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Yvain comments on That other kind of status - Less Wrong
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Here's a piece that I think you're missing: identity and status are related, but not equivalent.
Identity is about living up to a social standard or ideal for a role that defines your place in the tribe. Living up to "your" ideals (i.e., the tribe's standard for the role) produces good feelings.
Let's say that a tribe has hunters, gatherers, warriors, shamans, and healers. Each subgroup (subculture?) has a set of practices, sayings, beliefs, values, etc. that are unique to that subgroup role. In order for an individual to occupy a productive specialization, they have to learn (and be motivated to embody) these standards and practices.
Also notice that what's high-status behavior for each subgroup is different; behavior that's honored when done by a shaman would be laughed at (or worse) in a hunter.
Thus, we get the all-too-human phenomena of conforming non-conformists, status-seeking behavior by people who claim that all status is beneath them, etc.
So, I think you're on the right general track, but missing a more specific mechanism that more closely explains why this type of behavior is rewarded. It's not status-seeking per se, it's "living up to ideals". Conspiracy theorists are emulating the ideal of a revolutionary truthseeker... and so, perhaps are most of us here. ;-)
Thing is, it's not the specific behaviors or results that are rewarded by this mechanism; it's attitudes, emotions, and other fuzzy stuff like that. So, you can be a really fuzzy thinker and still pride yourself on being a brilliant seeker of truth... in attitude. (Presumably, in the ancestral environment, your actual skill calibration would occur via real-world feedback and the not-so-gentle correction of your peers or mentors; but the motivation to persist in the learning would come via the pride-of-identity mechanism.)
Priming research, btw, shows that when we're reminded of the subgroups we belong to, our behaviors tend to conform to ideals or stereotypes of those subgroups -- IOW, identity, not status, is the key to stereotypical behavior. (And incidentally, it's a mild refutation of the idea that status needs drive everything. Human beings do have other motivators.)
Either "identity" is too vague or I don't understand how you're using it. There's no explanation of what an identity is, why or how people seek an identity, or why they would seek one instead of others. "Village idiot" is an identity and "brilliant seeker of truth" is an identity, but most people, given the choice, would try to conform to the latter.
"Living up to ideals" is a very human-level thought. Where's the mental circuitry behind it? Why would people want to live up to ideals, or even have ideals? What's my motivation?
I think you're entirely right about identity, but that identity is a high-level process that emerges out of the search for status. Exactly how is a whole other post, but I think a lot of the research you mention is in the fields of contingencies of self-worth, ie how our self-esteem comes from lots of different sources. We then value or devalue those sources in order to maximize our own self-esteem. I'm pretty smart but not too strong, so I come up with a worldview in which intellect is much more important than physical strength, and my identities, like "rationalist" and "leftist with a side of libertarianism" develop partly out of what helps me affirm that story that leads to my high status and high self-worth.
I disagree about the attitude versus results thing. One of the posts I still have to make in this sequence argues that this mechanism is what drives so many people into roles that can't receive feedback. For example, you won't find many poor people priding themselves on how rich they are, or too many stupid people priding themselves on how book-smart and well-educated they are, but anyone can pride themselves on how moral they are and how correct their political beliefs are, and most people do. Likewise, the 9-11 Truther example and other conspiracies of fact tend to form around questions that are hard to resolve.
Also, although you use the example of "shaman", there weren't that many roles in the EEA, shamans are probably a pretty late development (first ceremonial burial isn't until 100,000 BC or so), and everything else came even later.
Summary: I think you're right about roles and identity, but the goal of this post is to deconstruct "identity" into moving parts.
An "identity" is a label attached to a set of personal attributes that signify membership in a subgroup, e.g. "A Spartan comes back with his shield or on it".
The subgroup can be political, familial, or other: "A Smith never backs down", "A Scout is always prepared", and "Big boys don't cry".
People seek to emulate identities they are attracted to -- i.e., ones with whom they feel they already have something in common, and which offer them something in return. (This latter bit is vague: the something in return could be the admiration of allies or the annoyance of enemies. E.g., being a punk rocker to piss off your parents.)
(And of course, these feelings of attraction aren't any more consciously thought out than sexual attraction is.)
But not all people. A person whose natural talents are reinforced in that direction will likely end up there... see for example the "class clown".
Human beings tend to be different from one another because reinforcement leads to a positive feedback loop of increasing "talent" (i.e. skill) in being a particular personality type. People then try to "fit in" somewhere, even if the fit is a minority role of one.
I don't understand whether you mean "why" in an evolutionary sense, or "why" in the sense of "what causes it" (i.e. how).
I think it's a mistake to use "status" as a single lump term for all these things. We don't directly perceive our "status" in an absolute sense, and status is in any case relative. I think the emotion that's relevant in this case is the one that some researchers refer to as "elevation" -- the opposite of disgust. We aspire to be like those who inspire us, and we feel pride in having an identity as a worthy member of a subgroup.
This is not the same thing as feeling that we have a high status within a subgroup, or within a larger group. Beware the Big Hammer. ;-)
While "self-esteem" certainly mirrors one's actual status feedback in part, it is not a direct measurement, nor is it exclusively based on status.
I think we more or less agree except on semantic issues, then. If I ever manage to continue this sequence, it'll become clearer whether we do or don't.
Some of my recent tweets hint at a theory of where identity comes from, but a write-up will take some time. I think I agree with you regarding contingencies of self worth and the desire for no feedback.
I look forward to a day when all great philosophical systems can be expressed in 140 or fewer characters (no, really, I just found your Twitter feed and really like it)
All worthwhile philosophy is already published to Twitter. Observe John Basl's list of philosophers on Twitter