Comments on: Actors See Status

By: Overcoming Bias : Seeing Red

Overcoming Bias : Seeing Red — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 02:34:19 +0000

[...] avoid seeing our own status moves, including reacting to red as a dominance [...]

By: Oops, I Did It Again « Geoff's Blog

Oops, I Did It Again « Geoff's Blog — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 18:00:28 +0000

[...] how much the marking of status underlies all of our speech and actions, it would be odd indeed if that had no influence at all on [...]

By: Eliezer Yudkowsky

Eliezer Yudkowsky — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 11:11:58 +0000

Donaldson described this first novel as an ideal drama in which a Victim, a Victimizer, and a Rescuer all change places. He noted that the difference between drama and melodrama is that in melodrama, the people all keep the same roles. I think it might have been an older saying, but that is where I encountered it.

By: Timothy

Timothy — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 01:04:39 +0000

For those interested in SF/Fantasy, the short SF novel by Stephen Donaldson, The Real Story, first part of The Gapseries, where Donaldson plays on the villain/victim/rescuer trope of adventure novels, with Angus (villain) Morn (victim) and Nick (rescuer) rotate in their roles to Victim/Rescuer/Villain respectively. It is also intensely about the changes in status of Angus, whose status goes from low (as petty bully victimising Morn) to exceedingly low (after Morn is rescued by Nick and Angus is arrested), while the beautiful Morn and dashing Nick are high status. Angus accepts neither his original low status as a marginally legal smuggler nor his later, lower status as a prisoner, and reacts with classic signs of denial (petty criminality, opportunistic brutality, then denial, disbelief, refusal to cooperate even when imprisoned) and gradually has his status raised (and that of Nick lowered) as the novel, and the later books, progress.

By: William Newman

William Newman — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 17:23:55 +0000

Grant, I think even Bill Clinton or George Bush or Barack Obama might be more inhibited, not from any irrational shyness but from a fairly rational assessment of the situation’s payoff matrix. The presence of clear respected achievement independent of promotion-by-popularity makes for a situation a little like some peculiar corporate event where most of the participants don’t (yet) know the official power hierarchy. Anything close to one-upmanship could be risky when you might be trying it on someone who turns out to be your boss’s boss. Somewhat similarly (not for fear of payback, but for fear of embarrassing face-palming situations which harm status) when you might be trying it on a nice distracted chess player who turns out to be an International Master.

When everyone already knows everyone, the relevant social rules get more complicated, but quite generally it seems to me that standard status maneuvers encounter additional friction when one or more people in the audience are known to have a solid independent status that everyone respects.

Incidentally, perhaps this has something to do with the depth of antipathy for markets under a clear rule of law (and for some kinds of geekery, and for hereditary nobility back when it had a lot of power and street cred): *so* vexingly unfair when a significant number of self-made businessmen (or chessmasters, or students who get prized credentials based on strictly blind tests, or Barons) carry social trump cards (or at least social get-out-of-jail-free cards) which are substantially independent of the main silverback “don’t you know who I am?!?” dance.

By: Overcoming Bias : How Wrong Can We Be?

Overcoming Bias : How Wrong Can We Be? — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 10:00:13 +0000

[...] addition, I just posted on how seeing the hidden status games in most conversations makes one a better actor, and on how [...]

By: Actors See Status « Geoff's Blog

Actors See Status « Geoff's Blog — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 22:48:16 +0000

[...] Hanson has a fascinating post up, on how Actors See Status when doing improv: ‘Try to get your status just a little above or below your partner’s,’ I [...]

By: Person

Person — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 21:31:40 +0000

Reminds me of the time I stared straight in eyes of a silver back ape at the zoo. He stared back with such intensity, I literally felt scared and wanted to run away.

By: Grant

Grant — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 20:36:14 +0000

William,

I think its just a matter of talent: we play the status games we are good at. Socialites are good at games more distant from physical outcomes. Engineers (perhaps we need a broader term for this sort of person?) are good at games which have direct physical feedback. The later sort of person would seem to be more often involved in honest signaling.

Many social status games are cheap (e.g., boasting), so many people play them. Nearly any sort of game is cheap when compared to violence.

By: Bill Shoe

Bill Shoe — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 20:10:57 +0000

The early 80′s movie “Dinner with Andre” is a perfect example of the writer’s suggestion that a good play (movie) is one that ingeniously displays a reverse in status between characters.

–Semi-spoiler here. If you like this general concept then watch the movie instead of reading this, it’s a good movie.–

Dinner with Andre consists of a long (~1.5 hour) conversation between two people over dinner. The movie starts slow and there is a natural tendency to closely follow what is said in the conversation. Then about halfway through you have an exquisite Aha!! moment when you realize it’s not really about the details of what they’re discussing, it’s about the status of the characters that slowly switches during the conversation.