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Hacking The Status Game

blog.amirkhella.com

309 pointsamirkhella90 comments

There is much wisdom in improv. I would encourage anyone and everyone to take at least a "Intro to Improv" or "Improv 101" course. It can definitely change your outlook.

And as far as "hacking the status game" goes, this is part of what the Pickup Artists have been teaching for a while... how a given woman reacts to you is largely about how you present yourself. Act like she's the superior in the relationship, "the prize" as it were, and she'll lower her view of you. Treat her as a peer, or someone of lower status, and you actually become more attractive. Well, that's the theory anyway, and it definitely seems to be borne out at times.

Of course this concept is more general than just interacting with the opposite sex. But you have to be careful... too much of this with your boss, and you may get written up for insubordination or something. :-)

Or you could be seen as just a straight shooter with upper management written all over him ...

http://www.hulu.com/watch/12638/office-space-peters-intervie...

I hope for a day, when posting links to geographically-limited sites like hulu on international forms, will be considered similar to posting links behind a pay-wall. - Bad form.

sorry, couldn't find any other watchable links, looked like Fox had DMCAed the others .

Hulu used to be cool, but the networks crippled it.

This scene is actually a good example of how well status hacks can work. Despite being a low-rung employee, Peter shows up to the meeting under-dressed and totally relaxed, and treats the Bobs with calm indifference. By doing this, Peter signals that he is high enough status not to give a shit, and the Bobs eat it up.

Hah... yeah, good point. I'll keep that in mind in case any consultants show up at the $DAYJOB.

Sex and real estate have a lot in common. What's a house really worth? You have to look at the comps, and see how the house does relative to them.

There's no hard-set intrinsic value.

Anything is worth exactly what someone will pay for it.

So... if no one will buy it, does that mean it's worthless?

If no one will buy it for any price, yes.

If no one will buy it for your current price, it may not be worthless, but it's worth less.

Not buy, more like wants, If no one wants it then it is effectively worthless. Buying is just a means to satisfy a want.

I think there's something wrong with the logic if the opposite is false.

If you have a product people want, but no one is willing to pay for it. I can't call that a business.

No one wants it at that price. You can always sell for a loss.

If you're interested, try reading Keith Johnstone's Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre, which has gems like this in it:

"Once you understand that every sound and posture implies a status, then you perceive the world quite differently, and the change is probably permanent. In my view, really accomplished actors, directors, and playwrights are people with an intuitive understanding of the status transactions that govern human relationships. This ability to perceive the underlying motives of casual behaviour can also be taught" (72).

Or this: "A further early discovery [in theatre status games] was that there was no way to be neutral [...] The messages are modified by the receivers" (37).

Consequently, we all have to play status "games" (an imperfect term that nonetheless gets used frequently) whether we wish to or not. Attempting not to play such games might confer the highest status of all, implying that one doesn't need to rely on status modifications to achieve social standing: one is beyond the petty concerns and judgments of others. Chances are that almost one actually is beyond such judgment, but we would like to pretend that we are.

i'd like to second this reading recommendation and add that in the first few paragraphs of this book i found one of the more inspired and simple brain hacks i've ever tried (paraphrasing here ... the book's on a 6-degrees loan somewhere):

"to free your mind of its cluttered and stunted awareness, walk around the room calling out at the objects you see, but use different names for everything. look at the chair and say 'banana', then the door and say, out loud, 'desk', and so on. go on walking and calling things by their wrong name out loud. it takes a few minutes, maybe 10, but soon you might notice something happening. maybe a kind of brightness falls over the objects in the room around you. suddenly things appear more vivid, fresh and new, for no particular reason. it's like an adrenaline shot for your creative mind. getting into this state takes deliberate effort at first, but gets easier with practice."

if you're familiar with it, there's a scene from the remake of 'the manchurian candidate' that uses a similar lighting effect to signal an altered state of mind for key characters. but it's nothing like that. those are the movies. -- just to set the right expectation.

