The Status Game (with Will Storr)

Welcome to EconTalk, Conversations for the Curious, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty. I'm your host, Russ Roberts, of Shalem College in Jerusalem and Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Go to econtalk.org where you can subscribe, comment on this episode, and find links and other information related to today's conversation. You'll also find our archives with every episode we've done going back to 2006. Our email address is mail@econtalk.org. We'd love to hear from you. Today is October 16th, 2025, and my guest is author Will Storr. Our topic for today is his book The Status Game. Will, welcome to EconTalk.

Thanks for having me, Russ. It's good to be here.

So this book, uh, EconTalk listeners will recognize the echo of Adam Smith's, uh, Theory of Moral Sentiments. My favorite quote being, man naturally desires not only to be loved, but to be lovely. That is, we care about earning the respect of other people and we like to matter and we like to be admired and we like to be— we like to earn that honestly if we can, but sometimes fool ourselves. And, well, you actually quote Adam Smith with a similar version of that quote, which is fun for me to see. But what this book is about, it's more than just the Adam Smith insight. It's, uh, it's about our perennial constant desire to judge ourselves, judge others, and give ourselves a score in the game of life because of our status and how we're treated. So talk about what you mean by life is a game, um, and the status game in particular.

Yeah, so, so, so, you know, the thesis is that the conscious experience of human life is a story, you know, that, that's how we experience our life moment to moment. We're the kind of hero at the center of this unfolding narrative. But the subconscious treats our lives in a, in a different way. And so when I'm talking about life being a game, you know, that, that's what it's doing. It's, you know, there's a famous neuroscientist called Chris Frith that I quote in the book who says that the brain treats your environment as a reward space, and it draws you towards the things that you need and pushes you away from the things you don't need. And, that's what the subconscious brain is constantly doing. And, the story of life is we're telling a story and justifying and rationalizing those movements back and forth. And, the 3 big things that humans want is, like all living things, we want to survive, obviously, and we want to reproduce. But, in order to do that, humans have these other 2 very profound urges. The first one is connection. We want to connect with people like us, which is Not primarily the subject of this book, but equally important. And the second one is status. You know, we need to feel that we are being of value to other humans because we're this sort of collective, tribal, highly cooperative ape. So we're highly motivated by signals that we are contributing to the great cooperative game of human life. So that is a subconscious obsession. You know, we need to feel that we are valued or respected or however you want to phrase it, that we have status. And when we don't feel like that, we immediately feel distress. And when we experience sort of low status in a chronic sense, we get mentally ill, we get physically ill. So the book is really arguing that status is not a want, it's a need, and then just extrapolating all the ramifications, the various ramifications of that.

So let's talk a little bit about judgment. I went on a number of silent meditation retreats, and on these retreats, you're not supposed to make eye contact. You're not supposed to speak to anybody for sure. You're not supposed to touch anybody. So if you see somebody crying or struggling emotionally, you're not supposed to comfort them. That's the role of the staff and the teachers. But even when you pass them in the hall, you're not supposed to catch their eye. You can't nod, you can't recognize them in any way. And when that first happened, I thought— when I was first told that was one of the ground rules, I was like, that's just the silliest. That's just, that's stupid. It's ridiculous. But after about a minute, 3 minutes, I don't know how long it was, I realized after not looking at someone, I realized they weren't looking at me. And it was one of the most liberating experiences I've ever felt. I wasn't being judged. Oh, he's overweight. He's not attractive. His hair is funny. That shirt's wet. Why do you wear that shirt? And I realized that we do that every second. And, you know, part of the goal of that retreat was to be aware of judgment and how constantly we do that. And of course, judgment's really useful, uh, in all kinds of places, but it also comes at a cost. So talk about that, the role of judgment in our everyday life, and, uh, uh, also your own experiences having written this book and thinking about it. Has it made you more sensitive to judging and being judged?

Yeah, um, that's, that's, that's so interesting about the silent retreat. Yeah, I hadn't thought of it like that. But, but, but yeah, so, so, so we, we, we Yeah, the brain has this— I mean, neuroscientists call it the status detection system. We have this always-on technology that's continually assessing other people in terms of status, but also how other people are assessing us in terms of status. So, you know, I talk in the book, you know, you go into an elevator in a hotel and you're immediately judging people on how they're dressed, what floor they're getting off at, are they staying in a suite or are they staying in one of the lower floors, who's the staff, you know, like you can't escape from the— the status game. And, you know, we've been playing— you know, lots of animals do this, you know, we're not the only animals that are interested in status, but we are, you know, especially good and especially sensitive to it. And it's functional, as I say, like, you know, so— Humans are, you know, a species of great ape. We're not like an ape, we are an ape, but we're unlike the other apes in a really important way, and that's that we're highly, highly cooperative. So we're kind of part ape, part ant. So, you know, the way that we solve the problems of existence, unlike the other apes, is we do it collectively. We, we form into groups, and each member of the group knows what their role is, and they know what part they play. And it's the group in humans that solve the problems. So, you know, that's whether it's a soccer team or a political party or a nation or an army, that, you know, that's what we do. We, you know, we, we, we, we solve the problem in the form of cooperative groups. And, and in order to make those groups functional, you need, you need a system of incentive and punishment, rewards and punishment. And that's the status game. So as I said earlier, we are deeply interested in how useful am I being to other people? Because that's what status is. It's a score of our perceived value. And back in the days of the hunter-gatherer tribe, when our brains— when all this was evolving, when our human brains were evolving, The more useful you were to the tribe, the more prosocial you were, the more you put the tribe's interests before your own, the higher you would raise in status, and the more food you'd get, the better food you'd get, you'd get safer sleeping sites, you'd get better access to your choice of mates, which of course evolutionarily is extremely important, your children would be treated better. So basically it's this fundamental rule of human life, is go for status. If you go for status, everything else gets better. And, you know, lots of that— lots of those other things are directly plugged into survival and reproduction. So, so it's of fundamental importance.

