In most scientific fields status is defined as access (or entitlement) to resources (i.e.: food and females, mostly). Period. And they tend to take this measure very seriously and stick to it (it has many advantages, easy to measure, evolutionary central, etc.). Both your definitions are only two accidental aspects of having status. Presumably, if you have - and in order to have—higher access to resources you have to be respected, liked, and have influence over your group. I think the definition is elegant exactly because all the things we perceive as status have as major consequences/goals higher access to resources.
Moreover, I don’t think it is the case people can have warm fuzzies for everyone they meet. There’s a limited amount of warm fuzzies to be spent. Of course, you can hack the warm-fuzzy system by using such and such body language, just like you could hack mating strategies using PUA techniques before everyone knew about it. But that’s a zero-sum game.
Different people are comfortable with different levels of status; there are a lot of studies confirming that. If you put a regular gorilla as leader of a group of silverbacks he will freak out, because his trachea is most certainly to be lying on the floor in a few seconds. For very similar reasons, I will freak out if you give me a Jiu-Jitsu black belt and threw me into a dojo. This does not mean that same said regular gorilla will not fight with everything he has to achieve a higher status within certain safety boundaries. People are comfortable with different levels of status, and their current level is not one of them, nor is one too high to be safe. Nobody can be happy. That is the nature of status. (Also, there are limited resources—or so your brain thinks—so it is important to make other people miserable as well.)
This also reminded me of this study, which found that “wealthy individuals report that having three to four times as much money would give them a perfect “10″ score on happiness—regardless of how much wealth they already have.”
In most scientific fields status is defined as access (or entitlement) to resources (i.e.: food and females, mostly).
Which fields are these? This sounds to me a definition that could be useful in e.g. animal studies, but vastly insufficient when it comes to the complexities of status with regard to humans. E.g. according to this definition, an armed group such as occupiers or raiders who kept forcibly taking resources from the native population would be high status among the population, which seems clearly untrue.
Moreover, I don’t think it is the case people can have warm fuzzies for everyone they meet. There’s a limited amount of warm fuzzies to be spent. Of course, you can hack the warm-fuzzy system by using such and such body language, just like you could hack mating strategies using PUA techniques before everyone knew about it. But that’s a zero-sum game.
an armed group such as occupiers or raiders who kept forcibly taking resources from the native population would be high status among the population, which seems clearly untrue.
Maybe that’s still the same kind of status, but it is in regards to a different domain. Perhaps an effective understanding of status acknowledges that groups overlap and may be formed around different resources. In your example, there is group (raiders and natives) which forms around literal physical resources, perhaps food. In this group, status is determined by military might, so the raiders have a higher status-as-it-relates-to-food.
Within this group, there is another subgroup of just the villagers, which the raiders are either not a part of or are very low-status in. This group distributes social support or other nice things like that, as the resource to compete over. The group norms dictate that pro-social behavior is how you raise status. So you can be high-status in the group of natives, but low status in the group of (natives and raiders).
In our daily lives, we are all part of many different groups, which are all aligned along different resources. We constantly exchange status in some groups for status in others. For instance, suppose I’m a pretty tough guy, and I’m inserted into the previously discussed status system. I obviously want food, but I’m not stronger than the raiders. I am, however, stronger than most of the villagers, and could take some of the food that the raiders don’t scavenge for. If strength was my biggest comparative advantage, and food was all I wanted, then this would definitely be the way to go.
Suppose though that I don’t just want food, or I have an even larger comparative advantage in another area, such as basketweaving. I could join the group of the villagers and raise my status within the group. Other villagers would be willing to sacrifice their status in the (raiders and villagers) system in exchange for something they need, like my baskets. This would be me bartering my baskets for food. Here, we can see the primary resource of the (raiders and villagers) group thrown under the bus for other values.