Fascinating. And furthermore, smart people may be at a major disadvantage with this game; as Bertrand Russell said, "The trouble with this world is that the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt." Put another way, overconfidence and bravado come readily to those with the least real skill and insight; people who know enough to realize they don't know may often stay quiet and deferential.

But at the other extreme, people who have reached mastery in something often exhibit a subtle authority which shows up in body language alone.

No, smart people are at a major advantage, the cocksure can easily get themselves into difficult situations with this, if you're smart and cocksure then you can lull the idiots into poor positions, and you can defend your own poor positions with some clever use of rhetoric.

I was once in a meeting where the CEO was deciding that we should standardize the developer's OS. This was because I had installed Windows on a Java developer's workstation and the CEO was kind of pissed at me about it and thought the developer should have Linux on his system. (The dev was porting C# to Java)

So I suggested at one point, by asking the sys admin what would make his life easiest, whether the best way to standardize was to run whatever we ran in production so that it would minimize bugs due to OS differences. The CEO and sys admin who was his trusted lieutenant immediately seized upon this and were barking out orders that we should run whatever was in production. I happend to know that we ran Solaris in prod for these products, now all the Linux developers were pissed they'd have to run Solaris, immediately revolted in the meeting and the result was no developer OS standardization.

The key with cocksure idiots is to tell them something that sounds good that they will seize upon which will be laughed at by everyone who is in the know. Then they go away and stop fucking with you. Most people are just looking for someone to tell them what to do, be that person and you can run the show.

Cool story, bro. Are you playing the role of the smart person or the cocksure idiot in this particular situation?

I think I'm playing the smart person :) Who really knows, smart and idiotic are all perceptions in the minds of others.

Semmelweis who was influential in the idea that germs spread disease was jailed for insanity because of it. Was he smart or an idiot?

I went into the meeting wanting to kill OS standardization and it worked. I got my way but whether standardization is better / worse, who knows?

Wouldn't you have been better off explaining the (presumably genuine) need for a windows machine? Your CEO is likely to remember this the next time you make a suggestion.

Just make sure there are enough people in the know around, and remember that it takes a lot of people laughing at cocksure idiots to get them to change their minds. I've tried this approach with an insufficient number of "people in the know" and it did not end well.

I've used this technique myself to handle belligerent co-workers. Make them think you're subtly mocking them and it throws them totally off their game.

This is similar to the Dunning-Kruger effect. From Wikipedia[1], "The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which unskilled people make poor decisions and reach erroneous conclusions, but their incompetence denies them the metacognitive ability to appreciate their mistakes."

To put it plainly, incompetent people are more confident in their poor abilities than competent people are in theirs well-developed skills. Moreover, and incompetent people are unable to accurately measure the extent of their incompetence.

Instead of making us all feel confident and superior to those who are not as capable as we are, I think the better takeaway is that we are all subject to the effect. Because of this, we should be on guard for the situations where we are unjustifiably certain of our conclusions.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

One thing that's always important to emphasize to people who first discover status games is that it's not always about high status. High status is high reward but also high risk. Properly playing the status game means being able to move fluidly from high to low status as the situation and context demands.

Indeed. Acting higher-status when you're really not is a sure way to make people take a very strong dislike to you.

A student comes into a professor's office to ask for help. What's going to happen to the student if he starts acting like he's got higher status than the professor? Nothing good.

Likewise, if I start lording myself over my friends (who are supposed to be my equals) then they're gonna stop being my friends pretty soon.

The number of social situations in which artificially attempting to raise your status is a good idea is pretty limited. The only really useful part of all this is in making sure you don't give off an artificially low status.

Useful social situations for artificially raising yous status:

1. Attracting a good looking girl.

2. Communicating to your boss that you will not be pushed around without resorting to words. I used this a lot (maybe a bit too much). But I never had to do shit work that I didnt want to do.

