Avoid Instant Status Traps and the Bernie Madoffs who set them

In his book of the same name, status anxiety is defined by author Alain de Botton as a worry "that we are in danger of failing to conform to the ideals of success laid down by our society and that we may as a result be stripped of dignity and respect."

Status anxiety loomed large in the housing boom for people who did sensible things. They looked askance at their used Hondas, humble dwellings, conservative fixed-rate mortgages, and budget hotels at Disneyworld, and, finding them deficient amid the neighbors' BMWs, McMansions, and forays to France, tried in vain to suppress a creeping apprehension that they had gotten something terribly wrong.

(Now they realize the neighbors did it by surfing a tsunami of debt, but it brings them little comfort, since their jobs and home values are in jeopardy thanks to the follies of the foolish and greedy.)

Beware of Schemers

In addition, it was status anxiety that propelled smart people to hand over enormous sums of money to Bernard Madoff without paying adequate attention to what he was doing with it.

"What strikes one about the investors in the Ponzi scheme is desperation -- and not necessarily desperation to become rich, but to earn status, honor, and esteem," Botton wrote me in an email. "If our position on the ladder is a matter of such concern, it is because how we feel about ourselves depends to an unfortunate degree on what others think of us.

"Except in societies where status is fixed at birth, our position on the ladder hangs upon what we achieve -- and success is uncertain," he continues. "And from failure will flow humiliation: a corroding awareness that we have failed to convince the world of our value and are henceforth condemned to consider the successful with bitterness and ourselves with shame. That's where Madoff came in: he promised an instant and painless release from these status anxieties."

Wired for Stature

Our appetite for status derives from a physiological drive that played a useful role in survival, according to evolutionary biologists. The higher the status, the larger the share of pie an animal got in competitive situations. Thus it survived better, lived longer, and left more living offspring, preserving its genes in the population. Our biology evolved to make us keenly attuned to status.

"Animals higher up in the hierarchy have less stress -- lower cortisol and adrenaline levels -- and higher levels of hormones associated with feeling good, like serotonin," says Denise Cummins, an author who studies the evolution of cognition and teaches psychology at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. "This has been shown among humans as well. You're wired for status -- your whole neurology and endocrine system are tuned to what your relative status is.

"Even small changes in status -- someone snubs you -- will cause a response in the endocrine system," she adds. "High-status individuals have priority of access to resources, and in a market-based economy that means money. You have a lot of money, you have power."

Bad for Your Health

Thus when one experiences a sudden, Madoffian-sized loss of status, the upshot is neurological and hormonal fireworks.

"Large, precipitous changes in status can have massive effects," says Cummins, including cardiovascular stress, immune system dysfunction, and a shift in the way the body metabolizes sugar and stores fat. "What your body is saying, ‘My God, I'm never going to reproduce, I'm not going to be alive and leave living offspring' -- because that's what status means in a truly Darwinian world."

But that primal sense of alarm lingers in the modern world -- exacerbated by our belief in meritocracy, suggests Botton.

Meritocracies Have Their Downside

Since the mid-18th century, Western governments have sought "to create a hierarchy based on actual ability, replacing posh, chinless halfwits with the meritorious," Botton wrote in an email. "This meritocratic ideal has brought opportunity to millions. Gifted and intelligent individuals who for centuries were held down within an immobile, caste-like hierarchy are now free to express their talents on a more or less level playing field."

Alas, the dark side of meritocracy is that if we believe individuals are exclusively responsible for their triumphs (and we hold financial success at the pinnacle of esteem), then individuals are ineluctably accountable for their failures -- and economic collapse (with its corresponding plummet in status) is equally deserved.

"Financial failure has become associated with a sense of shame that the peasant of old, denied all chances in life, had also thankfully been spared," Botton notes.

The Company You Keep

Is there any hope of defeating status anxiety in a species biologically primed to chase rank?

Start by changing your reference group, advises Cummins: "It's relative status that hits you the hardest. If you are the hedge fund manager and your business went under and all the buddies you meet at cocktail parties are doing OK, that's going to hit you a lot harder than if go to cocktail party and everyone is in the same boat."

Another possibility: Unemployed hedge fund managers and investment bankers, among others, are turning to evangelical churches for relief. Botton thinks that's not such a bad idea.

"Christian moralists have long understood that to reassure the anxious it may be best to emphasize we will die, everyone we love will vanish, and all our achievements and even our names will be stamped into the ground," he wrote in an email. "To consider our petty status-worries from the perspective of a thousand years hence is to be granted a rare, tranquillizing glimpse of our own insignificance."

The Biggest Monkey Doesn't Always Win

Another escape from status anxiety might be found in taking bold risks based on your passions, rather than continue to pursue a job in which you display expertise but no joy.

"The paradox of success is that all those who have done well have tended to ignore questions of status for many years in order to pursue a passion," Botton argues. "In other words, seeking status directly is as futile as seeking happiness directly. Status should be the byproduct of a job well done rather than a goal in itself."

Or rather than avoid status anxiety, one might simply pursue new routes to the top of the hierarchy. One proven strategy: Network like crazy. "In a lot species, neither size nor aggression correlates with status -- it's more about social intelligence," Cummins says.

When two primates fight, each side will call for help, and the monkey with the biggest posse wins, she explains. "The literature shows quite clearly the individuals who come to help in situations like that are individuals that you groomed in the past, shared food with in the past, or engaged in some kind of helping behavior with in the past," Cummins says. "This forms strong coalitions, then reciprocation happens. If you do that enough, what happens is you can secure a nice, strong, stable position in the hierarchy."

Comfort in the Dark

Finally, if someone calls you, wretched with status anxiety, don't try to cheer them up with rosy bromides.

"One of the most consoling things one can hear anyone say is that everything is absolutely dreadful," explains Botton. "Something like this sentence from the Roman philosopher Seneca: ‘What need is there to weep over parts of life? The whole of it calls for tears.' Or else this from the 19th century German Arthur Schopenhauer: ‘Today it is bad and daily it will get worse -- until the worst of all happens.' Or this from the French 18th century thinker Chamfort: ‘A man must swallow a toad every morning if he's to be sure of not meeting with anything more disgusting in the day ahead.'

"These thoughts make us feel better because they perform that most valuable of all services: they tell us we're not alone with our darkest feelings."

by Laura Rowley