My guess is that this trait is mostly innate, rather then acquired.
I’m pretty sure I didn’t use to be like that. As far as I can tell (though my introspection is far from perfect), I started off as a nerd who didn’t care about status at all (either instrumentally or terminally), then realized status is instrumentally useful, started to pursue it, and eventually find myself getting warm fuzzies from it. A subgoal stomp has occurred.
Did this happen during your developmental years? This seems to be a typical high school experience, which would lead me to believe that it is more of an innate process people go through. (Albiet a lot of people are inherently social at a very young age).
No, I was in my twenties. The process started when I was studying abroad and living in a residence (AmE: dorm), and living with a bunch of people none of whom I had known beforehand probably played a huge role (though the process I described in the grandparent took a couple years to complete, by which time I had been back in my country for about a year, and been reading LW for about half a year). (The experience of no longer wanting to be a reclusive geek and starting to want to have a social life did happen when in high school and only took a few months, but it’s not like I tried to be as popular as possible: not being in the bottom decile kind of sufficed.)
Did this happen during your developmental years? This seems to be a typical high school experience, which would lead me to believe that it is more of an innate process people go through. (Albiet a lot of people are inherently social at a very young age).
No, I was in my twenties. The process started when I was studying abroad and living in a residence (AmE: dorm), and living with a bunch of people none of whom I had known beforehand probably played a huge role (though the process I described in the grandparent took a couple years to complete, by which time I had been back in my country for about a year, and been reading LW for about half a year). (The experience of no longer wanting to be a reclusive geek and starting to want to have a social life did happen when in high school and only took a few months, but it’s not like I tried to be as popular as possible: not being in the bottom decile kind of sufficed.)