3. Communicating to others who are not in your reporting hierarchy, but still senior to you, that you "get it". IF this is coupled with actual execution capability then you'll gain a lot of credibility pretty fast.

And yes I do agree that if you want to learn something from someone then you do have to assume a slightly lower status.

But the most interesting insight is that status is something that you give to someone else and not something a person can create on their own. Ie, someone elses status requires your active participation.

Just wanted to add that if you pull this on a manager who has a slight inferiority complex then he will think your brilliant, regardless of the quality of the work that you produce. This is in turn is something you have to stop from affecting your psyche.

Very strange. :)

>... status is something that you give to someone else and not something a person can create on their own. Ie, someone elses status requires your active participation.

The pitfall here is the words "your active participation". Huge amount of people have parts of their minds which are out of control of their consciousness. It is often that reacting to someone status signs happens automatically (subconciousnessly). Some people stop doing it after some time passes by, some never stop these uncontrollable reactions.

Almost every person correctly guessed the number on his or her forehead, or was off only by 1! Could this mean that it wasn’t a game we were playing for the first time? Could it be that we’re playing that game over and over every day?

Really? Maybe it's just that, once everyone knows the rules of the game, they are reasonably successful in communicating a tiny piece of information (a single number) to each other.

This demonstrated that by simply deciding to change my own status and acting accordingly, the other person almost immediately granted me that status and at times, changed their own.

That's because he thought he was supposed to, not because it was necessarily something he would normally have done.

> That's because he thought he was supposed to, not because it was necessarily something he would normally have done.

He mentions successfully testing it outside of the game halfway through the article:

"For the following weeks, I started experimenting with this game in real life: I’d go into conversations picking a random number for myself and others, assume my posture and tone to match, and enjoy seeing strangers changing their behavior quite randomly. Sometimes I’d make it more fun by swapping statuses with the other person halfway through the conversation and enjoy seeing many people transform in front of my own eyes."

Still, his conclusion is presented as a result of the improvisation game, not after he tried to verify it.

>Maybe it's just that, once everyone knows the rules of the game, they are reasonably successful in communicating a tiny piece of information (a single number) to each other

It's possible, but highly unlikely that a group of people playing a game for the first time will all get that successful so fast. They weren't all hackers ;-)

>That's because he thought he was supposed to, not because it was necessarily something he would normally have done.

I had the same assumption you mentioned, that's why I had to field test it for validation.

Seriously, next time you wanna poke fun at someone who tells you he just sold his startup, tell him you sold your previous 3 startups and see what happens.

The timing of this post is a coincidence because I just did the "status game" this past weekend at my improv class. It's a fun insightful game and Amir is spot on about the fact that we are always playing this game. In fact, we were in a class with 12 people, and after walking and interacting around the room (while only knowing the numbers of everyone but yourself on the forehead), the instructor asked us to arrange ourselves in ascending order in a line. It was amazing how almost everyone knew where exactly they were with respect to everyone else (especially when a #5 and a #6 interact, its hard to figure out if you are the superior or not, but the subtleties do tell quite a bit). Both times we did the exercise, only one person was out of place, and that too, they were right next to each other.

Like mindcrime says, there is quite a bit of wisdom in improv. I enrolled in classes because I wanted something very different to break up my usual routine that mostly involves writing code. What was really enlightening to me was that most of improv was not about being funny, but really about the fundamentals of how to communiciate and convey something to a fellow improviser as well as the audience, in the least amount of time (short scenes).

How could exactly one person be out of order? If one person is out of order he occupies other persons place - so that other person has to be out of order as well. Am I missing something?

1, 2, 3, 5, 4

Arguably only the 5 (or the 4) is out of order. Simply remove it and order is maintained.

> Both times we did the exercise, only one person was out of place, and that too, they were right next to each other.

Were they on the very top, or very bottom?

