A question that has long interested philosophers, psychologists, what motivates people?

There are these these phrases, follow the money. Money is the root of all evil. Money makes
the world go around. But in this course, I'll be suggesting there's another overlooked
incentive, and that is social status. Status is interesting because it it lives in the minds of
other people. You don't get to decide how much status you had. I grew up in foster homes. I
never even expected to go to college. My unusual life trajectory has naturally led me to
become curious about what is status. Humans naturally pursue status with ferocity. Status
undergurs so many of our decisions in life often unknowingly. It's a resource as real as
oxygen or water. We're chronically conflicted. We want to fit in and we want to stand out. We
want status, but we also want to be accepted. We're constantly walking that sort of tight
rope. Good morning. Um, my name is Dr. Rob Henderson and I'm the instructor for this
course. So, these lectures will be based on ideas I've been researching and thinking about
and developing for several years now. And of course, I'll be drawing on the work of many
other brilliant researchers and and scholars and their studies and their ideas. Uh I I received
my PhD in in psychology from Cambridge University last year and one of the benefits of of
taking a course with a recent PhD graduate is that most of the studies I cite throughout these
lectures will be recent. Uh this is the latest stuff the most cutting edge work. Um if you take
courses with with some senior professors often you'll find that many of the references and
studies that they site will tend to cluster around a certain point in early on in their career.
those are the findings that made the the strongest impression on them. Uh and I'm no
different. I just finished. But in this case, it's an advantage. Uh much of the research I'll be
discussing has been published after the wake of the replication crisis. How many of you
familiar with the psychology replication crisis? Any a few of you? Yeah. So that was quite a
large disruption in several fields in in in psychology. Uh but there have been many formal
changes made that have improved the quality of research. Things like pre-registration,
meaning you have to formally announce your hypothesis before you start the study instead
of finding a significant result and then sort of exposfacto rationalizing, oh this is the finding
we predicted all along. Um larger sample sizes, better statistical methods, making the data
publicly available so other researchers and statistitians can check the work. So these are
just a few of the changes that have been implemented over the last seven or eight years.
Um so broadly I'm confident that the ideas I'll be presenting in these lectures are solid. It's
not to say that all of them will unfailingly replicate but I'm I'm confident in these in these
findings. So we can uh yeah get into the actual uh content of the course. So there's been a a
perennial question about what has what motivates people. So psychologists, philosophers,
and theologians uh have long wondered, you know, what drives people. So here are some of
the things we'll be discussing in lecture one. We'll be discussing social status, the
evolutionary and developmental roots of the desire for status. So here's Abraham Maslo, uh
20th century psychologist. Some of you may be familiar with his hierarchy of needs, but here
is how he defined status. Reputation or prestige defined as respect or esteem from other
people, recognition, attention, importance or appreciation. The philosopher Agnes Callard,
what is status? It's how much value other people accord you. This is a very simple definition.
It's an intuitive definition and this is probably the the simplest way to remember what status
is. Status is interesting because it it lives in the minds of other people. You don't get to
decide how much status you have. You can't just say, "Hey, everyone, I have high status."
And people will say, "Prove it." And they get to decide. So why do we care about status?
There's a a neuroscientist I really like, Michael Gazanaga says, when you get up in the
morning, you think about status. You think about where you are in relation to your peers. Um
so Gazanaga is a neuroscientist. There's a lot of interesting work within neuroscience um
about what people think about when they have free time, when their mind starts to wander.
So when you're not focused on a task immediately at hand, what areas of the brain are
active? And neuroscientists call these areas of the brain when you're mind wandering the
default mode network. And what they find is that the default mode network, the regions of
the brain that are active overlap with the regions of the brain that are active when people
think about their social lives, uh when they think about themselves in relation to other
people, when they think about other people and how they are evaluated. Um, and what this
suggests is that when we have free time, when our mind starts to wander, what do we think
about? We we actually think about what Gazanic is talking about here. That's where our
mind seems to naturally drift. Um, when you don't have any sort of external pressures or
when you're not immediately focusing on something uh in front of you. So, I mentioned we'll
be talking about the evolutionary roots of psychology um and our psychology. So, what is the
field of evolutionary psychology? There's a there's a nice definition here from uh the
evolutionary psychology professor Tanya Reynolds, a recent definition. She defines it
evolutionary psychology as examining how the mind has been shaped to solve recurring
problems faced by human ancestors. It contends that natural selection has produced mental
adaptations that enhanced our ancestors ability to survive and reproduce. Uh it's important
to remember here a lot of people will uh sort of conflate environments when they when we
say you know this is this is what's advantageous for survival and reproduction. Um they think
that it's um it applies to the present moment but it doesn't. humans uh you know we we
evolve more slow or the environment evolves faster than we do is one way to think about it.
So, the way that our minds and our bodies have been shaped um 300,000 years roughly of
human evolution, this is roughly uh the the sort of modern form of homo sapiens. 300,000
years ago, we lived in mostly nomatic hunter gatherer groups until about 10,000 years ago.
And then with the agricultural revolution, uh we stayed in sort of stationary uh areas where
we grew food and formed uh uh villages and cities and so forth. But for most of our history,
we lived in these small nomatic groups as hunter gatherers. And that's where our psychology
evolved in the plea to scene in the ancestral environment which I'll be describing throughout
this course. That's where uh our minds are adapted for. So one way to think about it is uh uh
common example is food. So 20,000 years ago uh if you had food, it was in your best
interest to eat as much of it as possible because you don't know when you're going to see
food again. if um I mean I saw this documentary of these hunter gatherers um I think
somewhere in Central America and they were just sort of I think they were on a hunt and
then they saw a beehive and they immediately stopped everything and like they grabbed that
beehive and like they had little like techniques down. It was it was amazing to see like how
they were able to sort of evade getting stung and take this beehive down and they just
gorged themselves on this honey and that's what you should do if you're in an environment
where calories are scarce. Um but now in the modern environment with an abundance of
food uh this natural adaptation to eat when high uh calorically dense food is available um is
perhaps maladaptive with the rise of obesity and associated health issues. Okay. So so keep
that in mind as we go through this course. When I say this is a mental adaptation or we
evolved to do XYZ. This is in the ancestral environment um thousands of years ago not in
the modern environment 2023. Okay. So, so why do humans care about status? Um, well,
humans evolve to pursue status because it leads to reproductive benefits. So, reproductive
benefits, uh, this is, uh, the currency of evolution is offspring. Um, and so a lot of the a lot of
the motivations that humans have are associated with uh the attainment of attracting
romantic partners, survival and reproduction, right? So, so securing allies, territory,
resources, mates, but ultimately the currency is is is offspring. Reproduction is actually what
um what evolution cares about, not actually survival. Survival is only important within an
evolutionary framework in so far as it allows you to live long enough to reproduce. So, there
are traits, for example, that will actually be detrimental for your survival, but if it enhances or
aids you on your path to to reproduction, then the trait will actually proliferate. And in
contrast, if there's a trait that will enhance your survival but damage your reproductive
prospects, then your genes will not um spread and you know the the trait will not proliferate
within the population. So an example might be uh risk-taking. So risk-taking is actually a trait
that uh that can be very damaging to your survival. If you take risks and it increases your
your odds of death, not good for survival. But if risks taking increases your access to certain
kinds of resources uh and ultimately uh you know impresses potential romantic partners,
then you will find that this trait will uh will spread this this the genetic um uh properties will
spread throughout a population and this will increase the likelihood of of uh you know that
person or those genes uh spreading. So in contrast, if you have uh someone who's very
preoccupied with survival, they have no interest in mating whatsoever. All they want to do is,
you know, live to be 100 years old, not interested in romance, not interested in anything.
They just want to you do all they can to survive and avoid any kind of risk. I mean, that's
great for that individual person, but it's bad for their genes. And so we are the descendants
of people who cared about reproduction, not necessarily the people who cared about
survival. Our ancestors had to walk that tightroppe, right? They wanted to live long enough
to reproduce. Um, and that's where we came from. So, okay, we talked about that
reproduction is what evolution cares about. We'll do things that enhance reproduction
potential. Not just at the expense of survival, but also at the expense of of happiness. Um,
people will do things that sort of are good for their genes but bad for themselves. We'll talk a
bit more about this later. Um but a lot of our emotions, guilt, shame, embarrassment,
humiliation, these are terrible feelings, but they do serve an adaptive purpose. And for our
ancestors, they serve the purpose of modifying our behavior to increase our appeal to
potential romantic partners and ultimately uh increases the odds of of having offspring.
