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wedrifid comments on Selfishness Signals Status - Less Wrong
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It is actually only getting away with them that is high status. Doing them is not high status.
As far as public speaking, while most of what I've done involves coaching competitions, the basic principle of standing up straight corresponding to confidence applies across a broad spectrum. It is not always the case, as there are times when slouching may indicate relaxation or boredom, and relaxation or boredom may signal high status (for example, being the only person in a group who is not stressed out about an upcoming event may signal high ability, which is high-status). Thus, the claim that standing up straight is a low-status thing to do is simply false, as there are many, many occasions when it signals high status.
Standing at attention is another matter; if that is what the original author meant, they should have been clearer.
Doing them is inferential evidence that he or she has not suffered sanctions for taking similar actions in the past or, having been sanctioned, they have the emotional physical resilience to be unaffected by said sanctions. Both of these predict higher status.
Evidence? There are plenty of low-status people with bad manners or bad posture. What data do you have that leads you to believe that, for some X under discussion here, on observing X, you can systematically infer the doer of X is high status?
More precisely, not suffering sanctions and emotional resilience may predict higher status, but does the behaviour under discussion reliably predict those characteristics, or may it predict others? You ignore the fact that if you display low-status behaviour at a social gathering, people won't kill you and your offspring; you just won't get invited back. Thus, people can quite easily repeatedly take actions that lower their status. This is even more so the case if they are somewhat oblivious to social rules, and, of course, being oblivious to social rules makes them far more likely to act "selfishly" (as used by the original author) in the first place.
I believe you need to observe a rather complicated series of events to infer that any particular selfish behaviour shows high-status. This makes the concept advocated by the post's author rather useless: selfishness signals high status, except when it doesn't, which is quite frequent and hard to identify precisely.
The behavior of humans provides information about their experiences and their social influences. This being the case I reject your correction and in particular the emphasis on the absolute, 'only'.
Jack said it well.