Avoiding Instant-Status Traps and the Bernie Madoffs Who Set Them

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[url]http://finance.yahoo.com/expert/article/moneyhappy/129866[/url]

I'm not really concerned with the Madoff reference here however this is a good article IMO. de Botton's book also makes for interesting reading.

I study status/value because it plays a huge role in pickup. The boundries are ever changing.


"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."

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.