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The Introvert’s Guide to Status Games
Our origin story begins with Keith Johnstone, a legendary British theatre director and playwright, who invented much of what we know today as improvisational theatre, or improv.
In his book Impro, Johnstone tells the story of his experimental theatre troupe “discovering” status games:
Suddenly we understood that every inflection and movement implies a status, and that no action is due to chance, or really “motiveless”….Normally we are forbidden to see status transactions except when there's a conflict.
The primary mechanism in these games (or transactions), they discovered, is the Seesaw Principle:
When one person’s status goes up, the other person’s status goes down, and vice-versa
A simple example to illustrate:
Person A: [enters room] What are you reading?
Person B: War and Peace
Even this straightforward, factual response implies a small status boost for Person B, since reading such a famously long and difficult book implies studiousness, persistence, and cultural sophistication.
But look what happens when A responds:
A: Oh, that’s my favorite book
A has cut B down to size, implying that not only has he also read this impressive book, he has done it multiple times and enjoyed it.
But now imagine an alternative scenario. Suppose A instead answers:
A: Oh, that’s my favorite book…but I only look at the pictures.
It initially looked like a status boost, but then turned into a self-effacing comment. By lowering his own status (by admitting that he only looks at the pictures), according to the Seesaw Principle, A raises B’s status by implicitly recognizing B’s greater achievement.
From this tiny seed grows the hyper-cross-disciplinary theory of status games, drawing from diverse fields like game theory, transactional analysis, social psychology, and, more recently, neuroscience.
A 2008 article in Scientific American describes research at the National Institute of Mental Health on the physiological effects of perceived status changes:
We found that the brain reacts very strongly to the other players and specifically the status of the other players,” Caroline Zink says. “We weren’t expecting that profound a response,” she adds, noting that the subjects seemed to be concerned with the hierarchy within the game even when it was of no consequence to how much money they could make.
The researchers found increased activity in the striatum (known for handling monetary rewards) and the medial prefrontal cortex, while the pain processing centers (amygdala and posterior cingulate) “lit up” when they saw inferior competitors outpace them.
We feel challenges to, and reductions of, our status on the physiological, instinctive level, as tangible threats to our survival and reproduction. Because of course, back in caveman days, they were.
Layer 2
Now that we’ve established the basic principle, let’s add another layer. In this short skit, multiple stages of a status battle are compressed into a few minutes:
Note the sequence of moves and counter-moves the two players engage in. Under the guise of “catching up,” they deploy ever more aggressive status tactics to one-up each other.
The exchange illustrates what makes status games so interesting and worth playing: they go far beyond mere socio-economic status. Mapping the sequence of moves in the skit gives us a rough hierarchy of status levels, in ascending order, with material wealth at the bottom:
9. wealth (diamond ring)
8. commitment (marriage)
7. experiences (dating a sheikh, sports car, exotic vacations)
6. perspective (pregnancy, home life)
5. success (high-powered job, busy schedule)
4. selflessness (volunteer work for non-profit)
3. influence (leadership of non-profit)
2. authenticity (death of father)
1. victimhood (baby with autism, barrenness, AIDS, heart attack, etc.)
Note the logic of status games — it’s not who is superior, in any objective sense. It is who is more worthy of attention. That’s why victimhood trumps all other tactics — your tragic condition demands the sympathetic attention of everyone present.
The conversation is obviously accelerated and exaggerated for comedy, but what makes it cringe-worthy is that we’ve all experienced conversations like this one. In fact, we regularly take part in the one-upmanship and humble-bragging that arise naturally when you have to recalibrate your status with a new (or long-unseen) acquaintance.
Layer 3
Ready for another layer? Take a look at Kristen Wiig’s character Penelope on SNL:
Penelope’s behavior demonstrates that the status hierarchy mentioned above is not a simple stacked pyramid — each level can be cut and spliced in multiple different ways. The character’s genius is in finding (and claiming) new angles of status competition that are so subtle and petty that we normally wouldn’t notice them consciously.
But the fact that we instantly understand what she’s doing, and often can’t help but smile, suggests that even those tiny slivers of status register with us at some level.
How Status is Made
Before I get hate mail, it’s important not to confuse status with worth. Of course, each person’s worth as a human being is innate and doesn’t depend on such superficial behaviors.
Status is, instead, a strategy that you play depending on the situation.
Sometimes it pays to “play” low status: as a defense mechanism, or to avoid confrontation, or appear helpless (think of begging at the passport office). Other times it pays to play high status: to intimidate others, impose your will, or preempt attacks by competitors (think of negotiating the price of a car).