The scene in Office Space where Peter is talking to the two Bobs, while presented as comedy, is a perfect example of how this actually works. As soon as he acts like he isn't subordinate to them, they begin to feel that he's "management material".

In that scene, he isn't acting. He has simply lost fear and is therefore presenting his case openly.

This is such a key insight. Coming from a lower-middle class background and working my way up in large corporations, the power of "status" slowly dawned on me. Some kid from a well-off background comes in and acts like he owns the place, and it works with 7 out of 10 people! Meanwhile a guy from a lower socioeconomic class comes in, works his arse off and hesitates asking for a raise because he's afraid of overstepping -- this guy gets looked down on or taken advantage of by 7 out of 10 people.

Would be nice to have learned about this earlier.

Indeed. You want to find the "middle path", however. If you overplay your attempts at high status, you have the opposite effect: people see you as having "a problem with authority" or a proletarian "chip" on your shoulder.

http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2011/01/30/yes-rich-kids...

Using the cards metaphor, you never want to be one point away from the other person. Step 1: figure out where the other person sees himself. Step 2: figure out what he wants-- a protege (1-2 points lower), a friend and equal (same status), or a mentor (1-2 points higher). Almost no one wants a supplicant (3+ lower) or arrogant boss (3+ higher). And more importantly, almost no one wants to be a supplicant or an arrogant boss.

Wise words. Good essay, too.

If you get really good at this sort of thing you can take people's wallets just by asking http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DR4y5iX4uRY

The problem is that sort of video doesn't show the failures, so we have no idea how real the success rate is.

The video states that it worked on about two-thirds of people.

I want to see that IRL. Is there any more compelling evidence that that actually works?

If you study Neuro-Linguistic Programming, the Structure of Magic I & II, Milton Erickson, and Alfred Korzybski, it won't seem that magical.

Part of the trick is that during a routine operation - like a handshake - or asking for directions - you're brain drops down a level of awareness - you are basically on auto-pilot - but the illusionist interrupts the operation, you're still stuck in sub-optimal awareness pattern, and then you get manipulated in some fashion.

If you liked that one, this one cracks me up everytime, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdlItEIj8bg

I interpreted that last video more as a status game, actually. The guy, immaculately dressed with a posh british accent, creates a status differential by talking fast and flawless, by touching her a lot. This makes it very unappealing for her to flat-out contradict him. She's just giving him socially acceptable answers.

It's not arbitrary touching. When he's asking her about something she's unsure of, he consistently touches her left shoulder. When he talks to her about something sure, he touches her right. Then he uses those same touches when he wants to make her unsure or a color, or feel sure that a color is the wrong one he says it is.

I don't know to what degree that actually works, but it's pretty interesting.

Also known as kinesthetic anchoring, the bread and butter of basic NLP. It's pretty controversial like the rest of the material and is probably utterly ineffective.

There are a lot of subtle details required to make this effective, so it is indeed art.

The fact that _he_ believes it is important which shoulder he touches produces enough an effect that one can be fooled into thinking the touches have the power instead of the belief.

That could just be misdirection...

Incredible. I thought you were going to link to this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awK0NrgHUbk

I've watched tons fo Derrin Brown videos. His experiments are pretty interesting. Subliminal advertising and the chess grandmaster ones were the most interesting.

See what happens when you leave a wallet on the ground: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxYCh_p2Mjs

Just don't forget that he's a showman, and explication is part of his act.

I agree, the advertising one was pretty cool. But the chess grandmaster thing was just a lame trick. He let all of them play against each other through his memory and beat some random scrub (which was probably planned).

Was it just me or did anyone else think of "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell? The author of this article implicitly assumes that all the participants of the game come from similar cultural backgrounds.

Read: http://bokardo.com/archives/what-malcolm-gladwells-book-outl...

