Status anxiety can delay adoption of well-known useful technologies by years

Evidence

The role of status seeking in cultural change is well attested in sociologist Everett Rogers’s authoritative theory on the diffusions of innovations. (“Invention” is a new idea; “innovation” describes the invention’s use and widespread adoption.) In principle, rational humans will embrace technologies with greater efficiencies as soon as they become aware of them and can afford them. But Rogers had firsthand experience of the contrary. In 1936, a terrible drought decimated the family farm, and the Rogerses couldn’t afford Christmas presents. Their neighbors, on the other hand, weathered the crisis just fine thanks to the newly developed farming technology hybrid seed corn. Rogers’s father knew the benefits of hybrid seed corn and could afford to use it, but he stuck to open-pollinated seed corn, worried that the local old-timer farmers he most admired would look down on him for switching over to newfangled methods. Hoping to avoid another devastating crop failure, Rogers’s father finally made the switch to the hybrid seed corn—after eight years of holding out. — W. David Marx, Status and Culture, 529

Categorization

• SHARE: Send to a friend in ag-tech or diffusion research: the story of hybrid seed corn adoption delayed purely by fear of local disapproval.
• DEEPTHINKING: A vivid concrete case where rational-maximization economics entirely fails, grounded in a named family’s real suffering.
• recurring: this claim recurs 2 times within its source
• XREF: connects to: Norms persist only while conformity benefits outweigh deviance rewards — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 139; Shrinking subcultures grow more extreme as core members chase escalating status — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 426; Status acts as an automated motor driving permanent cultural change — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 27 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Fear of social disapproval slows innovation adoption more than access does #corroborates (0.95) — W. David Marx, Status and Culture, 531
• Opting out of big-tech tools violates modern social norms #exemplifies (0.75) — James D. Kirylo (ed.), Reinventing Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 538
• Public discourse about technology shapes behavior, attention, and capital flows #expands (0.72) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 57