Of course, the flip side is that you want to avoid a loss of status.

Oh yeah.

Uh, so, you know, one of the more shameful, um, feelings that, that I have experienced is being around someone who I think is not worthy of being around me. And therefore, I don't want to associate with them because they're pulling down my status. And it's just— I had a remarkable moment maybe about 6 months ago. I had a party at my house for some of my faculty, and a man came to deliver the fruit for the party, and he came late. So most of the faculty were already there, and most faculty historically, in my experience, are Really into status. It's an important thing. But I'm proud to say that my group here at Shalom College in Jerusalem, when this guy came to deliver their fruit, they— it was in my house, by the way— they happily invited him in, gave him some of the food that was— he was an older man and he wanted a tip. It was clear that he was eager to be taken care of in addition to whatever He was being paid for this delivery, and my faculty just embraced him. It was just—I was so proud of that because that is kind of rare. And I—and you know—they have PhDs, and of course they have a lot of status, at least in certain circles. Others not so much. But it's just—it's a beautiful thing. And I think you know one of the crueler things that we sometimes do as human beings is we reject or push away people that we think are not worthy of us. on some illusory dimension like education with the thought that, oh, that's going to— that's going to make me look lesser in somebody else's eyes. And it's not a rational calculation. I mean, one of the things you emphasise in the book, which I think is very powerful, is how unconscious or subconscious this is. And I think your book sensitises one to that challenge, which I think is very important.

Yeah, I think that's right. And, you know, as I say in the book, status leaks. And so, so we want to be around higher status people than us because that— because their status leaks out onto us. But it also goes the other way. And if we feel that we're, you know, around people who are lower status, then, then that makes us uncomfortable because that means that we, you know, we feel that, that, that some of the status is leaking out. I mean, I, I, I've just come from my, my CrossFit class, which is why my hair is wet. And, um, You know, that's full of. I'm not impressed.

I am not impressed at all.

Don't be because because it's like like I've been going for two years and I'm still one of the worst people. I'm one of the lowest status people in the gym. But and and like well you do the big guys who are in their thirties and twenties, but it's always the old guys that gravitate towards me. And I think why? And it's like because you're one of them. These are your people accept it. You know, like but but yeah it's it's a I always. Especially after writing this, I always notice it at CrossFit because I— because it is like going into a place where I am fated to be always one of the lowest status people in that particular space. So it's always—

But you do CrossFit, which makes me look like a bum. So I'm, I'm humbled that you're on my program, and I feel the lesser than I did a minute and a half ago.

You wouldn't be humbled if you'd seen me half an hour ago, I tell you.

It reminds me of when my wife and I, about 5 years ago, went to see Jackson Browne, who I'm a big fan of. And she looked around at the concert and she said, a lot of these people look like my mom. And I said, yeah, because they're old like us, you know, somewhat at least. It was not a young crowd. But that's you at the gym. I'm sorry to hear it, Will.

Well, yeah, I had a similar experience. I think one of the sort of moments I realized I was getting old was, you know, my favorite band is called the Afghan Whigs. And, um, I remember going to see them in the '90s in London, and, you know, like, the singer Greg Dooley was young and thin and handsome, and the whole of the audience were young and thin and attractive, and I was there, you know. And then I went to see them again, you know, in my early 40s, and, and, and Greg was rather overweight, and everybody in the crowd was old and overweight. I was really looking around like, God, you know, like, what, what hap— like, we used to be cool, and now we're just not. Like, like, even on the stage, they're just not, you know.

Right.

It's so—

It's just a good example though, because it makes your point, which you make in the book, which is, you know, if you can't win that game, pick a different one. You know, you're always looking for a place where we can be a bigger fish than we might otherwise be.

But I think that's one of the liberating things, is the understanding that— I think the colloquial understanding of status is that life is just one big status game. It's just one monolithic game that you go up and down. But that's not how it is, is that there are kind of effectively infinite status games. And, you know, I can go into CrossFit, I can go into CrossFit and be at the bottom of the rung, but then I can go into a different status game and, and, and not be there, you know, like 10 minutes later or half an hour later. So, so, so that's the great thing about life. And I, and I think that's the thing that especially getting old— I mean, I've just turned 50, I'm not enjoying it— but, but, but it's the understanding that you just can't be playing those games of youth anymore. You can't be playing a status game that involves beauty anymore.

Right. Just don't.

Because you're going to make a fool of yourself. But there are other games to play. When you're in your 40s and 50s, you've got to have experience and expertise, and there are things that a 22-year-old can't do that you can do.

Exactly.

So it's embracing that stuff and not falling— we live in such a youth-worshipping culture in the West that that can be hard for people. I mean, it's hard for me, it's hard for lots of us as we get older.

Your hair still looks really good though, just, you know, and much better than mine. So, you know, I'm 71, so it's nothing to be proud of.

Are you? Oh my God, you look amazing for 71.

Of course. Yeah, that's one of my status achievements.

Wow, amazing.

Let's talk about, um, Ben Gunn, uh, an example early on in the book which, um, is quite, quite, quite interesting about illustrating how status works.