Although in theory anyone can play any status, most people tend to settle around a narrow range that they’re most comfortable with. Every point on the status spectrum is characterized by a set of stable external behaviors that over time become hardwired into each person’s body and mind. Unconscious and usually unexamined, I believe these behaviors end up shaping our individual destinies far more than we realize.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
What’s amazing about these external behaviors is how specific and easily identified they are. There’s nothing mysterious here, unless you don’t understand the lever being pulled.
Because these behaviors are so tangible and identifiable, they can be mimicked, and neutralized, and turned back on themselves.
Johnstone gives a variety of simple examples that his students use to take on the status of a character:
- Moving smoothly is high status; moving jerkily is low status
- Putting your hands near your face is high; keeping them away is low
- Spreading your body out is high; pointing toes inward is low
- Showing teeth when smiling is high; covering them is low
- Not moving your head while speaking is high; moving it too much is low (Johnstone claims that police officers are trained to not move their heads when issuing commands)
- Making direct eye contact is high; quick, furtive glances are low
- Taking up more space while sitting or standing is high; taking up less space is low
- Verbal fillers like “er” that are longer and toward the end of sentences is high (you’re signaling them to wait for you to finish thinking); shorter and earlier in the sentence is low (you’re inviting them to interrupt you)
Looking at these individually it can be hard to understand their effect, so here’s an integrated example: the comedian Anthony Jeselnik.
His whole shtick is about projecting status. It starts with being a white male, of course, but extends to his posture, the way he moves, his low-reactive facial expressions, his voice tone and quality, not laughing at his own jokes, paced breathing, the precise but relaxed enunciation, and even the jokes themselves. What makes it entertaining, instead of overbearing, is that he understands this, and plays with it.
That, by the way, is the highest form of status: not caring what your status is. This is what we pay comedians to do — lower their own status on purpose, and thereby, according to the Seesaw Principle, raise ours. What makes this a difficult skill is they have to do it in such a way that we feel good about ourselves, while not feeling too sorry for them.
Think of Louis C.K.’s standard routine. He laments his pathetic sex life and mundane family rituals, but in the end you don’t truly feel sorry for him because he comes across as a normal, likable guy (impressive considering he has long been a multi-millionaire).
Principles of Status Games
Once you start looking out for status levers, you see them everywhere. They pervade every aspect of daily life and work and pop culture. It’s not a question of whether or not you want to play them — it’s whether you will play them consciously or subconsciously.
We can discover the principles on which status games operate by looking at real-life examples. Here are some of the more interesting ones I’ve noticed.
- Combining status markers has a synergistic effect
Since status is all about being unusual, and therefore “special,” the combination of two forms of status rarely found together has a multiplying effect.
Two examples: the Hot Dudes Reading Instagram account. It shows attractive men reading books, which is titillating because those are two qualities that we don’t normally perceive as being linked: physical attractiveness and intelligence. A corresponding example is the Internet’s obsession with Gamer Girls (NSFW). They unusually combine physical attractiveness with enjoyment of video games (attractiveness pretty much always wins).
2. The rules change drastically depending on the social context
Every group has its own markers of high and low status. Hedge fund managers compete on luxury cars, but in a Buddhist monastery the poorest and humblest individuals will receive the most praise, and therefore status.
I’ve noticed this in Northern versus Southern California. In SoCal you flaunt your purchases and never apologize for any form of consumption. In NorCal you gain status by driving a Prius, wearing secondhand clothing, conserving water, and shopping at farmer’s markets.
Kevin Simler discusses this phenomenon in activist circles. It may seem traitorous for a man to be a militant feminist, because he seems to be opposing the interests of his own group. But actually it makes complete sense from a status perspective— his feminist beliefs (and even more so, actions) signal that he is an enlightened, evolved male, thereby increasing his status among men and women who value that. So-called Macktivists have been known to use their social consciousness as a tool of seduction on women who find that form of status attractive.
3. Bragging is the biggest status killer
This is a principle that has surprisingly wide-ranging implications. Any time you openly try to increase your status, or recognize that your status is being changed, or even let it be known that you possess a particular status marker, your status is lowered.
The reasoning is simple: high status people don’t care about their status level. They have so much of it, they have status to spare. They don’t respond to slights, nor take every opportunity to (casually) mention offhand that they have a cabin in the mountains, or went to Harvard, or have been vegan for 7 years. We are programmed to assume that anyone who doesn’t give a s*#% about how others perceive their status, probably has lots of it.
The reverse is also true: have you ever discovered an impressive fact about someone you’ve known for a while? The fact that they didn’t immediately let this fact be known greatly magnifies how impressed you are when you do find out.
4. Status changes have an irresistible, visceral effect on us
This discussion may give the impression that status games are a purely intellectual exercise. But our responses to status challenges touch so deeply on our fears, insecurities, and deep-seated feelings of self-worth that you cannot help but feel them as irresistible physical sensations.
I once sat across the negotiating table from a senior lawyer representing a top Silicon Valley law firm. I was a Junior Project Manager at the time, in my first real job after college.
