I’m not sure it’s a status-lowering act. I know it intuitively seem so—I think if you’re only ever asking, and not ever contributing, then yeah. But not if you contribute a lot too.
As long as we’re on the topic of status, I’d be interested in using the grandparent to this comment as a case study. At first I took your response as an indicator that I should have phrased the grandparent less confidently (i.e. lower status), but then I realized that you might not have pointed out what you did if my comment wasn’t so direct, and the conversation overall is probably nice and crisp to read. But then it occurred to me that if you hadn’t come along, people might have become too confident in the grandparent. Thoughts?
I’m not sure it’s a status-lowering act. I know it intuitively seem so—I think if you’re only ever asking, and not ever contributing, then yeah. But not if you contribute a lot too.
Giving advice is a status-raising act, so if you give and receive advice in equal quantities they cancel each other out.
That doesn’t follow. Do they really raise and lower status in equal proportions? Regardless of initial status?
As long as we’re on the topic of status, I’d be interested in using the grandparent to this comment as a case study. At first I took your response as an indicator that I should have phrased the grandparent less confidently (i.e. lower status), but then I realized that you might not have pointed out what you did if my comment wasn’t so direct, and the conversation overall is probably nice and crisp to read. But then it occurred to me that if you hadn’t come along, people might have become too confident in the grandparent. Thoughts?
No, no thoughts.
Fair enough.
I’m not sure it’s a status lowering act. I am sure it usually feels like a status lowering act, and so people avoid it.