Yeah. So, Ben was a guy that I interviewed as a journalist quite a long— about 10 years ago, maybe 15 years ago. And, I interviewed him because he was the— I think the longest-serving prisoner in the UK. He'd been sent to prison as a teenager for losing his temper and killing someone accidentally. And, he was literally sent down to prison wearing his school uniform. I think he was 14. And, Um, of course, this is a nightmare. Um, you know, the phrase is at Her Majesty's pleasure, which is like an open-ended sentence. Um, and so he was there, um, and he, you know, initially he tried to take his own life. He tried to starve himself to death. He tried to, you know, all kinds of things, and that didn't work. Um, but, but slowly he, he, he, he sort of decided to, you know, fight against what he perceived as the kind of petty kind of bullying tactics of the prison officers. And so, he decided to study law, prison law and prison rules. And he got himself to the stage where he knew the, you know, the law better than the prison guards themselves, and became known as, you know, that archetypal character, the kind of the prison lawyer. So, whenever any prisoner had a problem, they would come to Ben, and Ben would help them, and, you know, cause a lot of problems, cause a lot of trouble, you know, write a lot of letters. You know, and he became— he developed a reputation as being somewhat of a difficult— well, not somewhat, a lot of a difficult prisoner. And so, in their kind of infinite capacity for revenge, the prison authorities kept denying him parole, you know, again and again and again and again and again, because he was just, you know, such a troublemaker. And then what happened was that he fell in love, like, a visiting teacher, English teacher, He fell in love with a visiting English teacher, and she fell in love with him, and they had this kind of affair in— somehow managed to have an affair in prison. And it got to the point where she said to him, look, Ben, you know, you're always up for parole. They're always turning you down. All you've got to do is just behave. Just, like, spend a year not causing any trouble, and then you can be released. I've got a lovely cottage in the Cotswolds. You know, you can come and live with me and my cats. It's like paradise. And the amazing thing was that he wouldn't do it. Like, he didn't want to do it. And he had to kind of face the fact that, you know, he didn't want to be released, that actually what had happened was he'd become very high status amongst the prisoners in the prison. You know, when he walked down the corridor, people went, oh my God, it's Ben Gunn. You know, he had this huge beard, he looked like a pirate, you know. And so— but when I met him, he had actually been released. Um, and he was living in the lovely cottage in the Cotswolds, and it was lovely, and his partner was a wonderful person, but he was— he was in the midst of what seemed to be a terrible breakdown. Like, you know, he completely collapsed, and he, you know, in his own words, was that, I knew who I was inside. I was someone, and out here, I'm nothing. I'm just an ex-con. And that really spoke to me quite profoundly about our need for status, you know, and how important it is, and how kind of really preeminently important it is, is that even in that absolute hell of— the British prison system. He would rather be there and have his status than be outside and have freedom and the love of a good woman and have no status whatsoever. Um, so, so, so yeah, that— I, I thought that was just a very interesting story to begin the book.

You know, it's fascinating. You know, without any spoilers, there's a similar character in The Shawshank Redemption. It's, uh, it— you know, when you script it in a movie, it seems a little heavy-handed, but This is a true story and you met the man. And the idea that we want to be loved in the Adam Smith sense of the word— he was loved by his wife, but that was not quite enough for him, at least relative to what the respect and admiration he had in that more restrictive environment. It tells you a lot about the human animal.

Yeah. Yeah, and romantic love I would put under the category of connection. Yeah, that's a separate thing, you know, that, that's different from, um, from the feeling that we are valued by the wider human community. I think that's what we're talking about when we're talking about status.

So we recently had, uh, Toby Stewart on the program talking about his book, uh, Anointed, which is in a similar vein, uh, but there's an edge to his book. There's a little edge to yours too, which maybe we'll get to, uh, about, about the economic system. But, uh, it was clear in talking to Toby, and it's probably in his book— I don't want to misquote him, so I'm just talking about at least the conversation— uh, that being anointed, being given status by someone recognizing you, or choosing you, picking you out, and giving you the benefit of their elevated status, either from their success or their beauty or whatever it is. That's something— sinister is too strong, but he doesn't like it. Let's just leave it at that, which I get. I don't like— I mean, well, I'm more agnostic about it. But the theme of your book really is that it's just the way it is.

Yeah.

We might not like it. We have social movements that rebel against it. They have not turned out so well. And you don't spend as much time on this in the book as you might have, but much of the book is saying under the surface and occasionally explicitly, this is the game. You might not like the rules. You may think it's unfair to you. But, this is the world that you live in because of your genetic endowment as a creature of the past.