If I raise my status in the group far enough by making good enough baskets, then in terms of the (raiders and villagers) system I will be getting a larger piece of a smaller pie, but it might still be larger than the amount I would get otherwise. Or maybe I’m not even too concerned about the (raiders and villagers) system, and view status within the village group as a terminal value. Or maybe I want to collect villager status to trade for something even more valuable.
tl;dr: There are a lot of different groups optimizing for different things. We can be part of many of these groups at once and trade status between them to further our own goals.
I’d have to be stronger than the group in order to get more food than the entire group, but depending on their ability to cooperate I may be able to steal plenty for myself, an amount that would seem tiny compared to the large amount needed for the whole group.
The example I chose was a somewhat bad one I think though because the villagers would have a defender’s advantage of protecting their food. You can substitute “food” for “abstract, uncontrolled resource” to clarify my point.
Which fields are these? This sounds to me a definition that could be useful in e.g. animal studies, but vastly insufficient when it comes to the complexities of status with regard to humans.
Yes, it came from animal studies; but they use in evolutionary psychology as well (and I think in cognitive psychology and biological anthropology too). Yes, it is vastly insufficient. However, I think it is the best we have. More importantly, it is the least biased one I have seen (exactly because it came from animal studies). I feel like most definitions of status are profoundly biased in order to give the author a higher status. Take yours. You are one of the top-5 friendly/likeable people I know, and you put friendless as a major criteria. (I think I nested an appeal to flattery inside an ad hominem here).
according to this definition, an armed group such as occupiers or raiders who kept forcibly taking resources from the native population would be high status among the population, which seems clearly untrue.
Yes, they would have high status (which would be disputed by the natives, probably). Don’t you agree the Roman had a higher status than the tribes they invaded? And yes, Nazis invading, killing, torturing, pillaging and raping the French would also have higher status (at least temporally, until someone removed their trachea). That means status is a bad correlate of moral worthiness, but so is most of the things evolution has ever produced. I think this definition causes a bad emotional reaction (I had it too) because it’s difficult to twist in order to increase your status, and is morally repugnant. It doesn’t mean it is false, to the contrary.
What makes you say that?
It would seem that in a world where everyone is friendly, things would escalate and only the extremely friendly would cause warm fuzzies. Or, people would feel warm fuzzies so often it would be irrelevant. (I.e., I used my philosopher-contrafactual-epistemic-beam, scanned the possible worlds, and concluded that. I.e., I have no idea what I’m talking about.)
In most scientific fields status is defined as access (or entitlement) to resources (i.e.: food and females, mostly). Period. And they tend to take this measure very seriously and stick to it (it has many advantages, easy to measure, evolutionary central, etc.). Both your definitions are only two accidental aspects of having status. Presumably, if you have - and in order to have—higher access to resources you have to be respected, liked, and have influence over your group. I think the definition is elegant exactly because all the things we perceive as status have as major consequences/goals higher access to resources.
Moreover, I don’t think it is the case people can have warm fuzzies for everyone they meet. There’s a limited amount of warm fuzzies to be spent. Of course, you can hack the warm-fuzzy system by using such and such body language, just like you could hack mating strategies using PUA techniques before everyone knew about it. But that’s a zero-sum game.
Different people are comfortable with different levels of status; there are a lot of studies confirming that. If you put a regular gorilla as leader of a group of silverbacks he will freak out, because his trachea is most certainly to be lying on the floor in a few seconds. For very similar reasons, I will freak out if you give me a Jiu-Jitsu black belt and threw me into a dojo. This does not mean that same said regular gorilla will not fight with everything he has to achieve a higher status within certain safety boundaries. People are comfortable with different levels of status, and their current level is not one of them, nor is one too high to be safe. Nobody can be happy. That is the nature of status. (Also, there are limited resources—or so your brain thinks—so it is important to make other people miserable as well.)
This also reminded me of this study, which found that “wealthy individuals report that having three to four times as much money would give them a perfect “10″ score on happiness—regardless of how much wealth they already have.”