The difference in status was instantly palpable. I remember being unnerved at the man’s presence — he was like a Buddha sitting in his chair, uncannily impassive, in utter control without any evidence of effort exerted.
Even back then I understood some of these status levers, but it didn’t help. The harder I tried to control my actions and reactions, the more evident my effort became, thus lowering my status in a powerful feedback loop. Everything about him — his posture, his tone of voice, his facial expressions, his choice of words — exuded such a lack of reactivity to anything I did or said it was as if he was an android, with the real human at the controls back at the office.
Contrast this with a more recent, opposite experience. I was delivering the keynote at a conference, and entered backstage to get wired up. I felt a strange sensation of confidence and calm, before I even realized what was causing it: the social context was boosting my status. The audiovisual team was hovering around me, placing the microphone and syncing up my slides. People all around the room were stealing glances at me, reorienting themselves around me, deferring to me in ways large and small.
This, I suspect, is the mechanism behind “fake it till you make it” —fake high status behaviors can actually change the behavior of those around you, who then mirror that status back to you, creating authentic self-confidence. High status feeds on itself.
5. The voice is the most visible and important status marker
This is my own personal theory, but I believe we humans are exquisitely attuned to the tiniest variations in each others’ voices, partly as a way to evaluate status level.
It starts with breathing. Any perceived status challenge triggers the flight-or-fight response. In preparation for combat, the arms and shoulders are fixed to the thoracic cage, the vocal folds are adducted (contracted toward the midline of the body), the throat muscles expand to increase the flow of oxygen to the lungs, and breathing rate is increased. This results in breathiness, vocal hyperfunction (too much effort exerted for speaking), and running out of air mid-sentence, all strong indications of low status.
The voice itself also exhibits many qualities that can be read for status markers. Speaking quickly, high-pitched tone, and verbal artifacts like stutters and various kinds of paraphasias are all influenced by one’s thoughts and subconscious emotions, which makes them reliable status indicators.
You may have experienced some of these effects when meeting a celebrity. Even if you don’t consciously feel intimidated, your body starts reacting to the huge status differential in surprising and unpredictable ways. A friend of mine once met Al Gore at an event at her university years ago, and still remembers being almost overwhelmed with the magnitude of his presence as he entered the room and shook her hand.
Introverts and status games
Everything we’ve looked at thus far sheds light on why introverts sometimes have trouble with social situations.
We tend to spend a lot of time in our heads, in the world of ideas. So when we start a conversation, we want to talk about ideas, which is an admirable goal. But we have to realize that many people view conversation starters based on ideas to be a threat. Opening with “What do you know about chaos theory?” or “What was the last book you read?” is perfectly innocuous coming from an introvert, but can come across as intimidating, by highlighting the other person’s lack of knowledge in this area.
Introverts tend to be rigid in their social roles, but very fluid in their ideas. They’re comfortable trying on and switching between multiple mental models as a way of understanding problems. They may be sensitive and even insecure about many things, but their intellect is not one of them. Therefore, ignorance in any particular area is not threatening, but an opportunity to learn.
Non-introverts, on the other hand, tend to be rigid in their ideas, but fluid in their social roles. They’re comfortable switching rapidly between roles, which makes them good at things like flirting, joking, persuading, and empathizing, all of which require emotive (not intellectual) performances. They’re open to discussing ideas, but the actual information content is secondary to the emotional, relational content.
This lack of social fluency in introverts makes it hard for them to use the Seesaw Principle to their advantage. It’s difficult for them to purposefully lower their own status (thereby increasing the other person’s status), because rapid changes in status relationships feel threatening, instead of fun. Self-effacing humor, which is excellent for putting people at ease and getting them to like you, is difficult when you’re too attached to any particular status level.
Introverts don’t like playing status games because they don’t understand them. But not understanding them, they are continuously confused by the negative reactions they receive when they unintentionally drop a status bomb in the form of a complex idea. This confusion makes these interactions not enjoyable, which disincentivizes practicing them, making the problem worse.
Some practical tips
So what is an introvert to do? Let me start by telling you what NOT to do.
First, DO NOT try to “hack” status games by systematically “deploying” the high status markers I’ve mentioned in conversation. It won’t work, for two reasons. First is that the speed and complexity of the information being transmitted far exceeds any sort of processing you can handle consciously. Status games can only be played on the level of Kahneman’s System 1 (at least, until you get to more advanced levels), which has far more processing power than the analytical System 2. Second is that the subtleties of these behaviors are so small, you run the risk of coming across as weird or aggressive. The line between confidently maintaining eye contact and psychopathic staring is too fine to risk walking.