Greed, shame, envy, these kinds of things. These feelings tend to peak at the yeah they
tend to peak uh right at the age when we are most interested in mating. So a lot of a lot of
our most intense emotions will be clustered in our teens and our 20s. And you'll sort of find
that uh across the lifespan the intensity of emotions tends to to dwindle. Emotions serve a
critical role which we'll discuss more later as well. Okay. So, I mentioned earlier that people
talk about money as the beall end all of why people do what they do. And throughout this
course, I'll be making the case that status is an important incentive as well. It's a resource as
real as oxygen or water. And often people will actually exchange a material wealth for status.
So, uh, an example of this, I read this article, uh, you know, a couple years ago in the New
York Times of influencers paying for followers, why would you do that, right? If money is
what makes the world go round, you know, why would you pay for followers? I guess, you
know, you can make the argument, oh, the followers, maybe you could sell something to
them. It's an investment. I don't think that's what's going on, though. I think there's a lot of
investment uh involved in sort of raising your your your social prominence up, and follower
count is a very sort of visible metric. Um, also like displaying your bank account and your
money and that kind of thing. It's it's go shits. Well, I mean, if someone like posts online,
here's how's much money I have in my bank account. People that people that person would
be mocked, right? Laugh at this person. But if you say like, you know, hey, I just just got to a
million followers, everyone. Thanks. You know, that that actually raises your status even
more to sort of post that and and to to highlight that. Um, there's an example here that um uh
I like to give. Uh I had this conversation uh a few years ago with uh a lecturer at Yale. Uh he
was um a non-tenured lecturer and he told me that he received uh an offer a tenure track
offer at a university somewhere in the Midwest. I want to say it was Indiana. It's it probably
wasn't. So I'll just I'll just say Indiana. Um and the job offered more money. It offered tenure.
It offered job security. And that's kind of the the dream job of most uh academics is to get a
tenure track job somewhere. And this person had a non-tenure track lowpaying job at Yale.
And I asked him, "Are you going to take this job?" And he said, "No, it's tempting, but no." I
said, "Well, why not?" And he replied, "The name brand of Yale is just too valuable. Like, I'm
not going to." And so so this guy is choosing to live in more economically precarious
circumstances simply because it probably impresses people more when he says I'm a
lecture at Yale than I'm a you know a junior professor at Indiana University. So this is why
this is one reason why I think that that status is so uh important for human behavior choices.
So I mentioned before status isn't only just one thing. There are two different forms of status.
There are two facets here. So there's dominance and there's prestige. Uh dominance is
evolutionarily older. Uh prestige seems to be mostly um uh most prominent among among
humans. It's more pronounced uh among humans. You will see some uh rudimentary
elements of prestige among among chimpanzees and primates. Uh but in the animal
kingdom, dominance is what prevails. Among humans, it's a bit more complicated as we'll
see. So what is dominance? We'll talk about dominance first. The evolutionarily older form of
dominance the or or or status rather. So dominance it's associated with narcissism,
aggression, disagreeableness. This is in humans specifically. Uh and how dominance works
is people instill fear in others through coercion, intimidation, uh being confrontational, um
sort of either using violence or uh the threat of violence to get people to do what you want.
Uh and so why do individuals obtain status? Uh because of what they can do to them. This
is one way to them. So they can inflict costs, pain, humiliation, disfigurement, uh the threat of
violence and so on. And so in response to this, people are willing to sort of defer to a
dominant individual. But as we'll see, uh this type of status, this this route to social status is
um unstable and often doesn't work out very well for the dominant individual. Uh so here's
an example. This is a recent example that I just read of what a dominant individual is. So, so
this is comrade DI. He was a um he was a commonant uh for the communists in Cambodia.
And this is from a book called the lost executioner uh about what occurred in the communist
revolution in Cambodia. It wasn't until he returned he meaning comrade Dick returned to the
capital to work at no no rather this is an employee sorry it wasn't until he returned to the
capital to work at Tolang that he realized how terrible his terrifying his new boss could be.
His new boss being comradin said that Dick was hottempered and irrational particularly with
his staff. He became angry without thinking and ignored their reasons. He said he gave
execution orders without hesitation. They lived in constant fear, ruled by the whims of an
arbitrary boss. Uh this regime only lasted about four years. They sort of speedran a
communist revolution and destroyed their country after just a few years. Um so that is an
example of of a dominant leader. Um prestige on the other hand uh is conferred to people for
what they can do for you. So dominance is inflicting costs. Prestige is conferring benefits. So
prestige is associated with stable self-esteem, social acceptance, conscientiousness. So
here's a picture of Stephen Hawking. Uh he is a very high he was and and still is in the
minds of of uh of you know many or most people a high status person and he's not a
dominant individual. He's a prestigious individual um because of his um achievements in uh
physics and in science and in sort of uh uh science communication. So it's freely conferred.
So dominance is when people try sort of take status. You know there grabbing it and they're
forcing people to bend to their will. Prestige on the other hand is freely conferred. Someone
does something impressive or important or prominent or beneficial and we think of that
person as as having status. We confer this kind of prestige to them. So what can they do?
They can provide benefits, teach things, grant access to resources. Uh and often you'll
receive a status boost from being associated with them. Right? So, so you know if I saw
Stephen Hawking I might be like hey can we get a picture you know Dr. talking and you
know and and then you post the picture online you know so so so even even sort of being
around them being in their circle can can elevate your status even if you yourself haven't
done done much impressive but it kind of communicates that um you know like I'm
impressive enough to be associated with this high status prestigious person uh that they
would you know that they would even be want to be around me um so so we'll return to
dominance and talk about its origins uh there's a discussion of dominance hierarchies you'll
see this in a lot of the animal research. You know, chimpanzees uh have a sort of a an
established social rank, a social hierarchy. They usually have an alpha chimp. Um he's not
necessarily the the strongest chimp, but he can be sort of physically aggressive. You'll
seldom see like an act, you know, the weakest chimp become uh uh the top of the hierarchy
within a chimpanzzeee community. Chickens have literal pecking orders where chickens will
peck one another and then, you know, this chicken can peck that one but not that one. And
they sort of break out and fight each other. And then very clearly an order will be established
as to who can peck who. And the one who doesn't get pecked at all is the sort of the alpha
chicken or Yeah. So, so um yeah, wolves as well. Wolves will engage in these sort of
ritualistic combat uh situations where uh often one wolf will submit to the victor and expose
their neck to the dominant uh wolf. And this is sort of communicating that that you've won.
You could kill me if you want. And often the uh the dominant wolf will actually not kill because
they work in packs. uh but they have to fight each other to sort of sus out who's uh who's
going to be the leader of this this wolf pack. Um so dominance works on a void rather than
uh uh approach motivations. So the idea here is that we we do what dominant people want
because you know we we want to avoid uh the the cost that they might inflict. So yes, they
bargain by inflicting costs. Um, this isn't to say though that the subordinates or those
underneath the dominant will um sort of unfailingly do what the dominant wants. Um,
subordinates can bargain as well by withholding benefits. And we'll talk about more of the
dynamics of this later. Uh, but among animals, subordinates bargain, you know, they'll they'll
withhold grooming among apes. Uh, they'll maybe uh conceal food. They won't share. Uh,
they'll relinquish cooperation when it's convenient and the costs are low. Um but at least
among animals and and perhaps among among human organizations as well um hierarchies
are not necessarily a bad thing. A dominance hierarchy among humans usually looks pretty
ugly. Among animals it may be uh uh beneficial for them. Um prestige hierarchies among
humans tend to be tend to be quite uh uh functional and adaptive. But hierarchies in general,
you know, there's a discussion, you know, should we all be equal? Should we have an
egalitarian society with no hierarchies? There do seem to be some benefits to to hierarchies
depending on what they're based on, prestige or dominance. Um, among animals,
hierarchies seem to keep the peace. So, there are some interesting studies with uh with
macock monkeys, for example, uh where where uh researchers have essentially played this
game, you know, they'll look at a community of monkeys and they'll knock out the top
monkey, you know, the the alpha monkey. They'll they'll remove him and what tends to tends
to occur as a consequence is bloodshed. immediately with with no leader, the monkeys start
to tear one another apart. And what they're trying to do is basically figure out like who's the
toughest, who's going to take that top spot again. And then they have the new alpha monkey
and then the researchers take him out, see what happens. And they did this a few times.
And what they basically concluded is that actually hierarchies are sources of information for
the animals. You know, once once the hierarchy is established, the animals know, okay, so
that person's here, that person's on top, you know, this monkey. Um something similar
seems to happen in uh in prison systems as well. Often when a uh a leader in a prison gang
leaves, uh there's a sort of an unstable um situation within the prison system uh within that
gang. Uh and when newcomers arrive to prison as well, this is interesting that when a
newcomer arrives, often uh one of the uh uh long-term inmates will challenge the newcomer
to a fight because they want to know where would this newcomer stand. Often what will
happen, the new criminal will will arrive, someone will pick a fight, and then the other
inmates will start to cheer them on because they want to see what this new guy is made of.
