It’s not, not necessarily. There isn’t as much research on help-seeking as there should be, but there are some interesting observations.
I’m failing to find the references right now, so take with several grains of salt, but this is what I recall: asking for assistance does not lower status, and might even enhance it; while asking for complete solution is indeed status-lowering. I.e. if you ask for hints or general help in solving a problem, that’s ok, but if you ask for someone to give you an answer directly, that isn’t.
But all of that is a bit beside the point. In the abovementioned approach, you aren’t really “asking for help.” You are just talking with people, telling them what you wish to achieve, and asking for their thoughts. They can choose to jump in and offer help if they want (which can be, and most often is, a happiness-enhancing action for themselves as well as for you).
What you describe would be a status-lowering act for a CEO if she was doing it with her employees (i.e. such a CEO might be praised for her egalitarian leadership style), but it’s only a little status-lowering if you do it with friends you are on equal terms with. The more advice/help you ask for, the more you lower your status ceiling. Thought experiment: imagine a CEO who asked her employees for input on almost every decision she made.
This is unfortunate (seems possible that it’s an efficient use of resources to get input from friends on all of your major life decisions and problems; I know I think better about other people’s problems than my own). It’s not obviously unsolvable though.
It probably matters a lot the sort of person you are talking to. I suspect I have a strong tendency towards assigning status based on intelligence only, so hearing about someone’s problems doesn’t cause me to assign them lower status. (I’ve also taken a number of acting classes, which partially left me with the alief that status is a big game that doesn’t really matter.) I assumed this stuff was true for other people as well, tried to get them to debug/improve me, and found out the hard way that they would permanently lower my status for this.
One thing that occurred to me reading this was that a somewhat effective (not 100% effective) way of “guarding” one’s status would be to solicit for help / advice in private rather than in pubic. Obviously you can’t guarantee that people will not disclose things, but if you are in a position like the CEO in your example, you could take measures to encourage your employees not to share the contents of confidential discussions and so forth.
Of course, this has costs and benefits as well: it is much easier to make one post on a public blog than it is to private message everyone on your Facebook. If you’re concerned about maintaining your status, it might be worth considering. For example, for someone with high status and a relatively “forgivable” question (difficult, not obvious) just posting it in public is probably better than going through the hassle to make the inquiry private; for someone with low status asking a less “forgivable” question (“He really should know better, did this guy not listen to what the prof said in lecture?”), the extra effort might well be worth it.
For status amongst smarty-folks, asking for help definitely puts a ceiling on one’s status. You are forever denied the realm of the self-sufficient, infallible genius.
It’s not, not necessarily. There isn’t as much research on help-seeking as there should be, but there are some interesting observations.
I’m failing to find the references right now, so take with several grains of salt, but this is what I recall: asking for assistance does not lower status, and might even enhance it; while asking for complete solution is indeed status-lowering. I.e. if you ask for hints or general help in solving a problem, that’s ok, but if you ask for someone to give you an answer directly, that isn’t.
But all of that is a bit beside the point. In the abovementioned approach, you aren’t really “asking for help.” You are just talking with people, telling them what you wish to achieve, and asking for their thoughts. They can choose to jump in and offer help if they want (which can be, and most often is, a happiness-enhancing action for themselves as well as for you).
I would be careful extrapolating results from one study, which only has one trial scenario. See these comments of mine:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/bs0/knowledge_value_knowledge_quality_domain/6d88
http://lesswrong.com/lw/bs0/knowledge_value_knowledge_quality_domain/6d94
What you describe would be a status-lowering act for a CEO if she was doing it with her employees (i.e. such a CEO might be praised for her egalitarian leadership style), but it’s only a little status-lowering if you do it with friends you are on equal terms with. The more advice/help you ask for, the more you lower your status ceiling. Thought experiment: imagine a CEO who asked her employees for input on almost every decision she made.
This is unfortunate (seems possible that it’s an efficient use of resources to get input from friends on all of your major life decisions and problems; I know I think better about other people’s problems than my own). It’s not obviously unsolvable though.
It probably matters a lot the sort of person you are talking to. I suspect I have a strong tendency towards assigning status based on intelligence only, so hearing about someone’s problems doesn’t cause me to assign them lower status. (I’ve also taken a number of acting classes, which partially left me with the alief that status is a big game that doesn’t really matter.) I assumed this stuff was true for other people as well, tried to get them to debug/improve me, and found out the hard way that they would permanently lower my status for this.
One thing that occurred to me reading this was that a somewhat effective (not 100% effective) way of “guarding” one’s status would be to solicit for help / advice in private rather than in pubic. Obviously you can’t guarantee that people will not disclose things, but if you are in a position like the CEO in your example, you could take measures to encourage your employees not to share the contents of confidential discussions and so forth.
Of course, this has costs and benefits as well: it is much easier to make one post on a public blog than it is to private message everyone on your Facebook. If you’re concerned about maintaining your status, it might be worth considering. For example, for someone with high status and a relatively “forgivable” question (difficult, not obvious) just posting it in public is probably better than going through the hassle to make the inquiry private; for someone with low status asking a less “forgivable” question (“He really should know better, did this guy not listen to what the prof said in lecture?”), the extra effort might well be worth it.
For status amongst smarty-folks, asking for help definitely puts a ceiling on one’s status. You are forever denied the realm of the self-sufficient, infallible genius.
Is that really a title that one should aspire to?
Well, I don’t act as though it is.