That's right. You can't not play the status game. It's impossible. It really is impossible. It's part of how we experience ourselves and we experience the world. I mean, the nearest you get to people— well, there are 3 really examples that I talk about in the book of people who sort of fool themselves into believing that they've escaped the status game. And one of them is the hikikomori of Japan, the shut-ins, the people who find— because Japan is a harsh status game. It's very judgmental, very difficult work conditions, very strict kind of gender roles are enforced. And so there are generations of people that try and check out of there. And what happens to the hikikomoris, they end up spending their lives playing computer games, which is a— proxy status game anyway. And then they usually just die alone and nobody— and people just, you know, there's a foul smell and they find their bodies. It's not good, you know, when you exempt yourself from the status game. Another group of people that fool themselves into believing that they've exempted themselves from the status game are the Buddhists, which is complete fantasy. I mean, Buddhists believe in a karmic system of— I think there are 6 realms of reincarnation, and the idea is that you build yourself up to the Ultimately, you want to escape the game completely, but the top realm is wealth, luxury, splendor. I mean, it's basically the Donald Trump lifestyle is what these Buddhists are actually like. It's so incredibly status-based, Buddhism, the idea that they're somehow exempting themselves. And this is backed up in scientific studies too. There are these hilarious studies where they find that the better people become at Buddhism, the more highly they regard themselves as kind of spiritual, um, you know, superiors to the people around them. And so, so it just doesn't work, this idea that, that, that mindfulness and meditation and Buddhism is this escape from, uh, from the status game. And then the one, you know, the big story I tell at the end of the book as a way of summing up the whole thing is this, is the experience of the Communists, who, who, who, who believed that there could be such a thing as a world of pure connection. I mean, that was their own phrase, pure connection, um, with, with no status whatsoever. And of course, it ended up being an enormously hierarchical, um, society. I believe he's found 12 different social groups in the Soviet Union, you know, an insane cult of personality around Lenin, Stalin, Mao, which is all status, you know, demands for absolute reverence and subservience to the cause. So, you know, between the Buddhists and the hikikomori and the communists, I think we can see that these various attempts there have been to escape status, they're catastrophic. Well, I mean, Buddhism isn't catastrophic. I mean, you know, I think Buddhism is more comical in its self-delusion For me. But communism and hikikomori, they are not good ways to organize your own life or the life of a country. So yeah, you just can't do it. And also, I would argue, why would you want to? Because status is the source of a lot of personal pain for people. And that's what we think about a lot is, oh my God, it's tough, it's hard. And it is, but it's also responsible for civilization itself. Without smart people being very deeply interested in winning the respect of their peers, you don't get technological advances, you don't get space travel, you don't get the internet, you don't get cities and the amazing art that we have in the world. I'm agnostic about— well, status is as good as it is bad. In the book, I trace terrible things, including the Holocaust, to status anxiety. But equally, you know, the invention of the iPhone, um, you know, in, you know, is it that, that has its founding story in Steve Jobs' insane status anxiety and his insane sense of personal competition with his rivals in Silicon Valley. So, so, so, so that's the human animal. Um, and it is one of these things, like, like I've said it, I don't think I say in the book, but I've said it before and elsewhere, is that I, I find these, these conversations kind of ridiculous. You know, like, we— 20 years ago, we were having conversations about is religion good or bad, or is capitalism good or bad, is status good or bad. I mean, it's, it's so comical to want to feel we can reduce these incredibly complex systems of trade-offs into good or bad. I mean, they're highly complex phenomena. You know, religion is good and bad, capitalism is good and bad, status is good and bad. I mean, so, so, so, so I really try and resist these very simplistic, um, kind of analyses of these highly complex phenomena.

Well, I want to put in a good word for Buddhism. I'm not a Buddhist, but I certainly, uh, I think many Buddhists will disagree with your assessment. But yeah, no, yeah, if we're lucky, we'll hear from them. Um, I'm intrigued by it, by something that, uh, you've just turned 50, so that's very relevant. You say in the book, and I think it's generally true, that you're never satisfied. You know, you think, oh, if I could make this achievement— it's usually related to money or career status or, uh, you know, a certain title— then I'll be fine. And most of us aren't, uh, and most of the time, uh, there's a new title that we still yearn for. There are people— there's always people ahead of us. Kind of incredible. Uh, and there are people behind us, uh, which, uh, if you're really, um, unhealthy, you, you can enjoy that, uh, that you're above them. Uh, and it does cross your mind because you're a human being. Part of your— part of the insight, I think, of your book. But for me, having reached 71, I, I feel like I— it doesn't bother me as much as it used to. Let me put it in a different way. Uh, the flip side of of achieving things is grievance. Uh, you know, I'm not getting the respect I should get. I am not— I've not reached such and such an achievement, such and such a title, such and such an income. And instead of saying, well, it's me, it's usually— the conclusion is usually it's them.

Yeah.

You know, they're not giving me what I deserve. And there's an extraordinary story in the book. We don't have to go into the details, but It's a version of, do you know who you're talking to? Do you know who I am? And that cry, which never looks good, by the way, it's a, it's a, it's a sentence that a person should not utter in a world where many of our encounters get recorded. But it's a, it's a, it's a plea. It's a, it's usually said in anger or outrage. But it's basically an incredible statement of insecurity because it's saying, you are not giving me the status I am entitled to. And that's a very, you know, it's a very human thing. But I'm just suggesting, I think as you, as you get older, or at least as I get older, I feel like the grievances don't bother me as much as they used to. So as you continue to do poorly at CrossFit as you age, well, there may be a consolation that some of the fire of injustice that we sometimes feel in this game, uh, maybe will quiet down a little bit.

Well, that's very interesting. I mean, it's reassuring and comforting. I like what you're saying. So I tried to write— I wanted to write about this in the book because I had an instinct that as we get older, um, um, some of these urges will lessen. But, and I, I did research it, but, but the evidence was so inconsistent I decided not to write about it. And so I was looking specifically about the effect of retirement because I was thinking, well, retirement is, you, you, you know, you're removing yourself from the status games of life. And so is retirement good or bad? And so the evidence is mixed. And it's, and it, and it seemed to be that if you choose your retirement, it's good. And if you, but if you kind of feel forced into something, it's bad. It's, it just felt a bit like, uh, so, so my, I had an instinct for what you were saying was true, and I wanted to, I argue it, but the only reason I didn't, because I couldn't find the evidence to stand it up. But I do appreciate what you're saying, and I instinctively— I hope it's true as well, because it's a lovely thought. The other thing that I will say, which I think is very, you know, which isn't in the book, because it's in my more recent book, is this sense that we don't have the status that we deserve. I think is fairly universal. And in story terms, it's part of the archetype of the underdog. So when you're reading a story like Harry Potter or Luke Skywalker or whatever it— Luke Skywalker— Star Wars or Hunger Games or, you know, whatever it might be, very often you've got this underdog character. Underdogs are universally identifiable. Every culture has stories about underdogs. And, and so underdogs tend to be low-status characters that are deserving of higher status. And I think that's the reason why we love underdogs so much, why we identify with them, because that's us, that's me. And, and my, my guess is that's part of our psychology because it keeps us pushing for more. I deserve more, I deserve more, I deserve more. And I think especially as we get into middle age and some of the optimism bleeds away and some of the realities of life kind of leak in, I think you're right, that optimism and that fire turns into grievance. Like, I feel that often. Every writer I know feels that, you know, no matter how successful they are, without exception. It's not fair, it's not fair. And I do feel like it's— my instinct is it's just part of basic human cognition. We always feel like we are deserving of more status, and it keeps us pushing on and keeps us pushing on.