Some cultures, e.g. Colombian or South Korean, are more geared towards respecting authority than other cultures, e.g. New Yorkers. A collision of two such disparate cultures can result in disasters such as Flight 052:

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Avianca_Fligh...

More details about the Power Distance Index (PDI): http://www.maximizingutility.com/2009/06/culture-clash-power...

Well said. Skills and attitudes from improv are incredibly useful in all kinds of situations ...

A variant I'd suggest when playing the game in real life: as well as imagining an ace on your own forehead, imagine that the other person also has an ace.

Next time you’re in a conversation with a friend or stranger, try imagining that you’re carrying the ace card, act with a matching confidence, imagine everyone else holding the same card, and treat them with the respect that other aces deserve.

That seems to be the same thing he's suggesting.

right you are. how embarrassing. can i downvote my own post?

A case of cryptomnesia perhaps? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptomnesia

Don't worry, its a good point that I actually missed in the article, so that makes two of us!

This reminds me of various people who talk about the sense when they are "Buddhas", then there is a sense that all people around them are "Buddhas". A lot of beliefs in mysticism comes from hacking the brain through learning to change one's perspectives.

very true. Vajrayana Buddhism is a great example of this.

Once you get an eye for it, it's very easy to see other people playing this game.

Specifically, what types of things do you look out for?

If interaction were a function, feed it subtle edge cases ;)

Strikingly similar to "karma". People don't care about some number, but their status.

When pg experimented with visually distinguishing people with high avg karma (an orange dot IIRC), many people noticed the changing status dynamics (a lower "cringed" before a higher), and it discouraged discussion between equals.

I wonder if this guy is hacking the status game with this 'my latest project Keynotopia was built in 3 hours with a budget of $47' claim.

It's like he's saying, 'yeah, that's right, I'm a fucking rock star programmer. The type that makes things happen. The type that's 100x more productive than the average coder. The type you need to hire.'

Cause otherwise, why would he bother saying that, as customers usually want to believe a lot of work has gone into something before they buy it.

A few summers ago when I was in Sunnyvale I took a course at the SF Comedy College (http://www.sfcomedycollege.com/). The course opened my mind up to being completely in the moment and creative without overthinking things (applicable to almost everything you do in life). They go through common improv exercises like Yes-ands and scenario role plays. Highly recommend improv classes.

I've always liked the phrase, "99% of success is just showing up", although to be honest 0% of success happens when you don't. Self-confidence is a hard thing to gain but really worthwhile trying all you can.

The original is 80% and is attributed to Woody Allen.

The other 20%, of course, is schmoozing when you get there.

Isn't this analogous to a "guess a number" game? You have a stack of cards that range from 2 to Ace. If I were to play this game I would not start talking to a guy who has a King on his forehead. I would go to a 5-7 and then determine where I ranked, if I felt I were below 5-7, then I know I am in 2-4 or if I were above them, 8-K. It would seem it would only take only a few more iterations to figure out which status I have.

Remember that the 5-7 don't know that they're 5-7 when the game starts. They have no idea. It takes a while before they figure out where they stand. When the game starts, people are all over the map in how they represent themselves.

The 2-4 and the Q-A figure it out quickly. Then the Q-A start talking down to the 9-J but no one else does, so they figure out where they stand. Because of miscommunication and confusion, it takes a few minutes (maybe 10) of interaction before people figure it out.

Just to fuck around and have fun, I'd talk down to the Q-A and suck up to the 2-4. It'd be interesting to see how this game changes when there's an intentional "spoiler" in the mix.

There is an excellent discussion of status games in the book "Impro." Highly recommend it if you're interested in hacking the non-tech side of things.

http://www.amazon.com/Impro-Improvisation-Theatre-Keith-John...

I guess this could be good advice for manipulating status for short time periods (dating, job interviews, business meetings, etc.), but fortunately once it goes beyond that (relationships, careers, business deals, etc.) the status of everyone involved will settle down to the natural order of things.

