Status seekers choose symbols for their audience and adjust them based on feedback.
Evidence
In order to get ahead of failures in perceptibility, interpretability, and ambiguity, we adopt certain techniques to ensure semiotic success. The first is choosing the most suitable status symbols for our appraisers. We put on our best clothes for a fancy restaurant or a dinner with our significant other’s parents, knowing this will meet their expectations. The second is adjusting based on feedback. Nike founder Phil Knight wore a black bowler hat early in his career to look more mature but realized quickly that “it made me look mad. Stark, staring mad. As if I’d escaped from a Victorian insane asylum inside a painting by Magritte.” — W. David Marx, Status and Culture, 229
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: People signal status by using symbols associated with top groups — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 210; Symbols provide a feedback loop regulating continued trust. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 162; Status symbols create a tradeoff between exclusivity and legibility to outsiders — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 224 (+3 more)
Broader Connections
- People signal status by using symbols associated with top groups
#expands(0.85) — W. David Marx, Status and Culture, 210 - Symbols provide a feedback loop regulating continued trust.
#expands(0.78) — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 162 - People display originality within group conventions to signal difference safely
#qualifies(0.75) — W. David Marx, Status and Culture, 178 - Status symbols create a tradeoff between exclusivity and legibility to outsiders
#qualifies(0.74) — W. David Marx, Status and Culture, 224 - Status-seeking drives humans to comply with conventions that then reshape perception.
#expands(0.72) — W. David Marx, Status and Culture, 123