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hegemonicon comments on Discussion: Socially Awkward Penguin as a tool for unraveling social enigmas - Less Wrong Discussion
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The ur-rule for social interaction is pretty simple, actually (in form at least):
Do whatever will raise your status. Avoid that which will lower your status.
(Edit: See wedrified's more nuanced explanation below)
Confidence is simply a proxy for a certain class of high-status behaviors. PART of that is not displaying concern at how your behavior is interpreted (because if you're worrying about your status, you're obviously low-status), but if your behavior isn't in the ballpark of "proper" already this will backfire (unless you're so high status that you can re-define what proper behavior is, or at least make people question their knowledge of it).
Of course, if you've got a busted status processor - and I suspect social awkwardness/social anxiety are essentially cases of faulty status processors - this is entirely unhelpful. But it does serve as a framework for organizing all the social advice you get, and will help give you an idea of what a proper answer looks like.
Definitely not. Raising your status too much when at work, for example, can make bosses and powerful rivals feel (too) threatened and subject you to reprisals. Consistently raising your status with equal-status friends rather than alternating with a process of give and take also has undesirable consequences at times.
When you master social skills you have the ability to lower your status a little as necessary rather than rigidly taking the high status route every time. Strength rather than brittleness.
Agreed, thanks for the correction.
Can someone point me to examples of how status-theory reduces the complexity of social phenomena in a useful way? I mostly see it used descriptively, and then there is a great deal of context-specific information added.
I am not saying this is true, but a possibility would be that it gives you a more useful analytical model with which to ascertain other people's motivations and incentives which could further guide your own interactions with them.
Status theory doesn't really add any new mechanisms for human behavior, it just extends them from cases where they're obvious to cases where they're less than obvious. Concepts like "coolness", "popularity", "prestige", "high-class" are all basically synonyms for high-status, and systems of status are often explicitly codified in society, such as with titles of nobility or caste systems. And theories of fashion and other "positional" good are already status-based. So it's already a mechanism responsible for quite a bit of social interaction.
Status theory, as best I can tell, is really just saying that these particular cases aren't unique, and that all social interaction has an element of status-jockeying embedded in it. Armed with this explanation, large chunks of otherwise weird behavior (karma systems, etiquette, insults, giving non-monetary awards) begin to make sense.
I've been reading Keith Johnstone's book on drama which has some great examples of this. Highly recommended. Since then, from time to time I ask, "What would a high-status person do here?" and do it. Sometimes I want to lower my status and reverse the question.