Second, be wary who you even discuss the idea of status games with. I’ve been repeatedly shocked by the variety and intensity of people’s reactions. Many will deny it outright, accusing you of manipulative scheming. Some will become very defensive, if you hit a nerve. And perhaps most annoyingly, some will take to the idea so strongly that they will begin evaluating everything you do and say in terms of status.
Ironically, those who are most skilled at status games (and who you may be most tempted to discuss them with) are the most likely to deny it or claim ignorance — the reason they’re good at it is they don’t think about it.
Here are a few things you can do:
- View status games as a game
This may be the most important takeaway. Resist the temptation to use this information to overanalyze and overstrategize. This isn’t a game that’s meant to be “won.” I think the healthiest outlook is to view status games as an interesting sociological phenomenon — a new and intriguing way to understand human psychology and behavior in all its beautiful complexity.
This outlook has the potential side effect of helping us introverts not take things so personally, and not see the stakes of every conversation as being so high.
2. Try on different social roles
I find the idea that we have many “selves” — instead of a single fixed identity — incredibly liberating. This frees us to try on different personas, different attitudes and mindsets, and even different body language and conversational styles without losing touch with our integrity.
As I mentioned before, most people tend to stick to a narrow range on the status spectrum. But this is totally artificial! Your status is not an objective fact — it is an impression, an attitude, a mask you can change at any time for any reason.
Try conducting an entire conversation without making eye contact. Try adding weighty pauses here and there. Try interrupting…or not interrupting. If you’re really brave, you can try out one of the hallmark strategies of truly high status people: instead of defending yourself in response to a status challenge (So why should I buy your product?), lower yourself instead. Continually lowering yourself in response to challenges is a powerful method for deflecting attacks. If you refuse to defend your honor, it’s impossible for someone else to damage it.
3. Integrate behaviors that boost others’ status
This is one status game strategy you can deploy consciously. There are lots of little behaviors that make people like you and feel good by implicitly raising their status.
The excellent book Ask Questions, Get Sales explains how many of the classic sales techniques fail because they are too directly aggressive. Asking someone even a straightforward question like “What is your role here?” or “Who is responsible for this decision?” are surprisingly threatening, because we are used to being questioned in this way only by our superiors.
Schiffman recommends some behaviors designed to disarm your prospect and signal that they are in charge: asking non-open-ended questions that communicate your interest in their past challenges; taking detailed notes, as if you are taking orders; asking direct questions while looking down at your notebook, and not looking up until you get an answer to avoid pressuring them.
Of course, there are equally numerous tactics for using status to change (manipulate?) others’ behavior, but we’ll leave the morality of such methods for a different discussion.
4. Invest in emotional intelligence
Ever since Daniel Goleman’s seminal book on Emotional Intelligence, this term has become a cliché in the business and pop culture vocabulary.
Investing in EQ is extremely rewarding for its own sake, obviously, but just in case you need some extra motivation, it is really the only long-term way to sustainably and substantively increase your status.
Thomas Insel, Director of the National Institutes of Mental Health, has said that “Our position in social hierarchies strongly influences motivation as well as physical and mental health,” continuing to say that “insight into how the brain processes social standing may have important public health consequences, possibly even paving the way to new stress-reduction therapies.” I agree, and believe that in the future an understanding of how social status influences our wellbeing will be integral to our approach to health.
In a business context, relative status among the members of a team is an under-appreciated factor in creating an environment of psychological safety, which a recent study from Google HR found to be the single most important factor in the success of 180+ teams. Much more important than even who was on these teams. The study concludes that “…we’re all reluctant to engage in behaviors that could negatively influence how others perceive our competence, awareness, and positivity.” In other words, when we fear losing status, we withdraw from the creative, risk-taking behaviors that define a successful team.
Low reactivity is the secret to status games
You may have picked up on this theme already, but the core principle here is low reactivity: any behavior that exhibits low reactivity — to other’s behaviors, to internal thoughts and emotions, to outside pressures — is a high status behavior.
What I find interesting is that this principle is found everywhere. T'ai chi ch'uan and aikido martial artists know that an opponent’s overreaction is a great opportunity to throw them off balance, using their opponent’s misplaced energy against them. In negotiating, in relationships, in productivity, in war: overreacting leads to dissipated energy, wasted effort, and imbalance. Even in Buddhism, sankharas — the mental impurities whose removal leads ultimately to liberation — means “reaction.” Mental reactions are the gateway to attachment, which is the root of all suffering.
I used to think the goal was to go beyond “petty” status games. I figured one could reach a level of emotional intelligence, maturity, and equanimity to push through the other side, where everyone respected each other equally and cared about true intimacy, not games.
But now I’m not so sure. I think if we can take these dynamics not so seriously, we could learn to enjoy them. Maybe we would find that much of what makes humans, well, human resides not in our goals, our missions, or our grand plans, but in the games we play as an excuse to know and be known by each other.