Where will he fit in this hierarchy? Um, however, when two um two inmates who've been in
prison for a long time uh uh are in the sort of early stages of a potential fight, the other
inmates will often interfere. They already know who would win. They have this information
already. So, they just want to break this up. They don't want to disrupt and uh destabilize the
community. The hierarchyy's already been established. These two don't need to fight if
they've been here a long time and we already know. Okay. So, so hierarchies are sort
offormational um sources. Okay. So, high rank and a dominance hierarchy. Uh there was an
interesting study on chimps uh recently which found that um well unsurprisingly attaining
high status in a dominance hierarchy is energetically costly. Um it's also stressful. was
associated with elev elevated levels of glucocorticoid uh which is a a hormone associated
with stress. Um and so what these researchers suggest is that achieving dominance can
increase a chimpanzees odds of reproduction but it will also uh potentially come at the cost
of sort of reducing their lifespan and the increase of sort of general negative emotion and
stress. And so we talked about this earlier, right? That sometimes traits will evolve that will
increase the odds of reproduction at the expense of long-term survival. And so yeah, these
researchers suggest a cost of dominance rather than a stress of subordination approach.
Maybe for longevity uh in these communities, it's better to be a subordinate, but uh for
reproductive opportunities, it's better to be dominant even though it can potentially inflict uh
harm on you um in these chimpanzeee communities. Okay. So, so this is uh this is a great
book from uh the personality psychologist Jessica Tracy. Um she's talking specifically here
about about humans. So, she says uh dominant people pay for their less kindly road to
status by incurring the dislike and even hatred of their fellow group members. And for many
of us, this price is simply too high. We'd rather be low on the totem pole than be perceived
as arrogant and doineering. And we'll talk a bit more about the potential hazards of seeking
status via dominance uh later in the lecture. So let's talk a bit about prestige, the other route
to status. So prestige seems to be uniquely human. I mentioned before that you can see sort
of early signs of it, rudimentary signs uh among um among chimpanzees and and other
apes, but it really is um seems to be a prominent feature among humans. and based on
admiration rather than submission. It's based on approach motivation rather than avoid. So
with dominance, they achieve status because people want to avoid the costs that they may
inflict on them. Prestigious interviewuals, we tend to want to approach them. We tend to
seek them out. Oh, this person's high status and we want to become closer with them
mentioned before because they can uh confer benefits. So potentially there's a there's some
kind of benefit that you could receive uh from being uh affiliated with them in some way. And
we freely confer status to these individuals in the evolutionary or the ancestral environment.
Uh humans uh attained this form of status. They've attained prestige by being skillful and
knowledgeable. So whether in hunting or warfare or navigation or storytelling or identifying
sources of potentially critical resources, tool making and so on. And that um that property of
of our psychology exists today where um I mean there's there's this sort of interesting
conflation now where we we confer prestige to uh people who are knowledgeable and
sometimes people obtain prestige because they're not knowledgeable but we assume that
they have knowledge. you know, like this whole idea of famous for being famous where, you
know, someone is very prominent, you know, they're some kind of public figure, maybe
because, I don't know, they can they can eat a lot of food on YouTube or something, but
because they have millions and millions of subscribers, people will like want their take on
things like, oh, this guy can eat, you know, 10,000 calories in one meal. What do you think
about what's going on in Russia, Ukraine? Like somehow people will think like, oh, like this
guy because he has so much social attention, he probably has some useful knowledge to
share about other topics. Um so okay more on prestige rank disparities uh so how do these
emerge so I mentioned before so hunting warfare navigation storytelling and so on um and
yeah in in in hunter gatherer communities which are consist of about 150 people not
everyone is equal on the socially valued traits not everyone is as talented as the others in
hunting and warfare and so on uh and so these sort of rank disparities tend to emerge based
on what people are good at. Um, and so yeah, we mentioned exceptional knowledge,
exceptional uh skills in value domains. Um, what's interesting though, and we we'll talk a bit
more about this in a in a minute, is that even even though people may uh attain high rank
within these societies, often they'll downplay it. So, so in huntergather communities um that
exist today that anthropologists and researchers have studied, sometimes there will be sort
of leaders and headmen and chiefs and big men and so on. And and often what they find is
that these these these socially prominent individuals will sort of downplay. They'll display a
lot of humility, self- aacement. They don't want to attract uh negative attention or the
potential envy of their peers. And we'll talk about envy more later too. Um, okay. So, oh
yeah, we got there. Um, so yeah, we we'll we'll talk about this transition from dominance to
prestige. Um, so dominance among humans, dominance hierarchies tend to be unstable and
often hazardous both for the person who's attempting to achieve dominance but also so for
the others as well. The reason for this um is documented in in this terrific book Hierarchy in
the Forest by Christopher Bame. Um I wrote a review for it in my in my Substack uh last year
I think it was. And so so what Bane basically argues in this in this book and this is like this is
sort of like a landmark book one of the most important books uh in in uh uh in the field of sort
of study of hunter gatherers that human communities uh in the ancestral environment and in
existing huntergatherer communities today the the few that remain they tend to be relatively
egalitarian uh they tend to have sort of uh status leveling mechanisms such that people are
roughly equal in social status that one person doesn't rise too high above of the others. Um
the reasons he gives for this there's this been there's a sort of a transition in human
evolution where prehumans sort of our our our ancestors before we sort of uh took on our
modern form as homo sapiens our early ancestors were more like existing apes today very
uh uh sort of uh dominanceoriented chimpanzees and and gorillas and so on and even
bonobos a lot of people think they'll read about bonobos and how they're far more peaceful
than chimpanzees but if you compare bonobos to humans Bonobos too are actually far more
violent uh than human beings are. Yes, they're like, you know, 1/100th as violent as chimps,
but chimpanzees are about 550 to a thousand times more violent uh than than humans are
to one another, to their own peers. Um and so, so there so so early humans they were sort
of dominanceoriented and then as we sort of transitioned into huntergather communities, um
there was this shift away from from dominance. Humans didn't like dominance. uh and they
found ways to create these these mechanisms such that people would not uh rise too high in
the status hierarchy. And how did this occur? This was basically through the slow and
gradual elimination of bullies. Um Christopher Bame suggests uh three um factors that led to
uh egalitarian huntergatherer communities. Egalitarian meaning status equal. the invention
of hunting weapons and the advent of large game hunting. So people could uh essentially
once once the the advent of toolm and weapons arose um people could inflict violence on
others on other human beings uh with little cost to themselves. So often like if you watch,
you know, nature documentary videos or something or or even even uh in uh like fights
among humans, if multiple people gang up on one individual uh unarmed, the person can
usually inflict a bit of damage on the others uh even if they're ultimately defeated. But with
the rise of of arrows and spears and so on, people could kill another individual with little
harm done to themselves. And this seems to have been first, you know, these these these
weapons were first used for hunting and then transitioned into using them for for uh for
warfare and for um uh taking out members of one's own community. Um and then the
development of a large brain and cognitive and linguistic capacities. So conspiracies,
rumors, gossip, innuendo and so on, people could form whisper networks. So early humans
could basically say like so so the people who were killed in these communities tended to be
uh like bullies uh what you would think of as like a sort of a doineering dominant alpha male
type someone who's trying to take all the food maybe try to sleep with someone else's wife
uh you know try to take more resources than than uh other people believe that they should
um and so the the other uh maybe maybe uh physically smaller and and less
dominanceoriented males would basically just conspire with one another and say like Hey,
this guy's a problem. And then they'd get their spears and take them out. There's a there's a
story uh that I read about some hunter gatherers um few months ago. I want to say it was
actually in this book that we'll be talking about next uh where uh basically so there's a hunter
gatherer group. There was a bully and he was kind of a risk taker. The other guys, you know,
they're out on a hunt and they ask him, you know, they they dare him. and they say, "We bet
you can't climb into the top of this tree and get that piece of fruit up there." And so the guy
drops his weapons. Uh, and they didn't like this guy for, you know, the reasons I I'd
mentioned. He was uh, you know, he's kind of a bully. So he's like, "Oh yeah, I'll get that
piece of fruit." Takes his takes his weapons off, climbs up to the top of the tree, and when he
comes down, the other guys picked up his weapons and stab him to death. And that's sort of
how we became a bit more dosil. And we'll talk about that now, but that that that kind of
that's an example of the process that occurred. And this gets us to the self-domestication
hypothesis. Uh so this is Richard Rangam's idea. Richard Rangum is an evolutionary
biologist at Harvard. Um brilliant scholar. He wrote this excellent book, The Goodness
Paradox. Um so so I I mentioned before that uh if you compare within group physical
aggression among chimpanzees to human huntergatherer communities, chimps are 150 to
550 times more likely than humans to inflict violence against their peers. So these are like
people who they live with not some enemy or some out group. This is like among their own
peer group. Chimps are far more uh brutal and bonobos are also uh more violent as well. So
let's see here. Yeah. So so we'll talk about the self-domemestication hypothesis uh which is
roughly what I had mentioned before that you know uh early humans were a bit more say
you know wild so to speak. There were more sort of bullies and dominanceoriented
individuals. gradually uh we sort of weeded them out and a few you know like it's not to say
that these traits completely disappeared from the population but they're far less um
prominent and prevalent now. You're far less likely to see this kind of pervasive overt uh
violent violence especially within uh communities. People are far more docsil and peaceful
uh relative to our uh uh nearest evolutionary relatives. Um and so this is uh this is um
Rangum's idea of coalitionary proactive aggression. Uh this is what actually uh distinguishes
humans from uh chimpanzees and and bonobos and uh uh orangutans and so on. It's not
tribalism. Uh other apes can be tribal too. They also form groups. You know, if you watch
nature documentaries, you'll see chimpanzees go on a hunt against other chimpanzeee
groups. Uh if they're competing for resources or for females and so on. Um, Reanga makes
this distinction between coalitionary proactive aggression and coalitionary reactive
aggression. So, so talk about reactive aggression first. Reactive aggression is, you know, an
example of this would be, I mean, if you, if one chimpanzeee just goes up to another chimp
and pushes him, just does this, the other chimp will immediately lose his mind and try to kill
the one who just did that. They're extremely sort of on this sort of hair trigger temperament.