What is social status based on? To a large extent, nothing. A lot of people are "famous for being famous", and every high school or college has that notorious "creepy guy" who did nothing wrong other than piss someone off his freshman year and get "a reputation". Status is self-perpetuating and often derived from itself rather than any "underlying" trait. If you're a 2, you probably have to practice being a 5 before you can be a King, but you can "fake it till you make it".

The trick is to: (a) accurately assess the other person's "card", in terms of self-image, and (b) figure out what the person wants and expects from you. If he or she wants a mentor (+1) be that. If he or she wants an equal and friend (same) be that. If he or she wants a protege (-1) be that. Three points (using the 2-A card metaphor) in either direction will ruin the relationship. One exception: never go lower than a 6 or so. Also, in a group, err on the high side. If the group expects you to be the "alpha", be 1 point higher than the next highest person. If it expects and wants, someone else to be an "alpha", be 1 point lower than that person.

The "one-point" rule is important because people generally think in relative terms. If someone is extremely powerful and arrogant and acts the part (King) and you become an Ace you are "crossing" him (literally, in the number-line status metaphor). That's usually bad. On the other hand, there's no harm in being a Queen rather than an 8 or a 2. You get more respect that way. Likewise, if someone is (in terms of self-image) a 7 and you come in as a King, you're just going to be overbearing.

if you go into a conversation mentally giving people status', and then swap in the middle unbeknownst to the other people in the conversation, wouldnt that just really confuse them and make them think, "wait, am I the alpha male or is he.....i coulda sworn he was but then, it just kinda changed..."

It'd probably make people think "This guy is acting really strange, though I can't put my finger on what he's doing. I don't like this guy. I'm going to get out of this awkward social situation now."

Also, think like a winner.

(Yay, games with life.)

Be careful with this when there are actual status labels in play. Like rank or position. Act like you're an Ace around a boss or slight superior who's not an idiot and you may find yourself wearing that person's patience down very fast.

Interesting. I imagine that observers notice "tells" of some kind when a person is acting above their own internal status estimate, and downgrade their own status estimate of that person accordingly.

Great post until the end, when it was mentioned that everyone should be treated as an ace. I don't agree, because quite simply, not everyone is an ace.

dont play this with your friends.

You already play this with your friends on a daily basis. Haven't you ever teased a friend, or pretended something they did was silly? You're lowering their status and raising yours, if only temporarily and in the spirit of fun.

Keith Johnstone even argues that this sort of status game is the sign of a close friendship, implying that the two of you are comfortable enough with the status dynamics of your relationship to play around with them.

Doesn't a real friendship imply equal status? That equal status is always there, the teasing is thanks to it being equal, not fluctuating. At most you could say you are pretending to be lower or higher than each other, but acknowledging that is in fact pretending.

If you are male then yes. Pretty much all male bonding is about temporarily raising or lowering yours or your friends status, then laughing at the absurdity at what you've just done. Male groups typically have a leader (or "alpha") and the rest are equals.

If you are female then there is a harder edge to this game. It's played far more subtly, but the changes in status are real and permanent and no-one's laughing afterwards. Female groups have very strict pecking orders.

I am a female and I am only friends with equals, both men and women.

You missed the point. You're comfortable enough with your equal status to openly deflate their status, _because_ you both know it doesn't mean anything. Fair trade/permission giving: later they can tease you and lower your status.

Then real dicks use that sort of friendship to only lower the status of their friends, which is why we call them dicks.

Nah, I didn't miss the point, I got it square on. I just wanted to make the point about equality, which the post I replied to doesn't: "comfortable enough with the status dynamics of your relationship" doesn't necessarily indicate equality.

If you're doing it in the spirit of fun (which I assume to be mutual), this means both of you know how the game works (or that such a game exists).

What I meant was, don't play this with friends who are unaware of this game. If you're starting to put you're friends into social experiments without their previous agreement I'd call you a sociopath.

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