Status is the ability to help others. We are attracted to people we believe have high status because of the possibility of receiving a reward.  Pride is the emotion related to increased status, while shame is the emotion related to decreased status. The terms "one up" and "one down" refer to relative status in a relationship. Insults are an attack on status that often provoke humiliation and anger.

Definitions

1. Possessing assets that are potentially helpful to others.
2. Endowed with valuable assets.
3. Power derived from the potential for constructive actions. Contrast with Dominance.
4. Power based on a resource that cannot be taken by force, also known as leverage.
5. Social rank.
6. Social standing.

Origins and Importance of Status

High status provides increased opportunities to mate with high status partners. This increases the survival potential and social contributions of your descendents.

Genuine Status

Image allows us to estimate the status and dominance of others quickly and easily, but images can be counterfeit. Therefore it is important to learn the distinctions between genuine status and its many counterfeit images. Many terms for counterfeit forms of pride describe gaps between image and status.

Sources of Status:

Knowledge, charisma, wit, creativity, beauty, talent, skill, experience, reputation, strength, fitness, stamina, intelligence, curiosity, sensitivity, humility, judgment, courage, kindness, empathy, companionship, admired DNA, fertility, youth, wisdom, veracity, integrity, emotional competency, positive influence, patience, self-restraint, altruism, compassion, human dignity, and developing your strengths and applying them constructively. These are all authentic sources of pride and self-esteem.

Examples:

• Earning a Nobel Prize
• Earning an Olympic medal
• Being a good parent
• Conserving or preserving natural resources or other unique and useful assets.
• Creating a story, book, music, photograph, painting, invention, entertainment, or other new contribution that is useful to others.
• Courageous or selfless actions that help others.
• Innovative, creative, or persistent actions that help others.
• Acting from empathy and compassion.
• Genuine philanthropy.
• Completing an education program,
• Solving problems to enable more constructive solutions.

Image is not Status

Image is another's estimate of your status, not your actual status. The estimate can be very wrong; none-the-less, many people spend too much time in counterfeit attempts to increase image rather than status. Self-image is your estimate of your status. Self-esteem is your judgment and evaluation of your status (based, of course, on your self-image). This evaluation is often based on a comparison of your actual achievements with expectations you hold of yourself. These expectations may rely too much on comparison of your actual achievements with the images you hold of your colleagues.

But we find great comfort in the approval of others; perhaps because of the difficulty of maintaining confidence in ourselves without the reinforcement we get from the respect of others. Our self-image depends on our actual status, our public image, and the public image of others that we choose to compare ourselves to, generally our colleagues. Our pubic image depends on both our actual status and our self image.

Decide for yourself; the only opinion of yourself that matters is your own.

Evaluating status, and especially image, is difficult and depends on our values. Consider this example: does living in a mansion or living in a tiny, energy efficient house reflect the higher status? Which choice helps others more? The tiny, energy efficient home requires fewer of the earth's resources and is therefore more helpful to others. So less is more.

Money and Status

The relationship between money and status is complex. Consider Dr. Paul Farmer who has dedicated his career to fighting tuberculosis in third world countries. He is one of the most talented, hard working, and helpful people in the world, yet he receives little or no payment for the immense help he so generously provides. He is a financially poor man of great status. There are many other examples of people who have lots of money but little status. These includes lucky but selfish lottery winners, CEO's of large corporations who were well paid before being sentenced to jail for cheating, defrauding, embezzling, or stealing, people who inherit great fortunes only to squander their lives, and many others who obtain money through luck or misdeed.

But when money is a measure of personal merit, then money is also measure of status. Hard work, talent, courage, intelligence, creativity, and stamina all help earn money. These are also characteristics of genuine status.

When using money to judge status, consider how the money was obtained and how it is used to help others. Judge the person, not their money.

"A man may have a great suite of attendants, a beautiful palace, great influence, and a large income. All that may surround him, but it is not in him...Measure his height with his stilts off: let him lay aside his wealth and his decorations and show himself to us naked...What sort of soul does he have?" - Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1533-1592)

Dominance and Status

Often dominance is confused with status. There are several reasons for this. One reason is that they are both components of power. When we witness power we may not always analyze its sources correctly. We may correctly associate dominance with power, then incorrectly associate that dominance with status. Another reason is that historically the ability to protect, defend, and feed a community is an important source of status. This often required skilled hunters to feed and warriors to protect. Clearly fighting abitly—the abitly to harm—is an essential trait of both hunters and warriors. Although fighting abitly is a dominance trait, the abitly to feed and protect are status traits. The status of hunters and warriors comes from using their dominance traits to help others.

Pleasing may not be Helping

You can please someone by assisting them in satisfying an impulse. But you may be indulging them rather than helping them. To help someone you have to assist them in acting consistently with their values. That may be much more difficult. This is the distinction between short-term pleasure and long-term gratification. Status is the ability to help others, which may not be the same as pleasing them.

Futile Status Seeking

With more than six billion other people on this planet, the chances against you becoming number one are astronomical. Focus your energy and talents toward authentic constructive contributions, not toward futile status seeking. None of these are authentic sources of pride.

Car ownership provides a fertile arena for status seeking. If you can't afford to buy the most expensive car, you can get the biggest, the most popular, the safest, the lease expensive, the one with the best gas mileage, the one with the most horsepower, the fastest, the loudest, the worst gas mileage, the most fashionable, the most extreme, the most historic, or anything else you can claim to be unique. But how will any of this improve your rank? Since none of this enhances your ability to help others, it does not increase your status, and is not an authentic source of pride.

Name dropping, shaking hands with celebrities, fifteen minutes of fame, or collecting autographs will not increase your status.

Being the first on your block to try a new fad, wear the latest fashions, or buy the newest toy will not increase your status.

Disgusting Attempts to Attain Status

While seeking to distinguish themselves as unique, these people seem to have lost sight of the helpful aspect of status. We don't recommend any of this.

• Becoming the biggest freak, including having the most (disgusting) body piercing.

Emotions Related to Status

Several emotions reflect status changes:

• Pride reflects your pleasure with an increase in your status.
• Shame reflects your displeasure with a decrease in your status.
• Envy reflects your displeasure from an increase in an acquaintance's status.
• Gloating reflects your pleasure from a decrease in an adversary's status. This may also make you feel a bit guilty.
• Contempt is your assessment that another's status does not reach your own.
• Fear is often based on a potential loss of status.
• Anxiety can arise from concern over inadequate status, especially in comparison to colleagues.
• Hate is an attempt to isolate and remove people—the harmful others—suspected of low status.

These emotions are often very powerful, perhaps because of the importance of status for survival and procreation in prehistoric times.

Quotations:

• "Only that which is both damning and true should be permitted to shatter our esteem" - Alain de Botton
• "People feel incomparably more alarmed by a threat to the psyche or the soul or the self than they are by a threat to the body" - James Gilligan.
• "Denigrating my status will not elevate yours" - Leland R. Beaumont
• "There are certain times when public opinion is the worst of all opinions" - Nicholas Chamfort (1741 - 1794)
• "Man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can do without" - Henry D. Thoreau

References:

Beyond Dominance: the importance of leverage, Rebecca J. Lewis, The Quarterly Review of Biology, volume 77 (2002), pages 149–164. Published by the University of Chicago Press

Status Anxiety, by Alain de Botton

Somebodies and Nobodies: Overcoming the Abuse of Rank,

Class: A Guide Through the American Status System, by Paul Fussell

Violence: Our Deadly Epidemic and Its Causes, by James Gilligan

Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World, by Tracy Kidder