I'm curious about your claim that that "intellectuals care much more about the status-signaling aspects of their opinions than the common folk." This seems plausible to me, but I'd be curious what substantial evidence there for the claim.

I would like to define an "intellectual" as a person who I believe to be well educated and smart. Unfortunately, this definition will be deprecated as too subjective. An objective alternative definition would be to define intellectuals as a class of people who consider each other to be well educated and smart.

If that definition is accepted, then I think the claim is almost self-evident.