um very quick, very impulsive, hot-tempered, uh sort of ready to throw down at all times. Uh
coalitionary proactive aggression is what distinguishes humans. So, so early humans, as I
mentioned, through this process of self-domemestication, we weeded out or eliminated
those hot-tempered uh uh humans, primarily males, um which led to us being sort of more
docil uh among our peer groups. but this coalitionary proactive aggression. So rather than
being sort of hot-tempered, it's sort of the reverse of that where it's sort of um associated
with strategic uh oriented calm rational planning. Um think about the way that uh humans
carry out warfare, right? Like if someone attacks one group, the other group doesn't
immediately just lose their mind and launch, you know, launch all the weapons and go after
them. They they sort of pause and step back and think, okay, what are we doing now? How
can we best hurt that other group? Um, and this works at the individual level, too. Uh, if you
push, you know, one of your friends or something, they're not immediately going to try to kill
you like a chimpanzeee would, but if you do it enough times, they may start to slowly plan.
How can I get this guy back? You know, what can I do to this person? So, it's associated
more with a sort of a calm, deliberate, calculated planning. And this is what makes us
unusual. And Rangum claims that this sort of gradual transition from sort of weeding out the
impulsive and temperamental males uh and and this sort of transition to us being a bit more
docile and calm around our peers has also allowed us to uh be far more vicious to our out
group. This sort of uh transition to planning to strategy to impulse control and so on. Um you
know it's it's good for our in-group but but terrible for our out groupoup. we tamed ourselves
to be kind to those closest to us, to our community, to our social circle. And um it also allows
us to sort of plan uh sort of large-scale killings. Regum in in this book, he says something
along the lines of I'm paraphrasing here, but you know, we we talk about something like
genocide as inhuman, but Rangom says actually it's uniquely human. Only humans have
ever carried out a genocide where they try to take out, you know, an entire population of
humans. Um, I should mention here that like when when I talk about in-group and outgroup,
we'll talk a bit more about it, not a lot in this in this course, but in-group and outgroup, these
are terms that vary. Um, you know, your your in-group could be your your sports team, for
example. It could be your um you know, your neighbors, your city, your state, your
community. It could be your ethnic group, but not necessarily. Um, as you'll see with like
sports teams and militaries, um, people of different ethnic groups can view themselves as
part of the same team against an out group, even if the out group has members of their
same shared ethnic uh, background. And you see something like like um, like Russia,
Ukraine, for example. These are two groups that are very uh, similar in appearance and
ancestry and yet they're going to uh, war with one another. So in-group and outroup, these
are these are um, not like they're they're not clearly defined hard and fast terms. there's a lot
of sort of dynamics that that underly these these uh uh ideas. So, and I don't want to close
you out with uh on this with this this idea here. Uh I once heard a psychologist say that a
psychopath is someone who treats their in-group the way that ordinary people treat their
outroup. So, that sort of uh uh vicious impulsive callousness, this sort of disregard for their
feelings, this tendency to dehumanize them. Uh so, psychopaths kind of view everyone this
way regardless of whether they're the same group or not. Um but ordinary people when they
think of you know outsiders of uh someone from you know the opposite uh sports team or
the opposite political party or something along those lines um if things get too out of hand we
can we can start to think in that sort of psychopathic way of like they're actually not human.
They don't feel they're sort of unthinking unfeilling and we sort of tend to dehumanize them.
Um okay so so a bit more on on prestige. I think prestige is more interesting than dominance
too. There's a there's a there's a book here uh Very important people by the sociologist
Ashley Mir. Uh in this book she um she kind of goes undercover as a as a as a as a model
and uh for for for nightclubs. Uh I think this was in New York City and what she says in her
book, free things are a clear marker of status in the VIP world. Free entry, drinks, and dinner
signal recognition of a person's social worth. I always said in nightlife it's not what you can
spend, it's what you get for free. That's real power. Um, so again, we'll talk more about the
actual definition of power later. Just kind of using it in a in a more um colloquialist way here,
but uh so so here she's sort of getting at this idea of prestige, right? It's freely conferred. Like
you're such a high status person. You don't have to pay anything to get in. Come on in.
You're sort of elevating the uh the status of this nightclub just by your very presence. So
come on in. Um, and so, so dominance is kind of uh, you know, it's it's an archaic old, like I
said, it's it's prevalent in the animal kingdom. And it's, it makes intuitive sense that if you're
going to get hurt for not doing this, then you're just not going to do this, or you're going to
listen to this person if they uh, could credibly inflict harm on you. But prestige requires a bit
of foresight. You have to start to think ahead like, oh, this person is high status. I'm going to
approach them. I'm going to build a relationship with them. You have to think a bit more long
term about the the rewards that you could receive from building this relationship with them.
And this is why this is another reason why it's a bit more uh prominent among among human
beings because we have this capacity to to think ahead um in a way that other animals don't.
Um yeah, so here's here's prestige. You know, I mentioned before prestige conferring status
freely. Um you know, we we confer status because we want to, not because we have to. I
mean, prestige is interesting, right? Like how do these ads work? if you just put a brand
name next to a hot celebrity and somehow like this this works to get people to to want to buy
that more. Um so prestige isn't um I mean it can it can be used for other things. It can't you
know besides you know fancy washes and sugar water prestige can be used for for by
celebrities for for um noble ends as well. So there was uh there was an op-ed about 10 11
no 10 10 years ago 2023 20 2013 right um by by Angelina Jolie. So she wrote an op-ed in
the New York Times about getting screened for breast cancer and how this you know
probably saved her life. And so some researchers actually looked at the impact of this op-ed
and saw you know this massive increase in the number of women getting breast cancer
screenings after this oped was published. Um, and even after 6 months, there were still uh
surprisingly high rates of women getting uh breast cancer screenings after this op-ed. It
doesn't really I mean there's something interesting here, right? Because like you know if a
doctor writes an op-ed in the New York Times saying hey get a breast cancer screening. Ah,
okay fine doctor telling you Angelina Jolie does it. Whoa. Angelina Jolie says to you know
get get breast cancer screening. Let me and so so she she used her prominence to to sort of
raise awareness of this important issue. And yeah, researchers dubbed this the the Angelino
effect. So this is how prestige works. Just just by the fact that she's sort of prominent and
and and and high status and sort of um is at the apex of this sort of social ladder that uh
we're far more willing to to listen to what she has to say. Even uh you know this this issue
affected her personally, but it's not as if she has like special medical expertise in this. And
yet people were willing to to to listen. So okay, status is not power, right? So, we've been
talking a bit about uh status. I've mentioned power a couple of times. Um, but they're not the
same thing. Power has a very specific definition in psychological research. What is power?
