Taste manifests only through social activity filtered by status value

Evidence

Taste involves choice, and from what we’ve learned so far, we make our aesthetic choices within the context of status. Our particular tastes may have genetic and psychological elements, but they manifest only in social activity. Our habitus provides the unconscious conventions that decide what we find pleasurable. Our group membership nudges us to make the right imitations, counterimitations, and emulations, which manifest as signals, cues, and significant absences. At any moment, status value distorts our preferences, making certain objects and conventions more attractive than others. Taste, then, does serve as a useful measure for who we are: our past, present, and future. — W. David Marx, Status and Culture, 245

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: An individual tastemaker can infiltrate and collapse remaining status boundaries from within — W. David Marx, Blank Space: A Cultural History of the…, 360; Taste earns status only when proven anchored to a life history — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 267; Individual motives become social only through forms of mutual interaction — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 194 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Individual motives become social only through forms of mutual interaction #expands (0.85) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 194
• Social categorization dominates perception by selecting and interpreting sensory data #expands (0.78) — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 110
• An individual tastemaker can infiltrate and collapse remaining status boundaries from within #qualifies (0.72) — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 360
• Taste earns status only when proven anchored to a life history #qualifies (0.72) — W. David Marx, Status and Culture, 267