Status is zero-sum and cannot rise for everyone at once

Evidence

Status is a relative ranking, so not everyone can simultaneously achieve a high position. Status is zero-sum. For every person who goes up, someone must go down. Outcomes can feel unfair when we fail to move up after achievements or fall down after others succeed. This umbrage is further amplified due to cognitive biases that make us overestimate our abilities. A company found that more than 40 percent of its engineers claimed to be in the top 5 percent of ability, and among college professors, 90 percent claimed to be “above average.” — W. David Marx, Status and Culture, 73

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Relative status value makes one million dollars insufficient for millionaire living — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 156; Flattening the gap between standard and premium reduces status hierarchies — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 819; History is a selective construction by high-status narrators — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 641 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• No one can opt out of making status claims, since absences signal too #expands (0.78) — W. David Marx, Status and Culture, 203
• A source repeating one symbol conveys zero total information #corroborates (0.78) — David Howard, Jamie Angus, coustics and Psychoacoustics, 2620