Ever felt like someone was trying too hard to impress others or get ahead by stepping on people?
That’s a classic case of social climbing.
While a natural drive to improve one’s social standing is part of human nature and a good thing to have, this article explores why certain social climbing behaviors, like being overly aggressive, obvious, or pushing others down, can actually backfire and hurt your social status.
We’ll dig into the different types of poor social climbing, the hidden costs, and how to avoid these common pitfalls in your quest for advancement.
Contents
Social Climbing: Definition
Social climbing seeks to raise one’s status within a group or society.
There are many tactics for social climbing, including self-promotion, networking, or pushing down on others.
It’s important to note that the aspiration to social climb is natural and normal.
And the act of social climbing can be empowering, value-adding, and even honorable. Ambitious men are driven to advance, and masculine men all seek social status.
Bad Types of Social Climbing
In common parlance, social climbing refers to its negative form: aggressive, nasty, or too obvious.
Obvious social climbing is an issue because it signal lower value. Too aggressive, and you’re antisocial; too ‘in your face’ and you lack social skills; too much compared to your life station, and you’re posturing, and insecure. And you pay the costs.
Bullying For Social Climbing
An aggressive social climber may target a low-status, submissive-looking person and demeans him to look dominant by comparison.
He is effectively using him as a ‘social peg™’, stepping on him to gain higher placement in the hierarchy.
It’s a form of bullying, a more extreme example of the dominance approach to social status, and it can work.
However, it also comes with costs.
Costs of Social Climbing
Poor social climbing lowers your value because it signals:
- Signals Lack of Top Dog Status
People at the top of the hierarchy don’t engage in social climbing because, well… There is nowhere to go once you’re on top.
And that’s why social climbing communicates you’re probably around the middle of the hierarchy and craving to be higher. Sometimes you will see (clueless) top dogs engaging in social climbing though, and that’s because he is afraid and insecure about his position.
- Defensiveness and fear
If you have a good reputation, continuous grandstanding looks suspicious. Why anyone who already has people’s respect would keep bragging? It suggests insecurity about one’s position in the world, or to potentially lose status to new upstarts.
- Hostility and lack of cooperative, win-win mindset
The positive way of climbing is to climb by your own merit.
The destructive one is to attack others.
And while of course both can work, competitor derogation can be socially costly and psychologically costly. associated with the most maladaptive forms of narcissism (Back et al., 2014). It comes with lower self-esteem, and general negative affect.
Impresses Below, Undermines Above
Social climbing can impress. But it mostly impresses the people who are at the bottom of the pyramid.
Just think about it: if you are vying for some above-average position, how does it look to below-average people?
Kind powerful. But to higher than average people? It looks like you’re scrambling for scraps.
In animal terms, a cat posturing as a tiger looks awesomely powerful to a mouse. But not so much to the other cooler cats in his neighborhood.
Hence, if your aim is slightly above average, happy social climbing.
But if you aim high, then you must grow in sophistication.
And that’s the essence of it: social climbing “works” in mediocre environments, among mediocre people, vying for middle layers of the social pyramid.
How to Social Climb Well
Everything is contextual and there is a time and place for almost anything.
For example, early pick-up artists used some forms of social climbing to “demonstrating higher value”. It doesn’t seem to me they were doing it well, but in principle, if done well, it can be effective.
1. Calibrate to The Audience
Good social climbing starts with audience calibration.
High quality men and high quality women are power aware and see through the most basic games. Strategic social climbing with them is more refined and indirect. Much of your value display is on how you talk, and how you move.
2. Calibrate to The Context
Context also matters.
In some seductive contexts, even more blunt social climbing can work.
Many women enjoy the confidence, pride, and dominance that goes along with a well-executed social climb.
Two possible social climbing frames that work:
How lucky she is to be with this great guy that you are.
Look how great we are in this world of boring people (us VS the world)
3. Do It Smoothly, Subtly
Smooth social climbing requires calibration.
However, here’s the key, when you are truly skilled and calibrated, you gain stauts, respect, and attraction without looking like you’re even trying.
This is the paradox.
Good social climbing doesn’t look like climbing at all.
The bumbling, unskilled guys look like they’re trying too hard and look insecure. We baby and feel for these men.
The strategic and effective men instead, we just naturally admire them. We call them ‘cool guys’. Men naturally have respect for these men, and women are naturally attracted to them.
These are the types of men we train here at The Power Moves.
Learn more:
- Leaders’ social climbing
- Social climbers types, techniques, and how to handle them
- How to gain social status, the smart and effective way
Power University: the one-stop solution to advance in life, without climbing:
