I guess most people are afraid to do anything that is unusual in their social circles. That may include even things like reading books… if your friends don’t read and think that reading is low-status. Even having an unusual skill can be seen as low-status.
Sometimes this is not internalized, e.g. the person may still enjoy reading a book if they know that their friends are not around to see them. Sometimes it is, e.g. some people would not do something their parents disapprove of, even when they are alone. (Maybe with parents we have a strong feeling that sooner or later they would find out? Or maybe parents are more successful at convincing us that the society at large shares their opinions?)
I realized I offered a theory instead of examples, so here are also some data points (the theory says that virtually anything could be an example, but maybe some things are more likely than others).
Years ago, I did presentations on various topics at schools (I don’t remember what exactly) and the general lesson was that if I ask a group of students in classroom a question like “do you know what XY is?”, no one will raise a hand… but after the presentation is over, someone will stop me in the hallway saying that XY is actually their hobby or something, and will want to talk about it with me. But they just can’t admit it in front of their classmates.
The most curious example I have seen was kids making fun of their classmate for being able to make a HTML web page. Importantly, they did not make fun because of the content of the web page (like it being silly or ugly). The low-status thing was literally the fact that he had the skill. This was a school attended by many kids from very rich families, so my best guess was that “having useful skills” was a proxy for “not sufficiently rich” (as in: people who inherit a lot of money do not need to have useful skills, so if you develop some it shows that you are a pleb).
I guess most people are afraid to do anything that is unusual in their social circles. That may include even things like reading books… if your friends don’t read and think that reading is low-status. Even having an unusual skill can be seen as low-status.
Sometimes this is not internalized, e.g. the person may still enjoy reading a book if they know that their friends are not around to see them. Sometimes it is, e.g. some people would not do something their parents disapprove of, even when they are alone. (Maybe with parents we have a strong feeling that sooner or later they would find out? Or maybe parents are more successful at convincing us that the society at large shares their opinions?)
I realized I offered a theory instead of examples, so here are also some data points (the theory says that virtually anything could be an example, but maybe some things are more likely than others).
Years ago, I did presentations on various topics at schools (I don’t remember what exactly) and the general lesson was that if I ask a group of students in classroom a question like “do you know what XY is?”, no one will raise a hand… but after the presentation is over, someone will stop me in the hallway saying that XY is actually their hobby or something, and will want to talk about it with me. But they just can’t admit it in front of their classmates.
The most curious example I have seen was kids making fun of their classmate for being able to make a HTML web page. Importantly, they did not make fun because of the content of the web page (like it being silly or ugly). The low-status thing was literally the fact that he had the skill. This was a school attended by many kids from very rich families, so my best guess was that “having useful skills” was a proxy for “not sufficiently rich” (as in: people who inherit a lot of money do not need to have useful skills, so if you develop some it shows that you are a pleb).