Social status shapes how others treat you, how much power you have, and even how attractive you appear.

In this guide, we break down what social status really is, why it matters more than most people realize, and how you can actively gain status.

Social status is a key pillar of our expertise at The Power Moves. Continuously updated with the latest empirical findings, this article synthesizes the research literature and our real-world insights to serve as your definitive reference on social status.

Let’s dive in:

What Is Social Status?

Social status is your standing or rank in a social hierarchy.
It reflects how much respect, influence, and value others assign to you.

Status hierarchies are:

• Competitive for classic supply-and-demand imbalance: few top spots, many contenders.
• Inescapable: people naturally sort themselves into hierarchies in any group, especially for top spots—whether it’s your workplace or your friend circle.
• Fast: the initial stages of group formation sort leadership within minutes

That ‘sorting’ is based on a combination of signals like early leadership, body language, dominance, and ‘power moves’—and how you respond to them.

I differentiate between two types of status:

• Society-level status, based on profession, income, or class (SES)
• Group-level status, based on:
  • Group-specific values, the more relative and contextual form of status
  • Personality traits related to interpersonal dynamics (eg.: social dominance, charisma, leadership, etc). Related to ‘individual value‘

They overlap, but are different domains, calling for different traits, approaches, and strategies.

Why Social Status Matters

You can’t afford to ignore status.

Whether you like it or not, status shapes your life in ways you might not even realize.

Higher-status individuals get more attention and deference.
They’re more persuasive, more trusted, and more listened to—even when they say the same things as lower-status men.
And of course, they get more social and mating opportunities.

In other words, status is power. Social power.

Low Status vs. High-Status Comparison Table™, Lucio Buffalmano, 2025

Benefits of Social Status

1. Better Health

People with higher social status tend to be mentally and physically healthier across cultures and populations. This effect is consistent even with subjective perceptions of status, suggesting strong psychological and biological underpinnings.

• Lower stress: reduced cortisol and better cardiovascular function

• Better mood and fewer depressive symptoms: status buffers against anxiety and mood disorders

• Stronger immune function: higher status is linked to lower inflammation and faster recovery (source)

• Healthier behaviors: status is associated with better sleep, diet, and activity levels

2. Higher Self-Esteem

Self-esteem is intrinsically linked to status because self-esteem acts as a “sociometer,” gauging how much others value us (Leary & Downs, 1995).

Status may also boost confidence, and interpersonal status (respect, admiration, importance) matters more than class-level socioeconomic status (SES: education, income, occupation).

3. Social & Romantic Success

Status is closely related to romantic success.

Across cultures, status boosts perceived mate value, and women especially prefer high-status men for long-term relationships (Buss, 2016).

High-status individuals also attract more friends, allies, and better support networks, enhancing life satisfaction.

• Increased attractiveness, especially for men
• Better friendships with larger, more supportive social networks

Higher-status men enjoy more attraction and dating options

4. Influence & Persuasion

Social status dramatically boosts interpersonal influence across all socialization:

• Better negotiations: Being perceived as high-status improves bargaining power and leads to better outcomes
• Interpersonal relationships, gaining more attention, compliance, and faster adoption of ideas
• Leadership: High-status individuals gain more followers and trust

4. Greater Reproductive Payoffs

High-status men have more children.
Though the link is strongest in nonindustrial societies, it’s also true for modern industrial societies of ‘soft polygamy’.

5. Social Shields Against Attacks

Harvard professor Henrich states that we evolved to track status for exploitation and self-defense.

Your status and reputation shield you because attackers would lose their status.

And although we may need more evidence on this, Henrich’s observation squares well with power dynamics logic and our analyses of social climbers targeting weaker ‘social pegs’.

Downsides of Low Status

Contrary to high status:

• Poorer health and longevity: The Whitehall studies showed that lower-ranking British civil servants had significantly higher mortality than higher-ranking peers.
  • Lower mood and depression: Peterson claimed that ‘there is little difference between being depressed and being at the bottom of the hierarchy’

• Fewer social and mating opportunities: Status often works as a filter in the mating market, and women eliminate potential mates based on perceived low status before other traits are even considered.

