Some thoughts on social status

I.

It’s embarrassing to write a blog post about status, because whenever smart people talk about status they become stupid. However, some people are wrong on the Internet, so we will all strive to endure my temporary stupidity.

II.

Standard academic status theory distinguishes between dominance and prestige. Dominance is power through coercion. Directly, this means force, threat of force, or intimidation. Granting and withholding resources also counts: wealthy people are more dominant; your boss is dominant over you. Probably in humans spreading rumors, cancel culture, and destroying others’ reputations count too. Dominant people tend to be feared and to be treated as authorities.

Prestige is power that comes from having valuable traits that people like. Prestigious people might have skills considered valuable by a particular social group, such as musical abilities, athleticism, board game talent, or even machine learning. Prestigious people might be particularly funny or interesting to talk to. Prestigious people may also be unusually moral, honorable, loyal, generous, or kind. Prestigious people tend to be admired and respected.

(The Wikipedia page for the dominance/prestige division was clearly written by a pro-prestige propagandist. I guess editing Wikipedia is a prestige-seeker activity.)

I think that it is crucial when talking about status to distinguish between dominance and prestige. Often, when we think about high-status people, we imagine a high-dominance person. We imagine the stereotypical alpha male Chad, muscular enough to beat you up, bossing people around and showing up men and negging women. Or we imagine the “popular kids” from a 1980s teen movie, insulting the geeks and throwing losers into lockers and tossing pig blood onto random psychics.