QotD: Social Status

Status seems to me under-examined as a biological (as contrasted with a social) motive. It's necessarily a group thing; no one has status as a lone individual, as it is created relative to the group in which the individual is embedded. But of course, humans evolved in small social groups. Lack of status can really kill one, in any crunch situation. (Lifeboats, starving villages, the hunt, etc. See Lord of the Flies.) So humans have a biological need for enough status to obtain whatever their personal threshold may be to feel safe. There are a million ways to satisfy status needs, just as their are a million ways to prepare food to satisfy the underlying universal biological need, hunger. When a person drops below their comfort zone of status, they are thrown into a state of status emergency or panic behavior (often bad or wildly disproportionate) sometimes having little relation to any actual physical threat (see any internet flame war. And a lot of real wars.)

Lois McMaster Bujold, email to the Bujold mailing list, 2006-12-07

Posted by Nicholas at December 16, 2006 12:43 AM