It's control over access to resources. So, if someone can control whether you receive a
paycheck or control whether you can enter a nightclub or can control whether you receive a
promotion or not, um, that's power. It's not the same thing as status. Just because someone
can, you know, control whether you receive a promotion, it doesn't necessarily mean you're
going to confer any kind of uh prestige to them. Dominance is a tricky question there. But the
person clearly has power. Status um is something separate from that. Uh power seems to be
a novel development in in human evolution simply because as I said before, huntergather
communities are primarily egalitarian. Uh there's not any one individual who wields sort of
immense outsized power. Uh there can be, like I said, big men and chiefs and so on. They
wield a bit of more social influence. Uh but it's not as if they can control who gets to eat or
not or who gets to to have a wife or not. Uh there's not any one individual who has that level
of power in a small scale uh human society. Um where status is something that has existed
for a long time. Uh and so so yeah this this quote from Ma Dong power grows from the barrel
of a gun. And I think this gets at this idea, you know, like like power is something that you
need like you you you need sort of immense resources and a very serious credible threat uh
in order to control access. So power sort of relies on the on force or the threat of force um
you know if if someone tries to control access to resources and he doesn't have violence to
back it up then people will just take take the resource from them. Um and so power is
something that that is uh that is novel. So status is not power. Olympic athletes, here's an
example. So you gold medalists, this is Michael Phelps. Um he has high status. You know,
he's prestige. He's reached uh sort of the pinnacle of of of uh his sport. Uh but he doesn't
have power, right? Like Michael Phelps doesn't get to decide, you know, who gets to eat or
who gets money, who gets promotion, anything like that, right? We confer a lot of a lot of
status to him. And so nightclub bouncers, I used this this example earlier. So, you know,
you're not necessarily going to think that, you know, a nightclub bouncer is the most sort of
impressive or prominent or important person in the world. Uh, but they do get to decide
whether you get to the nightclub. They have high power and low status. Um, yeah, I'll tell
you, uh, yeah, I'll tell you this story. Um, so I was enlisted in the Air Force, uh, you know,
years ago, years and years ago. And um when I arrived at my first duty station, uh you have
to go through this uh sort of orientation, this sort of firstterm airman's orientation. And the the
classroom had uh they had to have a class leader who reported to the instructor and sort of,
you know, told them what was going on with the class. And um so most of us, you know, we
were relatively new, had one or two stripes. you know, in the military, there's like a very
visible uh ranking hierarchy where as you move up, they literally sew a stripe on, you know,
your sleeve and like add another one and you can see like, oh, this guy, you know, has high
status um and and power as well. Um, and actually more power than than status uh as the
story will illustrate. So, so we had this guy who was our class leader, he had three stripes,
the rest of us had one or two. And although he had power, you know, he could, you know, he
he could potentially issue sort of disciplinary measures or uh potentially get us, you know,
maybe demoted. He probably couldn't get us kicked out. He didn't have that level of power,
but he did have control over resources, whether you'd um uh uh sort of like where where you
would go next, how your how your day would go, uh potentially um your um you know, the
the the direction of your your career. So, he had this kind of power, but he didn't have status
because none of us respected him. He was kind of a goofball. Um, he wasn't, you know,
especially competent. He wasn't in like really good physical shape or anything. He was just
kind of a goofy dude who stayed in long enough to, you know, he was in a bit longer than us
and had three stripes. And so if you've ever had like a boss who you listen to simply because
they sign your paychecks, but you don't respect the boss, then you'll kind of understand that
you don't really confer status to your boss, but you understand that they have some kind of
power over you. Um because they control, you know, what your income looks like. So sex
differences in desire for power. We'll talk more about sex differences later, but I think this is
like a kind of an interesting finding that um you know who desires uh you know status or
power more. So you can see that um I mean I'll basically just spell it out. I mean this is uh
men want power more than more than women do. So you see here um let's see. So the
darker bars are men. So who wants more power? So men um compared to women. And
then status. You see that that uh women want uh uh status. Yeah. More more than is that
right? Yeah. More than men do. So so so surprisingly enough. So so that might be an
interesting finding that women want status more than men do until you think you know
women are a bit more you we'll talk about personality traits later but women tend to be more
agreeable. Most status today relies on prestige of being sort of well-liked, wellresected, sort
of um uh associated with stable self-esteem and those kinds of things. um more affiliated or
more associated with women than men, but you know having control over resources, that's
something that men seem to be more interested in than than women. Um and I think there's
something interesting here too about about affiliation. So status as I said lives in the minds of
other people. You sort of have to be good at building relationships especially in the sort of
the prestige route, the prestigeoriented status seeeking. Whereas power power is about
resources, having resources, access to resources and so on. And in a way, if you have lots
of power, you don't need relationships, right? Like you can have like a you live live on a
resort and have access to all these resources. You know, you never really need to rely on
anyone or have relationships with anyone uh if you don't want. Um and I think that that style
of life, I mean, it probably doesn't appeal to many people, but if it does, it probably appeals
more more to men than than to women to sort of, you know, retire on a on a resort and not
have to deal with people. Um we'll talk more about about sex differences later. Uh also
important here that um that uh in terms of uh status and power, men seem to want it in in in
equal amounts. That's also a notable finding as well. But the main finding I want to focus on
here is that men want want power more than women do. Um okay. So we'll talk a bit about
now the developmental origins. So we've been talking about sort of the evolution of status
thus far. We'll talk about the developmental origins. It seems that young children understand
what social status is. This is a sort of a question you know is if something is you know
roughly speaking nature or nurture is it innate is it social learning? Um I had a professor
once uh an undergrad who a developmental psychology professor who said if you want to
understand the mature form of an organism it helps to understand its history. And this was
you know part of part of his case for for studying children and infants and their psychology.
Um, and so there are, yeah, there's there's there's there there's a a large body of work sort
of testing whether, you know, young children, preschool age children, do they understand
what status is? How do they respond to status? Um, research indicates, for example, that
5-year-old children are selective copers. So if you compare how likely they are to imitate a
headteer versus someone who is equally familiar, same age and gender, maybe a lower
ranking teacher within the school system, children are more likely to to imitate the headteer.
Children seem to sort of observe and see, oh, the other teachers are responding to this
headteer and so therefore maybe I should should pay extra close attention to the headteer
as well and they're more likely to imitate them. Uh, imitation is actually um imitation is
essentially like a like an acknowledgement that someone has high status if you're willing to
do what they do. Um, imitation was advantageous. We're sort of highfidelity imitators,
humans. Uh, and this was adaptive in the the ancestral environment. So, you'll find uh, you
know, for example, that um, you know, if someone is especially good at toolm, you'll see the
others sort of follow along. If someone's good at navigation, they'll imitate that as well. But
then we sort of overlearn this and if you you know if a humans learn that you know there's a
there's a guy who's really good at navigation but then you know there the person is also
going fishing they're more likely to copy that person's fishing methods too. We sort of
overextend uh that person's uh skill set and think that they're good at other things as well.
Um and we you can see you can see this pattern uh today as well. Um, we also, uh, there's
also research indicating that 5-year-olds, if you ask them to sort of evaluate status based on
imitation patterns, they assume that someone who imitates another is lower in status. So,
they don't just assume that someone who's being imitated is high status, but they also seem
to understand that the person who's doing the imitating is actually uh probably lower in the
status hierarchy than that than that person who's sort of setting the the the behavioral norms
and the standards uh in the environment. Um, and so, so those are 5-year-olds, you know,
kindergarten, preschool aged. Uh, but there's also work on on infants as well. I mean, I I'm
really glad. So, I spent a lot of time uh when I was an undergrad research assistant working
at at Yale and Stanford. Uh, you know, I started out uh in in uh in infant labs and child labs.
And it was really great experience to sort of learn like how do you test an infant in
psychological research. You know with humans it's not you put them in a brain scanner or
you can have them do behavioral studies look at their preferences. But with you know this
sort of a blob you know I I once heard I heard Michaela Peterson on a podcast describe a
baby as a wet noodle with a heavy head. And that's kind of that's kind of what a baby is. You
know it's just sort of this this lump of lump of dough. But researchers have found clever ways
to test you know what goes on in the minds of an infant. And one of the most widely used um
experimental approaches um is looking time studies. So essentially this is I mean this is
intuitive that you'll habituate to something if you see it repeatedly. Uh when a novel um a
novel object appears in your visual field, you'll stare at it. You'll see what is that thing? Um
and then after a while you'll lose interest. And so babies are like this too where something
novel appears, something unexpected appears, they'll look at it for a long time and if they
sort of habituate and it, you know, is is is it lingers for a while or it continues to sort of flash
and reappear, babies will think, okay, they get they get bored, they so so you can see here,
you know, like the looking time at first they'll look for a long time and then it'll kind of dwindle,
but then if there's a novel display, something new, it'll, you know, they'll sort of look at it a bit
more and then it'll kind of dwindle again. Um and so researchers have used this to see like
well what what do what do babies expect to happen in the world? You know like do they
have an intuitive understanding of say physics and what you find is that if you show a baby
like you know like a rubber toy sitting on a table you know so what they do is like they have
the baby in like this high chair and then there's like a you know there's sort of a curtain stage
you know little one in front of them and they open the curtain and then they see like a little
rubber toy on a table. How long does it look at this before they start to get bored? Um, and
so they see a toy sitting on a table and maybe they'll look for a few seconds and then they
start to wander around. But if researchers sort of rig this visual field so that they open the
curtain and there's a rubber toy that appears to be floating in midair, it's not sitting on
anything. You know, they sort of rig the contraption. So it's like it looks like it's floating.
