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Mitchell_Porter comments on Selfishness Signals Status - LessWrong
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You could just be clueless.
On the contrary, most people who are socially clueless seem pretty easily excitable around everyone, regardless of status.
But I have seen some clueless types act selfishly, and it definitely registers as high-status. Why shouldn't it? The hardwired inference is still logically sound.
When clueless people act selfishly, the typical reaction I observe is "Who does that guy think he is?!" People get upset when people do things they don't really have the status to get away with. An important point to remember when analyzing meta-status signals is that there is an underlying reality to status, grounded in a person's actual value to society and power within it, and meta signals can't let you deviate far from this unless people are cut off from the primary evidence.
That's right, high-status selfish behavior can be trumped by actually violating the boundaries of your social role.
I was referring to selfish behavior that either (1) they really have the status to get away with, e.g. if Einstein took all the scones for himself at a physics conference, or (2) might be impolite but doesn't actually overstep boundaries, e.g. "can I have one of your cigarettes?" "no."
The absence of such caveats and context from the post is what I referred to when saying that this was second order effects that should be corrections to first order effects, not the whole story. Ignoring this makes the claim seem stronger than can be justified.
I second that observation. A friend of mine is extremely clueless in social situations (constantly needs to ask friends for help interpreting others' actions and for advice on what to do in fairly standard cases), but just doesn't seem to experience the "flight" response when in intimidating situations. Result? He's the one who (e.g.) walks up and talks to the cute female bassist of the indie band after the show. And it definitely comes across as "awesome", i.e. high-status, although he doesn't show any other symptoms of it.