Who Attains Status (And How Do They Attain It)?

Machiavelli had his opinions about status (source)

"Of Mankind we may say in general they are fickle, and greedy of gain."  --Machiavelli (1532)

In several of the posts on this blog, we have written about the various forms and functions of social hierarchies in society. For instance, we have written about the perils of economic inequality here and here, we have written (here) about how power can corrupt people--unless they are prosocially oriented (read: nice), we have written (here) about our paradoxical need for status hierarchies despite some of their negative qualities, and finally, we have written about various aspects of obedience to authority figures (here and here). Extending our tour of social hierarchy, today I'd like to discuss who attains status, and precisely how they attain it.

As we have discussed in a previous post, having high status is good for your social life, your health, and your well-being. We also know that people pursue high status in their daily lives-- although not all people do so with the same success or the same vigor. Here I will outline some of the keys to status attainment in face-to-face groups.

You’re a psychologist, right? What do you mean you don’t see clients?!

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Perhaps you, our most interested and involved reader, have taken a look at the “About the Bloggers/Researchers” section of Psych Your Mind (PYM). Here you learned that we’re either doctoral candidates (Amie, Juli, and I) or post doctoral scholars (Michael) in psychology. Like many of my friends and family, you might be confused about what that actually means. For example, when I tell people that I’m a psychologist, they naturally assume that I’m a therapist and see clients. Then, when I try to clarify, and explain that I’m actually a social-personality psychologist, not a clinical psychologist, I’m regularly greeted with a puzzled expression, and the question – “What the heck is that?”

Given that it’s Friday Fun, and you might be looking for a break from our (very) interesting, yet dense, research reviews, I thought I’d take a moment to step back and tell our readers a little more about us at Psych Your Mind.

Understanding Mean Girls

Regina from Mean Girls

"She's fabulous, but she's evil," social outcast Damian famously says about queen bee Regina George in the 2004 film Mean Girls. This line seems to perfectly capture our culture's love/hate relationship with so-called mean girls.

On the one hand, we're obsessed with them. Another Mean Girls sequel, Mean Moms, is forthcoming, and reality TV is replete with real-life mean girls of all kinds (for example, see these clips from The Real Housewives of New York, The Jersey Shore, and The Hills). Even after high school, we look to cultural alphas, such as high-profile celebrities, for advice on how to dress, what to eat (even if it's just lemon juice and cayenne pepper), and even how to surgically alter ourselves (see I want a famous face). There are apparently even elderly mean girls.

On the other hand, we resent their power and love to bring them down, which is probably why so many mean girl-centered movies (Heathers, Saved!, Sixteen Candles, etc) feature the demise of the queen bee and the triumph of the downtrodden, and why powerful female politicians are often torn apart by the media. See, for example, Carly Fiorina's infamous "mean girl moment" or Maureen Dowd's column on mean girl politicians. (Dowd herself was later accused of being "the ultimate mean girl").

The power of the police uniform: An instinct to obey authority

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I am still processing the horrific events that happened as part of the horrific terrorist attacks in Norway last Friday. Reading over the news reports, I can only try to fathom the terror felt by the youth on the island of Utoya as they ran, pleaded, and swam for their lives. How did this happen? How did the shooter manage to talk his way onto an island that is accessible only by boat? Fairly easily it seems, since he was dressed up like a policeman.

"We greeted him as we got off the ferry," said a student who was leaving Utøya just as Anders Behring Breivik, dressed as a police officer, was boarding the boat for the island. "We thought it was great how quickly the police had come to reassure us of our safety because we had heard of the bombing in Oslo."

The youth on the island gathered easily around the man in a police uniform wearing two guns. After all, people in police uniforms are seen as more competent, reliable, intelligent, helpful, honest, valuable, and possessing better judgment (Mauro, 1984; Singer & Singer, 1985). And Breivik is not alone in his manipulation of the police uniform. There are reports all over the web of fake policemen, many of whom receive instinctive obedience, including this particularly disturbing report of a boss who sexually harassed an employee at the behest of a phone call from “Officer Scott.”  Evidence from psychological research, such as Milgram’s study, shows that we have an instinct to obey authority, especially when we have little time to think through our choices, and it appears that the police uniform is a particularly potent symbol of authority.

Friday fun: Food and mood

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We all know that coffee is energizing, oysters are an aphrodisiac (maybe), and turkey makes us sleepy, especially when combined with gravy and stuffing. But there are many other important - and less obvious - links between food and mood. Here are a few of them:

Flexing the Muscle that is Self-Control

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College was a busy time for me and by extension a trying period for my roommate Vanessa. Unlike the average 19 year old, Vanessa had assumed such adult-like habits as washing dishes directly after eating a meal, making regular trips to take out the trash, and refusing to live with scum and filth in general (God forbid). These healthy habits were by no means my own. I was just learning how to balance the demands of my two priorities: a heavy workload at NYU and a debaucherous social life. When I came home from a long day at the library I was overwhelmed and exhausted. The last thing I had time or energy for was cleaning up after myself. Instead I wanted to simply unwind and relax in preparation for a night out in New York. I drove poor Vanessa mad!

You might assume from this introduction, that Vanessa and I have long since parted ways; that my dirty habits so turned her off from a friendship with me, that when our first year together was over, she quickly moved on to greener and cleaner pastures. Surprisingly, that’s not the case at all. Vanessa and I continued to live together for the better part of college, and to this day remain extremely close friends. While much of that is due to our particular “chemistry,” some of it should be attributed to the evolution of my cleaning habits. As college wore on Vanessa taught me how to be a good roommate, and with repeated practice I became much more able to follow a day studying with a night cleaning. How was I able to build these roommate duties into a routine that was just as work heavy and party heavy as before? The answer is quite nicely explained by Roy Baumeister’s “strength model of self-control.” For a great summary check out Baumeister, Vohs, & Tice, 2007. Let me outline the basic components of this theory…

Our Little Stories: Telling More Than We Know

Autobiography at its finest (source)

Last week I wrote a blog post about one of the most famous psychological experiments EVER: The Milgram Obedience Experiment. That got me thinking, wouldn't it be neat to write posts about some of my favorite classic experiments. Which brings us all here.

Let's try something for a second: Why don't you think back on the story of your life. While you are thinking back, try to remember why you got to the job you did, the city you now live in, the neighborhood, the relationships, etc... Most likely you--and most people for that matter-- took a long winding road to where you are now. It's also likely that you can pinpoint a few critical decisions you made in the past that have really shaped who you are today, and what you did to get here. We often construct these life narratives and you can buy any number of them in bookstores near you (hint: they are in the "autobiography" section).

But how true are these narratives really? Do we really know the two or three critical points in our lives that changed everything and made us the people we are today? Psychological science says no, and here is why:

Friday Fun: In which Hogwarts House do you belong?

The Sorting Hat on Harry Potter

The Sorting Hat perfectly divines people's personalities, something us mere muggle psychologists can only dream about doing. Yet we continue to try. So in honor of the final Harry Potter movie premiere tonight, I scoured the internet to find some psychology-based quizzes that will tell you, with science-backed certainty, in which Hogwarts House you belong.