Babies look at it a lot longer than if the toy is sitting on a table. And what this suggests is that
babies do have an intuitive understanding of how material objects in the world work. They
have this sort of intuitive folk physics. you know, they think like objects can't just float in
midair like that. What's going on here? And so it's as if they're asking themselves like how is
this possible? What's going on? You know, if they close the curtain and open it again, they'll
still continue to stare at it for a long time before they start to lose interest. Whereas if they
see the toy sort of, you know, they open and close the curtain and it's still on the table,
they're like, all right, can we move on? Yeah. So, all right. So, that's sort of how how they test
infants, their expectations of how the world should work. And if they look longer at
something, this suggests this is novel or unexpected. and therefore um they they come into
the world with expectations. So so now that we've sort of laid out how how the looking time
studies work um I'll walk you through this this slide. Um when researchers basically what
they do is that you know for for this study on on whether infants understand status. you
know, it's this is kind of a a tricky thing to do, you know, to to set up a a scenario in which
babies can sort of follow along, you know, follow a story and then see what their
expectations are. But basically, what they find is that um when they show infants, so so
ignore ignore ignore this for now, but we'll just look at this right here. In the absence of
information, babies expect resources to be equally distributed. And what does this mean? So
what they do is they find they they show babies two puppets and then the researchers will uh
distribute some some treats. They'll distribute some resources to them, some treats, and
then they'll they'll they'll test how long they look at this distribution of treats. And in one
condition, they'll have uh equal treats, right? So they'll show each each puppet gets five
treats. And then in another condition, they'll show a baby's uh situation in which maybe one
puppet gets five treats and he only gets one. In the second case, one in which one puppet
gets way more treats than the other, babies look longer at that. Um, suggesting that they
actually expect equal to redistribution of of the treats in the absence of other information,
right? All they're seeing are puppets and treats. And if they look longer at the unequal
distribution, this is something novel and expected. It's as if they're asking themselves, hey,
why did that puppy or yeah, why did this puppy get more than that one? That's not fair. Um
whereas in the other condition, when the treats are equally distributed, they don't look that
long. They're thinking, "Yeah, they get they get an equal amount. That makes sense." So, so
that's in the absence of information. But upon learning, so we're looking here now, upon
learning who has status in a hierarchy, it seems that infants expect higher status individuals
to receive more resources. Uh, and so they they actually used, this is actually funny, it's kind
of a more of a dominance framework, but what they did is um so first uh the infants, they see
um uh uh kind of a small stage. There's a little box and then there's this, you know, this this
this this high pink chair with pink or magenta. So, they see a chair and a box and then they
see two puppets come onto the stage and they're fighting over the big nice shiny pink chair,
have a little battle, they battle it out for a minute, and then one puppet wins, you know, wins.
He gets to sit in this shiny chair and then the other puppet, the subordinate, the loser, gets to
sit on the box. So they watch this and then the next thing they see is distribution of
resources. So in one condition the the both puppets the the sort of the the winner and the
loser receive an equal amount of treats and in another condition the winner receives more
treats than the loser. Babies look longer when the treats are equally distributed. It's as if
they're asking themselves, hey that puppet got the nicer chair. Shouldn't he get more
resources? Shouldn't he get more treats? Uh so they're looking longer at this confused. They
expect the winner to receive more. Uh, and when the winner does receive more, they don't
look that long, presumably because they expect, oh, like the victor should get more of the
the spoils, so to speak. So, this seems to be um this seems to capture something about
about how we enter the world. This this expectations about status appears to be to some
extent intrinsic. Um but both of these findings I think are important where in the absence of
information if you know nothing else the sort of the default is resources should be equitably
distributed right we don't know anything about anyone else we start from the point of
everyone should have an equal share but then once we sort of gather information about who
has status within the hierarchy uh infants seems to think okay well you know maybe
researchers shouldn't be necessarily equally distributed but uh should be distributed based
on based on the sort of status um concerns. So we'll talk a bit about uh sociometric status.
Now sociometric status is um yeah sociometric status is basically the way that we think
about about prestige, respect and admiration from our peers. To me, one of the most
interesting findings over the last must have been 10 or 12 years now is that sociometric
status is a stronger predictor than socioeconomic status for happiness and well-being and
self-esteem. Um, and and this is within developed countries, for example, this in first world or
modern countries. um suggesting that once you reach sort of a minimal level of basic
material and physical needs, what really seems to contribute to the way we feel about
ourselves uh is how much other people like us. Um there was an interesting study uh more
recently showing that people with high socric status were actually envied more than the
economically rich. And they asked people, you know, here's a person with high social
esteem, you know, they're sort of well regarded, well-liked. Um, and then here's, you know,
here's a person who's who's very economically wealthy, high income, high earnings, assets,
and so on. And people actually report, you know, in these studies feeling a bit more envy
toward the high socioeconomic status person. So, it seems like we intuitively kind of
understand this that um, you know, that that's that's what we were sort of really after again
once our basic material needs are met. I haven't seen these studies done in sort of
developing countries or in small scale societies in which sort of survival is an everyday
concern but once it's not it seems that this uh social esteem is more more um pronounced in
our in our minds. Uh okay so so I mentioned before modern stat is primarily based on on
prestige and it can be sort of hijacked by advertisers by influencers. Um in the ancestral
environment, prestige was primarily conferred by useful knowledge and skills. Um you know
again hunting, navigation, warfare, uh toolm etc. Whereas today um you know if you obtain
prominence for other reasons if you manage to gain whatever millions of subscribers or
something uh people will confer prestige to you even if what you do is not necessarily useful
to your community. Uh and so so again this um we we have to remember that a lot of the a
lot of the um properties of our psychology evolved in a different environment and today can
sort of be you know manipulated and hijacked and you know we have to be we have to we
sort of have to understand that this is the environment that we're in now is extremely
evolutionarily novel. Um but still right I mean I still think like oh prestige conferred for you
know whatever being an influence or something that's still preferable to to dominance. um
dominance especially in human um societies that that route is tends to be tends to tends to
be deadly. Okay. So so now we'll talk about uh you know we mentioned before fundamental
human motives. What does it mean to be fundamental in psychological research? There
seem to be four key criteria for whether something is considered fundamental. sort of this
basic primary need. So the first criteria shapes long-term health, adjustment, well-being,
your health. Um does it contribute to those things? Uh does this motive induce goal- directed
behavior? Do you do you chase this do you pursue this um this this need this desire as an
end in itself rather than as a means to to another kind of a kind of an end? Um oh, I'm sorry.
That's that's the non- derivatives. So that's number three. Number two, induces a wide range
of goal- directed behavior. It's fundamentally pleasant to to obtain it. Um, and failure is
fundamentally unpleasant. And then universal and observed across cultures and individuals.
So that makes sense, right? Like if if it's fundamental, humans regardless of time and place
should be uh uh pursuing it. So status does shape health and well-being. Uh it shapes your
adjustment. People with high status feel better. They have higher self-esteem. Um there's a
striking uh effect size. I mean we won't get into statistics in this course but basically I mean
this is a a large uh effect size in in psychological research the relationship between
subjective well-being and and sociometric status um strong predictor uh which which we
which we touched on before. Uh people with high status have uh fewer health issues um
less mental and physical illness. low status um in contrast is linked to sort of more
depression, more anxiety, uh negative emotion and so on. Um prestige is good for your
health. Uh whereas dominance might be detrimental. Um as I mentioned before, uh
dominance is associated with with stress and uh and so anyway, higher status equals higher
self-esteem, higher health and so on. This is uh suggests that status is a fundamental uh
human need. It does induce goal- directed behavior. Uh people uh are vigilant in the way
that they monitor their their status in relation to their peers. Even if it's not a conscious, right?
Like a lot of this stuff, you know, it's not it's not like a conscious like, oh, I'm I'm number three
and he's number two. It's nothing like that. It's just sort of if you feel uh put down or belittled,
you'll respond with negative emotion. And that's sort of your your implicit unconscious body
responding to uh potential sort of falling down that at least momentarily that status ladder.
And it'll sort of encourage you to either stop doing what you just did that led to that sort of
embarrassment or shame and uh and encourage you uh to to sort of repair uh whatever it is
that you've done uh and and then sort of seek uh the positive emotion that results from
whether it's an apology or doing something that that uh um uh leads to sort of whatever
reconciliation. There's a there's a funny three pen study. This is like uh one of the early basic
studies in uh social uh status um research where basically they found that uh you know they
the these researchers monitored this like u a branch of a finance firm and you know there's
all these vice presidents working there and at first they all had one pen on their this is in the
1950s by the way so it's like all guys all young men you know vice presidents and each guy
had one pen on the desk and then one of the guys put two fountain pens on the desk and
soon all the others put two fountain pens on the desk too. Then that guy put three, the other
guys put three. And it was like suddenly this pen became this arbitrary marker. You know, do
you have how many expensive pens do you keep on your desk and this became like a little a
little game that they were playing to see who could sort of reach the top despite the fact that
they all had the same um the same official position within the firm? All vice presidents. Um
so okay, preference for groups organizations. And so yeah, we we we tend to seek out
affiliation with uh with uh social organizations that could potentially uh increase our status.