Yeah, it's kind of interesting you mentioned you know, Harry Potter. I was just thinking, when you mentioned underdog, I was thinking about Oliver Twist.

Hmm.

So both those stories are about orphans. And it's actually kind of frightening how many children's stories are about orphans. And I've always found it disturbing as a parent to read stories to my kid about— or kids about orphans. It seems like a very traumatic thing to put in the face of a child. But I think there's a part of it I didn't appreciate that you're highlighting, which is an orphan really has no status. You know, their parents are gone unless they've inherited an immense amount of money. But in all these gripping underdog stories, the kid is not only missing the guidance of the parent, they're missing the income of the parent, but most of all, they're missing any status that the parents have. You know, if the parents are well off or they're successful or they're admired, they're gone. And so the kid who normally would be able to stand on the shoulders of the parent in some, some dimension has nothing. And they're put into the orphanage. They're put into, you know, the relative who doesn't— who hates them. They're, they're Cosette in Les Mis. And that underdog is, um, you're right, they are— they have a grievance. Their, their situation is not in line. It's not fair. And so it bothers us and we root for them.

Yeah, because we identify with that feeling. I think it's a fundamental thing. We identify with that feeling of, I should have more status than I do. I think it's, it's, it's, it's, it's a very, very common, um, feeling amongst humans. And you can see why it's functional, because, because it keeps us pushing on for more and more and more.

Now, slightly against my theory that as you get older you get more mellow about this, uh, is a story you tell about Paul McCartney. And I'd never heard this. I think it's a fact, uh, that later in his life he in some situations reverse the order of the songwriting credits. And, uh, you know, I've had Ian Leslie on the— Ian Leslie on the program talking about, uh, McCartney and Lennon, and I, I have a much, uh, greater appreciation for McCartney and Lennon than I had before I read his book. Uh, but this is some— I don't know how, how, how to talk about it. It's— there's a If it's— if there's not more to the story, it's, it's petty, but it's also pitiful. Uh, there's so— it's such a dramatic example of the insatiable desire that we're talking about. Tell, tell what happened there.

Yeah, so, so it's like— so I was told this, I was tipped off about this by a, you know, Beatles fanatic when I told— there was a journalist, music journalist, last time I was writing a book. Oh, you should write about McCartney with this songwriting thing. And I was like, what did he say? He said, oh, well, he went through a phase of— because— so the story is that when Lennon and McCartney started writing together, they had just had an agreement that all the songs be credited to Lennon McCartney, no matter who wrote what, it would just say Lennon McCartney. So that was fine. But then at some point with Paul McCartney, it became not fine. This is later in his career. And he started thinking, well, why does Lennon's name come first? It's not fair. Like, my name should come first. And there were various meetings about this. I think a lot of them were some of them were after Lennon died, because Yoko Ono was involved, and she was like— she said, absolutely not, you can't do this. And then so what he started doing is when he would do live albums where they would cover Beatles songs, he would flip the names. So it would say McCartney-Lennon, McCartney-Lennon. And then there was a threat of legal action from Yoko Ono. So, I mean, the reason I love this story is because, as you say, like, so 2 things really. So one is Paul McCartney is famously like a really nice guy.

Yeah.

Like, he's not like Kanye West, like, lunatic, who, you know, or Taylor Swift, who's, you know, very— who's seen as, you know, sort of savagely interested in status. He seems like a really nice guy. Like, no one's got a bad word to say about McCartney, really.

And he's got some status. He's got money. He's the most— he's one of the most famous people on the planet.

We— that's the thing, you can't imagine really a person with more status than Paul McCartney who's alive at the moment, really. Like, he's beloved. He basically helped invent popular music, like the songs that he wrote. And yet, like, even— and so I just thought that was a— I've got a bit more of a kind of maybe empathetic view than you. Like, I don't think it's— it is petty, but I think it's deeply human.

Oh, I agree. Yeah, I know.

Like, it's deeply human. And I think it just shows you that, you know, and as I say in the book, the one study that sort of pops into my mind when I think about this, it might have been in the same chapter, was the was when they were trying to figure out the difference between power and status. Like, is power and status the same thing? And the answer is it isn't. You know, we know power is about being able to control resources. And actually, when you, when you test people's desire for power, unless you're a particular personality type, like maybe a Trumpian or a whatever personality type, you— people's desire for power very quickly wears out because with power comes responsibility and hassle and stress. And it's— oh God, you know. So, so, but, but, but, but when they test people's desire for status, it never runs out. It never stops. The interesting thing about status is it's not to say that everybody's walking around thinking, I want to be the king, I want to be the number one. Most people don't. They're quite happy to be above average, but it's about ratcheting up. You go up a little bit in status, then you want a bit more, and you want a bit more, and you want a bit more, and you want a bit more, and that never stops. It never stops. I mean, I agree with you. Like I say, in old age, like older age, I should say, I'm sure it wears down. And good. Like, you don't want to be 71 and trying to compete with a 21-year-old, for God's sake. You want to take it easy a bit. But yeah, it never really stops. I don't think there ever comes a point in your life where you're quite happy to be seen as the lowest status person in the room.

