More specifically, interpersonal interaction has both a dominance dimension (“of status, dominance, power, ambitiousness, assertiveness, or control”) and a warmth dimension (“of agreeableness, compassion, nurturant, solidarity, friendliness, warmth, affiliation or love”). Dominance is zero-sum, but warmth is not.
Cultures also vary in how much they emphasize the dominance and warmth dimensions. In more “status-flat” cultures (such as the Nordic countries), social conventions tend to de-emphasize status differences, making relative status less important and letting the warmth dimension matter more.
It seems interesting to me that I feel like I mostly encounter arguments such as “status is zero-sum so we can’t ever make everyone happy” expressed by people from non-Nordic countries. The notion always seemed unintuitive to me, and I don’t think that the reason is just “Kaj personally pays less attention to dominance status” since I do feel pretty sensitive to it. Rather, it feels like a significant part of it is Finnish culture just not caring about dominance status that much, relative to warmth, making it hard for me to see why the zero-sumness of status should necessarily be a significant problem.
More specifically, interpersonal interaction has both a dominance dimension (“of status, dominance, power, ambitiousness, assertiveness, or control”) and a warmth dimension (“of agreeableness, compassion, nurturant, solidarity, friendliness, warmth, affiliation or love”). Dominance is zero-sum, but warmth is not.
Cultures also vary in how much they emphasize the dominance and warmth dimensions. In more “status-flat” cultures (such as the Nordic countries), social conventions tend to de-emphasize status differences, making relative status less important and letting the warmth dimension matter more.
It seems interesting to me that I feel like I mostly encounter arguments such as “status is zero-sum so we can’t ever make everyone happy” expressed by people from non-Nordic countries. The notion always seemed unintuitive to me, and I don’t think that the reason is just “Kaj personally pays less attention to dominance status” since I do feel pretty sensitive to it. Rather, it feels like a significant part of it is Finnish culture just not caring about dominance status that much, relative to warmth, making it hard for me to see why the zero-sumness of status should necessarily be a significant problem.