Which fields are these? This sounds to me a definition that could be useful in e.g. animal studies, but vastly insufficient when it comes to the complexities of status with regard to humans. E.g. according to this definition, an armed group such as occupiers or raiders who kept forcibly taking resources from the native population would be high status among the population, which seems clearly untrue.
What makes you say that?
Maybe that’s still the same kind of status, but it is in regards to a different domain. Perhaps an effective understanding of status acknowledges that groups overlap and may be formed around different resources. In your example, there is group (raiders and natives) which forms around literal physical resources, perhaps food. In this group, status is determined by military might, so the raiders have a higher status-as-it-relates-to-food.
Within this group, there is another subgroup of just the villagers, which the raiders are either not a part of or are very low-status in. This group distributes social support or other nice things like that, as the resource to compete over. The group norms dictate that pro-social behavior is how you raise status. So you can be high-status in the group of natives, but low status in the group of (natives and raiders).
In our daily lives, we are all part of many different groups, which are all aligned along different resources. We constantly exchange status in some groups for status in others. For instance, suppose I’m a pretty tough guy, and I’m inserted into the previously discussed status system. I obviously want food, but I’m not stronger than the raiders. I am, however, stronger than most of the villagers, and could take some of the food that the raiders don’t scavenge for. If strength was my biggest comparative advantage, and food was all I wanted, then this would definitely be the way to go.
Suppose though that I don’t just want food, or I have an even larger comparative advantage in another area, such as basketweaving. I could join the group of the villagers and raise my status within the group. Other villagers would be willing to sacrifice their status in the (raiders and villagers) system in exchange for something they need, like my baskets. This would be me bartering my baskets for food. Here, we can see the primary resource of the (raiders and villagers) group thrown under the bus for other values.
If I raise my status in the group far enough by making good enough baskets, then in terms of the (raiders and villagers) system I will be getting a larger piece of a smaller pie, but it might still be larger than the amount I would get otherwise. Or maybe I’m not even too concerned about the (raiders and villagers) system, and view status within the village group as a terminal value. Or maybe I want to collect villager status to trade for something even more valuable.
tl;dr: There are a lot of different groups optimizing for different things. We can be part of many of these groups at once and trade status between them to further our own goals.
You’d have to be stronger than the group of villagers.
I’d have to be stronger than the group in order to get more food than the entire group, but depending on their ability to cooperate I may be able to steal plenty for myself, an amount that would seem tiny compared to the large amount needed for the whole group.
The example I chose was a somewhat bad one I think though because the villagers would have a defender’s advantage of protecting their food. You can substitute “food” for “abstract, uncontrolled resource” to clarify my point.
Yes, it came from animal studies; but they use in evolutionary psychology as well (and I think in cognitive psychology and biological anthropology too). Yes, it is vastly insufficient. However, I think it is the best we have. More importantly, it is the least biased one I have seen (exactly because it came from animal studies). I feel like most definitions of status are profoundly biased in order to give the author a higher status. Take yours. You are one of the top-5 friendly/likeable people I know, and you put friendless as a major criteria. (I think I nested an appeal to flattery inside an ad hominem here).
Yes, they would have high status (which would be disputed by the natives, probably). Don’t you agree the Roman had a higher status than the tribes they invaded? And yes, Nazis invading, killing, torturing, pillaging and raping the French would also have higher status (at least temporally, until someone removed their trachea). That means status is a bad correlate of moral worthiness, but so is most of the things evolution has ever produced. I think this definition causes a bad emotional reaction (I had it too) because it’s difficult to twist in order to increase your status, and is morally repugnant. It doesn’t mean it is false, to the contrary.
It would seem that in a world where everyone is friendly, things would escalate and only the extremely friendly would cause warm fuzzies. Or, people would feel warm fuzzies so often it would be irrelevant. (I.e., I used my philosopher-contrafactual-epistemic-beam, scanned the possible worlds, and concluded that. I.e., I have no idea what I’m talking about.)