So now we're going to get the Taylor Swift fans writing us too with the Buddhists, and the Buddhist Taylor Swift fans are going to really be upset with you, Will. But I want to say one thing about McCartney. You know, it's, it's a constant issue in academic life when you have multiple authors, which is, which is increasingly the case in, in modern academic life, especially in science. So usually the, the, the norm is it's alphabetical order. Hmm. But, you know, if you're— my last name is Roberts, so that's cruel. It's not fair. And Lennon McCartney is in alphabetical order. Now, my, my guess is that maybe they flipped a coin, but maybe they just decided, well, alphabetical order. In economics, what happens, which I think is— I don't know, there's, there's a humor to it. It— people will write, uh, that the order of the authors was just— was chosen randomly, lest you think that the first author is the more important one or the one who did more of the work, including if it's in alphabetical order, because you want to make it clear. Because maybe you don't know that it was chosen as alphabetical order. So they often in the acknowledgments will say, which is really strange, that it was alphabetical order or it's random or we toss, you know, academics, obviously, you know, the joke is the, the fighting is so petty because the stakes are so small. You know, here, here's this journal article that 11 people are gonna read, and you're worrying about that you're second? Really? But I guess, you know, you gotta fight over space. You gotta, it's the game.

That's the game. And it's like, another one of these studies which always sticks in my mind is about the orange juice, where it was back in the '70s, they did a study where they poured lots of people glasses of orange juice, and one person got slightly less orange juice than everybody else. And, you know, reliably, that person became distracted and obsessed and was thinking about the orange juice. And 'cause that's what we're like as people, you know, Like, as human beings, we, you know, everything is a symbol of state. Everything can be a symbol of status. And, and we are, we are deeply interested in our, our relative status because it, as I said at the beginning of the chat, it plugs directly into our ability to survive and reproduce. So it's, you know, it's extremely important to us.

So you take some, um, I was going to call them cheap shots. That's not nice. You attack neoliberalism at one point in the book. Which is a phrase I don't like. But what you mean by that is the— I would call it the intellectual currents that culminated in the election of Reagan and Thatcher and pushed the United States and Germany— sorry about that— the United States and the United Kingdom toward a less regulated, smaller government. Now, I would argue it wasn't really much smaller, but let's put that to the side.

Of course.

I'm curious why you believe— I'll take the simple example of that after this change, people got more fill in the blank, greedy, self-centered. Could be true. But, but it's kind of hard to blame it on that intellectual current. Just like, I mean, communism couldn't wring the inequality out of the human experience. In fact, it may have made it worse.

Hmm.

Do you really think the— those intellectual currents, which I think failed, by the way, I'm sympathetic to them, as my listeners know. You might not know that. I don't think they had much success, but But you give them a lot of weight in changing how we look at ourselves, uh, as individuals rather than more collectively oriented. Do you really think that had much of an effect on the status game?

Yeah, you know, you know, defend that. So, so, so the, the human brain is always asking the question, who do I have to be in this place in order to earn connection status? I need to connect with people and to, you know, to to rise. And so, with the rise— I know you don't like the phrase, but when I was doing my research into this for my previous book, Selfie, I saw that lots of economists would argue that neoliberalism doesn't exist. I was aware that there was debate. But yeah, as I say, it's this idea that we removed things like regulation. It was the destruction of the unions. It was, in the UK, it was privatization of industry. It was selling all the council houses.

It was unleashing—

dropping regulations on banking, which some of those regulations directly led to the global financial crisis in 2008. So there were all these measures that Thatcher and Reagan brought in to basically increase competition. That was the goal. And so I'm intrigued that you said that they didn't actually do that, because that seems to me a surprising claim. But you're an economist, and I'm not, so—

You're the first person who's ever said that, Will. Will, to me in my life. Uh, most people just say, oh, he does— why would an economist understand this? But now I want to be— before— well, you carry on, I'll, I'll come back and add a footnote.

So, so, I mean, really, so that chapter you're talking about is a, is a brief summary of a much larger argument I make in my previous book, which is called Selfie. Um, so, so, so I look quite deeply into that there. And so I, I think what even your viewers and listeners who aren't economists can appreciate if you look at how the culture changed between the '60s and '70s and the '80s. As I said in Selfie, in 20 years, from 1965 to 1985, we went from screw the man, in inverted commas, to greed is good. There was an enormous change in the culture of the West into how we— into our conception of what a hero was, into our conception of what good and bad is, into the way that we played our status games. And I feel that it's— and that times perfectly with the rise of Thatcher and Reagan and all the things that we can describe as neoliberalism, which is the increasing competition. So there's this extraordinary quote from Margaret Thatcher when she was elected, where she said, economics is the project, but the object is to change the soul. And so my argument in Selfie is that if you look at the psychology, that's what happened. I mean, there was an amazing study by Jean Twenge where she looked at babies' names and how they suddenly changed in the early '80s. So up until the early '80s, forever in the UK and the US, people would just name their children ordinary names like George, Alfred, Barbara, whatever it might be. And then starting in the early '80s, people started to give their children unusual names, um, because they wanted them, in her phrase, to stand out and be a star. So, so, so all this stuff, this increasing competition, seemed to ramp up, um, you know, our, our, our kind of state of individualism, ramp up our state of wanting to stand out. There was a huge study of, um, levels of perfectionism, uh, which found that beginning in the 1980s and rising up through into the early 2000s, Perfectionism rates soared in individuals in the UK, in Canada, and in the US. Psychologically, there's a huge amount of evidence, and there's more too, that we changed radically as a people in the 1980s. Those changes mirror perfectly this Thatcher-Reagan project of decreasing the collective self and increasing the individualistic competitive self. Yeah, so that's, that's my thesis.