Um and this this this can vary whether from from sports teams or clubs or or or universities.
Um and we have strong uh reactions to to gain status. And again, this isn't uh these aren't
like conscious calculated thoughts that we have. We just have these emotions. we feel pride,
jubilation, honor. You know, you you you sort of glow when uh you receive agilation and
adoration from from other people. Uh and and when you don't, right, when people sort of
disapprove of you or condemn you in some way, you respond with these negative emotions.
And these emotions are are basically information uh and motivate you to shift your behavior.
Um there's been some some interesting discussion around around fairness as well. uh that
that people are are highly concerned with with fairness and specifically with regard to the
distribution of material resources. Often what people really care about, it's not that they care
about the the material resource in itself, but they care about they they claim they care about
the fairness, but what they really care about is like do you respect me? Do you confer me
enough status to treat me the way that I'd like to be treated? So, for example, if you discover
that other people at your uh at your job, other people with the same position as you are
getting paid more than you, even if you live even if you have a comfortable salary, right? Like
imagine you're still comfortable, you're still making a lot of money, but you discover your
co-workers are making way more than you. You're going to say, "Hey, this is like this is uh
there's something wrong here. This is unfair. Like what's going on?" And if your boss says,
"Well, we're paying you a lot of money anyway. Just relax." You're going to respond with
anger, right? This is not right. And that feeling that feeling is that sort of belittlement, right?
Right? That sort of feeling that you're not being treated with the same level of status as the
others despite the fact that you are earning a high wage just lower than the others. Um
status is non- derivative. It feels good in and of itself. Um I mentioned before that people will
forego material resources for status. They'll pay for social media followers and they'll forgo
other kinds of material resources. They'll forego food, right? People will forego food to look
attractive. Um they'll forego sleep, right? Like a physiological need. They'll stop sleeping
because they want to work hard to get promoted and earn more money or to impress other
people or work on their craft or their if they're an athlete, their sport. They'll literally damage
their health at least temporarily uh to chase this sort of invisible uh resource. I I told the Yale
lecturer story uh already. Okay. Status is is universal. Um you'll find it cross-culturally, right?
But I've been talking a bit about uh hunter gatherer communities uh the research from
Christopher Bame and others Richard Rangham status it's called different things though you
know a lot of people you know when I talk about status when I interviews and stuff they'll say
like status I people people feel um almost offended by this like is it really just about status do
people really care that much about status it feels like this cheap term status oh status
pursued but there are other terms that other cultures use and and we use these terms as
well to some degree and I somehow these These terms are, you know, like like like using the
term um respect. If someone says uh I'm doing X because I want status, you'll think like
really like a superficial shallow person and like you just want status. That's so you know so
cheap, vulgar. But if he says I'm doing X because I want respect. Oh, they're basically
synonyms, right? Like but for some reason respect carries these more respectful con
connotations. Um, others cult other cultures say things like face, they're chasing honor,
esteem, right? Status is the term that we use in psychology. Um, hunter gatherers, you
know, we we've talked about, you know, what are the the qualities that lead hunter gatherers
to to attain status. hunting. I mean, hunters like a lot of the research on on status has been
done on hunting because, you know, it seems to be like a sort of a very well, first of all, it's
dangerous. And I think that just sort of studying this dangerous activity is interesting for
researchers, but then also um you know, this is like a very obvious uh and direct way for for
hunters to to display all these qualities that uh confer status. So, hunters receive more
respect, they have more sexual partners, they have more offspring. These are uh on on the
the relatively few existing huntergather communities that that that remain. This is what
researchers have found anthropologists. Um there's some interesting work on on big game
hunting and status. So uh Robin Dunar and others you know they they've discussed this um
other researchers about oh Chris Kristen Hawk this is uh the person who I think did some of
the original research on this where they found that um in terms of return on investment big
game hunting is actually probably unwise where hunter gatherers would probably be better
off you killing rabbits and squirrels and raccoons and small game. um they could catch more
of them in a shorter amount of time and so on. Uh whereas it takes hours, sometimes days
to track a big animal and take him down. And yes, you get more meat. Uh but in terms of like
time spent versus calories received, it's actually uh not not not a wise strategy. But what
Kristen Hawks and other anthropology just have suggested is that big game hunting is
basically um a way to demonstrate athleticism, bravery, prowess, all of these things that are
attractive in a potential romantic partner. And so the big game hunters uh you know they
they they partake in this on you know it's not to say that they don't do it for food. Of course
they want the food, but there's also that added incentive. And the reason why it seems to be
an unwise investment from a caloric perspective is is in part probably part probably because
it's a wise perspective from a reproductive evolutionary perspective motivates them to do this
impressive thing uh to take out a big animal. Yeah. Overconfidence uh so overconfidence in
some some regard is probably wise if you want to bolster your status sort of believing you
can do something can often help uh you to actually do it. But the areas in which people are
overconfident tend to be uh associated with the status domains or the domains that confer
status in a given culture. So in more individualistic cultures uh you know especially uh in in in
the US people tend to overestimate their ability to lead. You know if you measure their actual
sort of leadership ability and sort of their resume and their record of leadership versus what
they say about their ability to lead there's a mismatch. people think that they're better leaders
generally than they really are. Um, in collectivistic societies, the ability to listen is highly
valued. And if you ask people about their own ability to listen and then you ask their peers
separately, how good is this person at listening? You'll often find this mismatch where people
systematically overestimate this ability. Um, and this suggests too that um that status is
universal because the thing that's valued is the thing that they sort of overestimate
themselves on. Um we're going to we're going to go a bit over. Um so so pain of pain of low
status. So I've talked a bit about emotions and um how emotions basically feed into your
knowledge, your feeling, how you know the our concerns about status aren't necessarily
conscious, explicit, verbalized in our minds, but rather through how we feel. Um, one of the
most interesting uh like research models that that looks at how like social exclusion and sort
of thwarting fundamental human needs can lead to uh you know losses in self-esteem and
so on. It's this game called Cyberball. Uh it's a very simple game and I've used it in some of
my own research. Um essentially uh you you sort of want to induce social discomfort in
participants. You want to sort of get them to feel excluded. It's very simple game. So
basically you have them play this ball tossing game, this digital ball tossing game. This is
you, you as in the participant, and you're playing with two other players. It's actually part of a
computer game, but you know, tell the participants, hey, you're playing with two other people
uh in, you know, different locations and toss the ball back and forth. In one condition, uh
you're included throughout the game. Uh so as a participant, you basically just toss this
digital ball for about 2 minutes. kind of boring, just tossing the ball back and forth. You click
your mouse, you click this guy, you can toss the ball to him, he toss it to you, maybe click
this guy and so on. The other condition, basically, you are the player and you're tossed the
ball one time and then for the remainder of the game, you just watch these two players toss
the ball back and forth and you're just sitting there. And there's been some, you know, so I
did my studies, a lot of these studies, I mean, you know, when I did this this study here, this
was like during the lockdown, so I had to do this online. Um, but researchers have done this
in a lab setting where they bring people and sit them down on a computer. And when they
are excluded from the game, often participants, they'll get visibly upset if they're not included
in the game. Some of them will tap the computer screen as if this is going to alert them like,
"Hey, what's going like, "Hey, I'm I'm here too." Um, they get upset at being uh socially
excluded. Um, and after they play this game, we ask them, you know, we'll ask, you know,
these these scales about, you know, your your self-esteem, your sense of control, your
meaningfulness, your sense of belonging. We'll ask you all these questions. You find this
massive effect size that people feel much worse about themselves even after playing the
silly two-minute game. And we find this effect even when you control for personality traits.
