“…the popular—or high status—kids make life hell for those they believe to be less popular and therefore lower status than themselves. They freely inflict verbal abuse (usually under the guise of “teasing”), cut in front of less popular kids in food lines or push them out of line and take their place, or deliberately bump into them in the halls and smirk while walking away. They act as though they have and deserve “priority of access to resources”, including teacher’s attention, best places to sit on the bus or in the lunchroom, and the most attractive mates.”
- Denise Cummins, describing the hell that is high school, in Dominance, Status, and Social Hierarchies
As the above excerpt illustrates, status is about access to scarce resources in competitive situations. Higher status means greater access. A resource is scarce to the extent there is a limited supply and it’s something more people want than can have: exotic vacations, unusual dining experiences, an enviable zip code. Since status feeds on recognition, humans tend to engage in costly "status displays” that confirm they are not just average Joe’s and Josephine’s. Hence, the attraction to luxury brands. Of course, one doesn’t want to be too obvious about one’s status aspirations - that reeks of desperation, which is a low-status emotion. Then again, once a person takes their high status for granted, it ceases to be sought or protected so strenuously. Ah, what a pleasant way to live: comfortable, confident and secure.
Is status striving inevitable in human society? I’m thinking yes - at least as long as people have to compete for scarce goods. And many goods are inherently scarce: attention, respect, wives. So it’s no surprise that status distinctions are well-nigh universal across cultures, even in the much-misrepresented “egalitarian” foraging societies, where food may be shared equitably but not sexual partners.
The human preference for scarce over abundant goods manifests in young children around the world. In one set of cross-cultural lab studies, researchers put a bunch of toys out for six-year olds to play with and the children ended up competing for the rare toys. The researchers concluded that the children’s scarcity preference was based on attraction to novelty and variety, but, even more, a fear of missing out on opportunity, especially when dealing with a toy of unknown value in the presence of competitors. Claim it before anyone else does!
References:
Bente, G., H. Leuschner, et al. (2010). "The others: Universals and cultural specificities in the perception of status and dominance from nonverbal behavior." Consciousness and Cognition 19(3): 762-777. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2010.06.006
Denise Cummins (2006). Dominance, Status, and Social Hierarchies In Buss, D.M. (ed) The handbook of evolutionary psychology (pp. 676-697). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley
John, M, Melis, AP, Read, D, Rossano, F, Tomasello, M. The preference for scarcity: A developmental and comparative perspective. Psychol Mark. 2018; 35: 603– 615. https://doi.org/10.1002/mar.21109
Speth, J. D. (1990). "Seasonality, resource stress, and food sharing in so-called “egalitarian” foraging societies." Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 9(2): 148-188.https://doi.org/10.1016/0278-4165(90)90002-U