would also explain its universality as we are exposed to social cues very early and existentially depend on the care of other people very early on.
the general inability of people to not care about status
This is evidence, but a weak one because people tend to cling to the status quo, which seems likely explained by a more general mechanism.
Sociopaths
Psychopaths and I also guess sociopaths often have traumatic childhoods, and that indicates a different learning experience and, thus likely other strategies, thus not contradicting the general learning hypothesis. Compare also the 2x2 life strategies suggested in Scott Alexander’s Book Review Evolutionary Psychopathology.
Mechanism
You ask
and you propose
But your hard-wired brain has no way of rewarding this thought specifically! There is no input to the steering system that can distinguish between these thoughts. It can not even distinguish what a person or agent is initially and has to learn that based on cues such as faces and coherent behavior.
And you mention counterexamples yourself I want to flesh out.
Taylor Swift
Explaining this contrast does not require an extra ingredient if you go by learning and predicting outcomes: Your brain will reasonably predict that attention by Taylor Swift might come with a lot of upsides!
High Status
That would be easy to explain as learned behavior—it is just less beneficial to you yourself to be respected if you don’t need the attention—but it would be hard for an adaptation mechanism to lock on.
I want to end with...
A Counter Example
I’m a counterexample. I feel no status-regulating emotions (that I’m aware of). I have often wondered about it. Is it a genetic thing? Is it related to my introversion? One possible explanation I came up with is that I somehow feel high status (without being aware of it). A high-status person doesn’t need to worry about other people’s status and can magnanimously be nice to everyone (and feel even more high-status in response). But that would also be counter to your hypothesis because I required another wheel to explain it.
I asked ChatGPT about it and it suggested that it might be related to my Big 5 type. It speculated that I might be low in neuroticism and high in openness and agreeableness—which I am! It also suggested neurological mechanisms by which status-blindness might be mediated. For example
Individuals high in neuroticism often exhibit a more pronounced response to stress.
Agreableness may be mediated by higher levels of oxytocin and lower cortisol.
I think these point to interesting ways in which genes do influence status regulation.
Sorry if it wasn’t clear. I want to distinguish two things:
Variability across people who grow up in a similar culture and environment — As a rule, I think that kind of thing is often evidence of innate drives rather than convergent learning, because if adopting a certain habit or preference is a robustly good idea, why would only some people do that? (I can think of exceptions; this is just a general rule.)
Variability across cultures — As a rule, I think that kind of thing is usually evidence that innate drives are not directly incentivizing the behavior in question, but rather it’s a learned cultural norm.
I think status drive exists in all cultures, and I also think that within a culture, some people are more intrinsically motivated by status than others. Those both point towards an innate drive, IMO. That’s what I meant, although of course you’re entitled to disagree.
I agree with this restatement. Makes sense. Sorry that I got it wrong.
For any innate drive, there is (and has to be) an innate parameter converting its output into units of valence. And, like any innate parameter, we should expect this parameter to be at least somewhat different in different people (and to be heritable).
Take hunger drive as an example. I think in some people, if the hypothalamus has evidence of slight malnourishment, it translates into strong valence boost for a-plan-to-eat-soon; in other people, the setting of some important parameter is lower, so if the hypothalamus has evidence of substantial malnourishment, it translates into a modest valence boost for a-plan-to-eat-soon. For example, my own children seem to feel almost no desire to eat when they’re hungry; instead they just get progressively more cranky, for quite a while. (I’m sure if they went a whole day without food, they would feel hungry like anyone; also, once they actually start eating, then they “realize” they were hungry.) A more famous example is the well-known differences among dog breeds in food drive. Another example: I think some people just inherently feel pain to be more aversive and distressing than others, in general, holding the physical injury fixed, because of innate “connection strengths” in their brain (or innate sensitivity of the peripheral nerves or whatever). I sometimes get very morally outraged when people misattribute those kinds of innate differences to strength-of-character or whatever.
So by the same token, I think there’s a human-universal calculator in (probably) the hypothalamus that calculates how much evidence of me-having-high-status are evinced by a certain thought, and there’s a conversion factor F such that X units of status-evidence converts to F·X units of valence, and I guess your brain happens to have a low F (so low that the status-calculator has no noticeable downstream effects at all), whereas most other people have somewhat higher F, and some people have much much higher F.
(More realistically, there are probably several innate adjustable parameters that can affect status-drive—not just the one final “conversion factor into units of valence” step, but also stuff upstream of that.)
Fair enough.
Can relate. Same with my kids. Many responses to stimuli seem to be expressed less for my kids and me.
I’d say this points more to a general sensual input weighing though and less to a specific status thing (which would be hard to weight as such abstract things have no absolute grounding).
As mentioned in §4.5.2, I hope to prove you wrong by spelling out a very detailed model of this in the near future. :)
Looking forward to it!