It's well said. You know, I don't agree with it, but that's okay. I, I'll give you my take and then you can— yeah, yeah, you can have at me. Uh, I don't mean to suggest that, that those 2 politicians achieved nothing. Yeah, uh, I— they did deregulate some, although actually in America it started ironically with Jimmy Carter, who was a Democrat. who started in the late '70s, and Alfred Kahn was his chief economic— one of his chief economic advisors on deregulation. And it introduced competition into industries that were making lots of money at consumers' expense 'cause they were protected. And I just, I have trouble seeing that as an an encouragement of self-interest or selfishness. You know, the fact that, that truckers or airlines— and I'm talking about America, UK is a little different because of the changes and more in labor situations. And a lot of things are different in both places, obviously. But the main argument I want to make on the other side is that In my ideal world, and I'm not gonna speak for Ronald Reagan, I don't know what he actually, or Thatcher, what they had in mind. But for me, the redemption of the soul, to take the Thatcher quote seriously, was about devolving responsibility away from the collective, the state.

Yeah.

Toward not the individual so much as the voluntary. that, that we would associate with each other through what is sometimes called civil society to take care of each other. Now, in certain situations, that's a myth. It's not possible. I think it's very hard to rely, say, and you can talk about what you can debate whether it's good or bad, but it's hard to say create a welfare state voluntarily. There would be charity under, uh, if welfare really disappeared. But, you know, my other side of this debate is that I don't think Thatcher or Reagan were very successful in dismantling the welfare state. A lot of people, you know, claim that. The more interesting question for me is the cultural change. And we can debate where it came from, but I do think we are more self-centered and see ourselves over this period of, say, let's say the the last 30 or 40 years as more of a brand, a more transactional sense of self, that we don't see our role in the collective or our community as being as important. And I think it's a really deep question why that might be, if it's indeed true. But I don't think people are more selfish. And I think, you know, people chose exotic names because it's fun and a lot of norms and cultural, uh, restrictions dropped away over this period, which most of us think were a good thing, right? So, so it's, as you said earlier, it's complicated. It's good.

Yeah, yeah. But, but I think, but I think most people would accept that the '80s— I mean, you know, like, look at pop culture in the '80s. You had, you know, Whitney Houston, The Greatest Love of All Is the Love of the Self. You had, you know, Madonna's Material Girl. Those Reagan-Thatcher values became— it changed the way that we— maybe it's just storytelling. Maybe it's just that Reagan and Thatcher got to set the narrative tone of the culture in a similar way that Donald Trump is now. Things are moving. They call it a vibe shift these days, don't they? But yeah, I hear what you're saying, and I bow for your superior depth of knowledge as an economist, but I would still— I still think it's remarkable that at the same time these economic changes were being made, we had an identical change in the character of the Western self. We changed alongside, along with it.

Yeah. My answer to that would be, I think the story that people tell typically about Reagan and Thatcher is a bit of a caricature.

Yeah.

And that while I bemoan the death of many collective things that we used to achieve as human beings, I also, as you do, recognize that sometimes collective action gets— has its own destructive side. So it's a bit of a trade-off between freedom and social norms and government legislation, not just norms that, that's going on here. It's a very, very interesting phenomenon. The last 60 years, the amount of cultural change over the last 60 years, which has been driven by, in our era, the recent era, obviously social media and the iPhone. So, and, you know, the smartphone. Before that, it was driven, I think, by the birth control pill and a bunch of economic change that came from all kinds of places. But it's hard to know. I don't want to be— I really appreciate it. I'm touched by your willingness to elevate my status because I'm an economist. It's, as I said, it's so rare. It usually drops me down.

Right.

And in a social gathering, No one will concede superiority or respect for the economist because it's their field.

Even when they're talking about the economy?

No, absolutely not. No, because they're in the economy too, that person, that other person. I have a job, I work, I have income. I know all I know about this. And they might be right, by the way. I don't wanna overstate any of my quote, superior knowledge. Okay. I want to ask a different question, a different kind of challenge, which is there's a related phenomenon that I think I didn't understand. You're— you want to subsume tribalism to some extent under the status game. And I want to— I want to keep them separate.

Okay.

So, you know, tribalism is a lot like status. It is deeply ingrained in our, our makeup, our psychological makeup. It's— we're very hardwired for both. But I think of them as 2 separate things. But you, you pull them together. Make, make the argument there. What are you trying to say?

Well, we, we play the status game on 2 different levels. We, we— so individual status is important to us, but also group status. So, so, so part of our identity, you know, in, in— there's a huge literature in psychology, social identity theory, very popular at the moment, um, uh, we, we, you know, which, which sort of explores how our identity is made up of our group memberships. And so, um, yeah, we— I, I, I think it's very well established, not only in psychology but in neuroscience, that, that, that we are, that, that we are, um, yeah, that we, that we— one source of our status is in our individual achievements, but also the, the, the, the wins of our group, uh, you know, matters deeply to us. And, and to see that, you've only got to go to an English football match. And you see how unbelievably deeply people care about their team, who they don't actually play for, winning or losing. You see grown men in tears when their team loses some important match. So yeah, that's why I— I mean, in psychology, that's not a controversial position, that group status— we suffer from group narcissism. There was that hilarious study where they asked, I forget, like, you know, 20, 30 different people from 20, 30 different countries to add up the percentage of how much their nation had contributed to world history. And I forget the actual percentages, but people were coming up with like 300 or 400%. You know, like, so people, you know— There's that concept also of group narcissism, which I think is really interesting because there's a social kind of restriction on us claiming status for ourselves as individuals, but there is one for our groups, for we're allowed to be very boastful and claim enormous amounts of status on behalf of our groups. And that's nationalism. That's, you know, that's the Swifties. So, so yeah, that, that would be my position. And, and I think the position of lots of people in, in, in the psychology.