So, for example, um, uh, introverts, extroverts, disagreeable individuals, everyone feels
upset when they're excluded from this ball tossing game. The origins of the this game, by the
way, are interesting. So So the the the person who invented this this game, Kip Williams, in
the early I want to say this was the early 2000s. The idea for Cyberball came to him when he
was sitting in a park uh by himself and he says a Frisbee landed next to him. So he picks up
the Frisbee, he's like, "Where'd this come from?" He sees two guys playing Frisbee with one
another and he's like, "Oh." Tosses it back to them. He watches them toss the Frisbee to one
another and then they toss the Frisbee back to him and now he's included in this game. So
he tosses the Frisbee and after maybe one or two rounds of this, the two guys walk off and
return to their game and he says, you know, I was sitting there in the park and I was like,
"Hey, I thought we were part of this game." And he suddenly felt bad about himself. He didn't
know these guys. They were complete strangers to him. Randomly, the Frisbee lands and
he's momentarily included and then he's excluded. and he felt he said he felt surprisingly
sharp emotions uh for for this you know kind of what you would expect like a like in an
objective sense kind of a a silly trivial thing. Um and so this is this led him to invent
Cyberball. But why do we feel so bad these sort of oneshot contact you know you're you're
momentarily excluded in a silly game with strangers even in a computerized context where
you don't even see the person. Well the reason seems to be that we we didn't we didn't meet
strangers uh in the ancestral environment. human beings almost never had these oneshot
encounters uh with another person. Um almost every single person a human would ever
meet in a hunter gatherer smallcale society is someone that they would have iterated
repeated interactions with over and over and they would be each interaction held high stakes
in terms of reputational concerns. Um and so we still because you know that that was the
environment in which our psychology evolved. We still have those properties in our mind
today and we respond uh to each social encounter as if it holds immense consequences.
You know like uh you you you get a a coffee at the shop and the person says something
impolite to you, you'll respond, you know, like oh like you know you that will kind of for some
people that'll ruin their whole day. For a lot of people it will upset them for a few minutes uh
even if you never see that person again. Um and in and in some cases this can be this can
be helpful keeps us honest when we deal with strangers. Um because even though you
know on on sort of an objective rational level I'm never going to see this person again uh you
still sort of you still have the psychology of someone of of a human being who would feel that
they would interact with this person again. Um it can be detrimental as well. You know,
sometimes we have a bit too much um anxiety and other negative emotion for fleeting,
inconsequential interactions with strangers. You know, I've I've worked with and talked to
young guys who like they can't even order a pizza on the phone because they're so fearful of
embarrassing themselves or saying the wrong thing when they order food. Uh and so for
them, like they they always just order online. Um that kind of social anxiety is uh obviously
maladaptive. Um so thwarted status you know this kind of cyber ball game feeling excluded
this is uh you know what's what some researchers they call it a strong situation. Um so in
social psychology there's this idea of situational strength. What a situational strength is um
when a situation is strong people will respond to it the same way regardless of their
individual traits regardless of personality and intelligence and impulse control and so on. And
uh an example is is a is a red light. This is a strong situation. Regardless of your personality
traits and all these other measures, almost everyone will stop at a red light regardless. It's
strong. A yellow light is what's called a weak situation. There's no explicit protocol for how to
respond to a yellow light. Uh so some people perhaps with less impulse control or lower on
conscientiousness or something, they'll just speed right through. Other people will slow
down. They'll even slow down perhaps a bit too early. And so in some cases, right, our
individual differences tend to matter a lot. In other cases, when when the rules are clear and
rigid, we'll respond in the same way. Being excluded seems to be a strong situation. So
regardless, as I mentioned, regardless of personality, being excluded hurts sort of losses,
thwarted status, sort of reduction in esteem. It seems to hurt everyone. Some people say, "I
don't care what people think." most of the time that's nonsense. Um, so psychological
adaptations. So there have been some interesting um, uh, studies on this idea of uh, the
psychological mechanism uh, in humans uh, called the sociometer. And this is basically
belonging. Uh, it sort of monitors whether you belong in the environment. Um, this is
pre-attentive. This is sort of unconscious the way that we monitor the environment. Um,
you're not consciously thinking, do I belong? Am I accepted? Am I excluded? Am I
excluded? Again, you just sort of respond in uh w with certain kinds of emotions if you are
excluded versus if you uh are not. And it's it's simil it's relevant to status, but it doesn't
actually monitor status. Belonging and status are are tightly linked, but they're not the same
thing. Um, so the sociometer uh seems to monitor communion, how much you're getting
along with other people, how much uh social acceptance you have, and you can belong
even if you have low social status. But we'll we'll talk more about agency and communion in
a minute. Uh, and then there's so there's the hierometer. So the hierometer is about status. It
tracks and regulates where you stand uh in a social hierarchy. Um, so this psychological
mechanism is is again it's correlated with but distinct from status. um you can think of cases
where you can be sort of low in belonging but but but high in in in status. People can sort of
regard you uh or hold you in high regard um even if they don't necessarily uh uh accept you.
Um you can think of like lonely CEOs or something like that. Um and this is more
preoccupied with agency. So we'll talk about agency and communion. Um high status
identities. We'll we'll talk about that later. Okay. So here's yeah here's the sort of a a diagram
of how hyerometer and sociometer works. Hyometer tracks status. Sociometer tracks
inclusion. Hyometer is um basically tracked by how you feel about yourself, your
self-esteem, but also with with narcissism. We'll talk a lot about narcissism later in another
lecture. And these regulate assertiveness. Assertiveness meaning like you know are you
going to put yourself out there to attain status. Uh and the sociometer is more about affili. So
self-esteem, how you feel about yourself? tracks your belongingness and then this leads you
to sort of uh uh build relationships with with other people. Uh and the the goal of of
sociometer is actually to avoid exclusion. Okay. So so yeah this is just the summary here.
Um one monitors inclusion, one monitors status, one's communal in character, sociometer is
comm uh communal in character, the hierometer is agentic in character. And in some cases
uh people will sacrifice status to get along. uh and in other cases they'll sacrifice uh uh
getting along uh in order to attain status. We're we're sort of chronically conflicted, you know,
human beings. We want to fit in and we want to stand out at the same time. Uh that's one
way of of thinking about it. Okay. So So I like this example. I don't know how many of you
read The Great Gatsby or watched the the the the movie from uh it was 10 years ago now,
but Nick Carowway in the book um he states in the book that I graduated from New Haven in
1915 and Carowway is the narrator of this story and New Haven he's not talking I think there
is a University of New Haven. I don't know if there was one in 1915 but he actually he went
to Yale. Yale is located in New Haven but he says I went to New Haven. Right? He sort of
downplays his educational pedigree. uh he wants you to know the reader as the narrator he
wants you to know I'm a humble guy you know he comes from this sort of old money
background he doesn't um he's not trying to impress you he's just trying to tell you a story
he's communal he wants to get along and Gatsby on the other hand he is very quick to tell
Nick Carowway in the story was brought up in America but educated at Oxford he tells him
explicitly what his educational well fraudulent educational credentials are Gatsby actually he
wasn't educated at Oxford um but Gatsby is chasing status he wants to be accepted that
he's new money. He wants to be accepted by this um by this old money society. He wants
the acceptance of Nick Carowway and ultimately uh you know to to to try to win Daisy back.
And so he's agentic in character and he's going for an overt bid for status. Um so these are
the two um well one researcher called him the the the big two the cardinal axes among along
which we chart the course of our lives. Communion is about getting along. Agency is about
getting ahead. Uh, one is about belonging, the other is about status. Um, so if you're high
agency, high communion, yeah, directing, helpful. Uh, if you're if you're low agency, but high
in communion, you're understanding and you're compliant. But these two um these two traits
sort of govern our our social lives. We want status, but we also want to be accepted.
Sometimes if you chase status too much, you can actually um you can actually lead people
to to to sort of dislike you or to en you or to abandon you. And so we're constantly walking
that sort of tight rope. Um morality and competence are two traits that are associated. So
morality is associated more with communion, with getting along. Competence is associated
more with agency or or getting ahead. Collectively, these two traits, your moral character and
your competence seem to um encompass the bulk of how we form our impressions of other
people. We sort of implicitly ask ourselves, you know, is this person a capable person? And
then uh how good of a person is this? Those are the two traits that that we seem to focus on
the most when we meet a new person and form our impression of them. Um, and moral
character is actually uh the trait that people are the most concerned with when they meet a
new person and try to determine of what type of individual they are. Um, okay. So, we're
reaching the end here. Uh, I want to just briefly touch on insults as status injuries. Most
insults that are directed at people other than appearance, right? Appearance is like an
obvious one that people make fun of. But appearance aside, what do people where do
people direct their insults? Mostly to their competence or to their morality or their sort of uh
ability to get along or get ahead. So, so male-directed insults, you know, here. So, so
worthless, weak, poor, dumb, useless, scared. Uh this is directed at their competence. And
then controlling self-absorbed, liar. These are directed at their moral character. And then for
female directed insults as well, worthless, poor, needy, disgusting, annoying. These are kind
of competence uh you know, insults directed at competence. And then scang, gold digger,
shallow. These are the most common insults and they tend to be uh directed I mean these
are sort of affiliated with with with moral character. These are the most common insults by
the way. This was like a recent study 2021. These are the uh the most common not
necessarily those words specifically, but those words and their synonyms. We're going to
talk about psychopathy much more uh in this in this upcoming uh lecture.