Is it a coincidence that several markers of good thinking habits do double duty as low-status behaviors?
Good thinking habits require being careful. Being careful is associated with being afraid. Being afraid is associated with being low-status.
To project high status, you should practice your art secretly, and only show public your best results—your achieved goals, your skills, and the respect of other people.
Our instincts are just evolutionary selected heuristics: sometimes they detect an activity as low-status even if the result of activity is high-status. It often makes sense… in an ancient environment.
Have you ever thought about this: one of the core aspects of specifically human social intelligence as opposed to other species is to read emotions from each others faces, and humans have more facial muscles to express these emotions than other species, yet, an “alpha male” will usually have an expressionless, stony face? And men who have expressive facial mimics (Rob Schneider, maybe Steven Buscemi etc.) come accross as kind of submissive? So one of the most core human characteristics is not used by the highest status folks?
Reading other’s emotions is the useful ability, being easy to read is usually a weakness. (Though it’s also possible to lose points by looking too dispassionate.)
Good thinking habits require being careful. Being careful is associated with being afraid. Being afraid is associated with being low-status.
To project high status, you should practice your art secretly, and only show public your best results—your achieved goals, your skills, and the respect of other people.
Our instincts are just evolutionary selected heuristics: sometimes they detect an activity as low-status even if the result of activity is high-status. It often makes sense… in an ancient environment.
Have you ever thought about this: one of the core aspects of specifically human social intelligence as opposed to other species is to read emotions from each others faces, and humans have more facial muscles to express these emotions than other species, yet, an “alpha male” will usually have an expressionless, stony face? And men who have expressive facial mimics (Rob Schneider, maybe Steven Buscemi etc.) come accross as kind of submissive? So one of the most core human characteristics is not used by the highest status folks?
Uhm, countersignalling? “I am so powerful that I do not need this ability.”
Specifically: “I am so powerful that I do not need the abilities that make cooperation easier; others obey me anyway.”
Reading other’s emotions is the useful ability, being easy to read is usually a weakness. (Though it’s also possible to lose points by looking too dispassionate.)