No, I like that. And I think I tend to think of it— and I think maybe I'm looking at it wrong, maybe it's, it's just status— I tend to think of it as injustice, that we have this sort of innate measuring of injustice. And when something is, say, untrue and we feel there's been a wrong, that we get agitated and angry. And especially if it's about our group. And I always think of it as simply, you know, my group's not getting what it deserves.

Hmm.

But it's probably status. It's probably the— my— I mean, I'm here in the Middle East. I'm here in Jerusalem.

Oh, wow.

It fascinates me that there's an immense amount of debate in the history of the Palestinian issue about what happened in, say, 1947 or 1948. Now, in a certain— '47 being the UN partition and '48 being the invasion of Israel by its neighbors. And then what happened after that is very much up for grabs depending on what facts you report. We've talked about this on the program before. But what I'm— without going into whether which side has a better case, the intensity with which that 77-year-old issue gets debated, I always think about it as being a justice issue. You know, my side, either one, is not getting the respect it deserves. And, and I always think, yeah, so, so I'm— I have angst, I have anger, I have outrage, but it really is partly about my side is higher status, is not getting the status it deserves either.

Yeah, I, I think justice and truth in inverted commas are downstream from status in the sense that every group, like, like, like it or not, truth is local. Like, you know, the, the, the Zionists in Israel have one truth and the Palestinian uh, you know, Palestinians have another truth, and, and they both equally believe their truth to be the truth. Uh, and especially when you get into things like moral truths, because really there's no such thing as a moral truth. You can't find— look at a moral truth under a microscope.

We think we have one, most of us, for our side, whatever side it is, even if it's just rooting for Tottenham.

So all, all of these things we use, we use as symbols for the status of our group. And, and that's— I mean, that's what you see in this, this recent Cultural thing we've had in sort of cancel culture and you know wokeism in inverted commas. It's that that whole business of I I demand that you sign up to the truths of my group, and if you don't sign up to the truths of my group, then I'm going to attack you, and that and it's attack on your status. I'm going to remove you from your positions. I'm going to I'm going to destroy your reputation. Da da da da da. So so so I think that's how it works, and and I think you know group. group versus group status competitions can be absolutely savage. And, and yeah, I, I really think that, as I said, truth and justice is downstream from status. Ultimately, it's about the status of groups.

Yeah, no, I, I think that that makes a lot of sense. Um, I want to close by talking— at the end of the book, you talk about some— you give some advice about, uh, how to move in the modern world in this status game. Um, the, the one rule that you suggest which I found most provocative and interesting is you summarize, you say reduce your moral sphere. Uh, what do you mean by that?

So, um, this was very much a reaction to— I mean, I wrote The Status Game during lockdown, during the whole, you know, it was, it was a very feverish time in the culture wars, and it was just that sense I think we're spending too much time thinking about other people's moral behavior. You know, it's that sense of moral surveillance of other people. It's all about status, that stuff. It's all about, are you on my side or are you not on my side? Are you a source of status for me and my group or are you a threat to the status of me and my group? And just the feeling that that brings a lot of hatred and a lot of aggression and a lot of stress. to other people, but also to the self. It's not nice to live in that world of never being off your phone, judging other people, getting angry at other people, stressing out about, about other people's, um, views. And just the belief that reducing your moral sphere, in the sense of trying to hone it down, just to think more about your own moral behavior rather than obsessing about the moral behavior of others, felt to me like a probably a fundamentally good thing that most people should It's interesting because in Judaism, if you see someone—

if you are suffering, if you've had bad things happen to you, you're encouraged to do some soul searching and ask yourself whether you've maybe earned this, right? A very dark philosophy. and troubling idea, but sometimes productive. But you're not supposed to do that with other people.

Right.

If you see someone else suffering, you're not supposed to say, boy, that person must have done something terrible. You're supposed to be agnostic and view that as possibly just bad luck. You're not supposed— and you're definitely not supposed to investigate their soul. on their behalf and say, oh, I know why that's happening to you, because you whatever. So you should be— you should distance yourself from the suffering of other people as a causal event, but you should use it for yourself as a way to become a better person.

Yeah.

So it's a really— it's a similar idea to what you're suggesting. And I, I think in these troubled times that we're in, Um, you know, with social media putting this kind of judgmental urge on steroids, it's, um, seems like really good advice you're giving.

Good. Well, thank you, Russ. I appreciate it. And thanks for engaging so thoroughly with my book. I really appreciate it. And I've enjoyed our chat very much. Thank you.

My guest today is— same here. My guest today has been Will Storr. His book is The Status Game. Will, thanks for being part of EconTalk.

Pleasure. Thank you for having me.

This is EconTalk, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty. For more EconTalk, go to econtalk.org, where you can also comment on today's podcast and find links and readings related to today's conversation. The sound engineer for EconTalk is Rich Goyette. I'm your host, Russ Roberts. Thanks for listening. Talk to you on Monday.