• Reduced influence: less heard, more interrupted and dismissed, and more likely to be blamed and scapegoated

• Socio-systemic discrimination: individual and institutional discrimination combine to systemic discrimination in many facets of life
  • Group-level discrimination: Individuals inherit the costs of lower-status classes. Compelling evidence from social dominance theory shows persistent systemic discrimination in all studied societies

• Vulnerable to exploitation: no status equals ‘no social shield’. Attacks may even be encouraged when low status is coupled with low reputation. It’s no coincidence the poorer and lower classes are also the most victimized

Limitations of High-Status Seeking

Status is great to have, but there are important downsides we want to emphasize:

• Group-dependent: status is contextual to the group it’s based on and it resets to zero the moment you change group

• Other-dependent: status depends entirely on others’ recognition, so you depend on others for status

• Fear and neediness: The more status you gain, the more you worry losing it.
  • Neediness: group dependence can lead to over-investment, both emotional and practical to keep the group alive

• Excessive status-seeking turns maladaptive since you lose potentially higher ROI pursuits (‘opportunity costs’).
  Researchers link it to poor mating strategies, delayed families, and fewer offspring.

• Status doesn’t guarantee respect when it’s not ‘earned’. This can lead to a disconnect between rank or title, and little respect among subordinates

The best leaders have both status from their rank, and respect from their personality

Traits That Impact Status

What increases or decreases status is partly relative to group, culture, and context.

But studies find these traits consistently drive higher social status:

Traits That Increase Status

• Competence, especially in fields related to the group’s activities and goals

• Social skills: High-status duties are often social. Eg.: inspire, maintain peace among members, facilitate inter-member communication (Van Vugt et al. 2008). Different subsets include charisma, charm, etc.

• Confidence is a proxy for competence (Areni and Sparks 2005; Price and Stone 2004). Observers infer higher status from overconfidence (Anderson et al. 2012)
• Size, with a bidirectional relationship, and high-status men perceived as taller/more muscular

• High value: as per social exchange model, value-giving potential makes you socially valuable
  • Resources
  • Displaying value and status, including expensive cars or watches
  • Attractiveness makes people ‘start’ with higher status
• Competitiveness and strategic predisposition, since status is inherently scarce, and a central domain of male competition and intrasexual competition for mating opportunities (Massar, 2022)

• Benefiting others as part of ‘giving value’ (Blass and Ferris 2007).
  • Effort, sacrifice, and loyalty to the group or cause. For example, employees who put extra effort into their jobs are often accorded higher status (Allen and Rush 1998; Podsakoff and MacKenzie 1997).

Also helps:

• Intelligence (Buss et al., 2020)

• Bravery and courage, including daredevil acts among adolescent groups

• High extraversion. Especially during group formation extroverts emerge as leaders more than introverts (Bass 2008; Judge et al. 2002)

• Social strategy: “political skill” like social astuteness, behavioral flexibility, and adaptability (Cheng and Tracy, 2014).
  • Smart self-promotion, including displaying skills and successes and hiding shortcomings (Jones and Pittman, 1982)
  • Self-monitors desire status and are more likely to emerge as leaders in task groups

Prestigious and dominant traits

Traits related to the two proven approaches to gaining status are:

• Dominance
  • Selfishness and disregard for others
  • Arrogance
  • Hubristic pride (Beall and Tracy, 2020)

Possible example of hubristic pride

• Prestigious traits – Valued knowledge and teaching ability (Henrich, Gil-White, 2001)
  • Generosity and prosociality, but must be public (Bereczkei et al., 2007)
  • Number of allies
  • Cooperativeness
  • Ethics and concern for public good
  • Authentic pride (Cheng et al. 2010)

Traits That Decrease Status

In general, being low value or taking value from others decreases status, and various studies found:

• Antisociality, including nastiness, meanness, and being known as a thief.
  Note: caveats apply for the domineering approach to status

• Poor hygiene, including dirty, unclean, or acquiring sexually transmitted disease

• Neuroticism, and especially so for men

• Shaming one’s family

Strategies to Gain Status

Prestige vs Dominance, based on Joseph Henrich, revisited by Lucio Buffalmano, 2025

According to the Dual Strategies Theory, people climb social hierarchies through prestige and dominance.

They’re two very different approaches as dominance inflicts costs, while prestige confers benefits and look very different in socialization:
As Henrich reports, they act and look very differently in socialization:

Dominant individuals tended to (1) act overbearing, (2) credit themselves, (3) tease to humiliate others, and (4) be manipulative.

Meanwhile, prestigious individuals (1) were self-deprecating, (2) credited the team, and (3) told jokes.

Henrich, 2015

A new theory claims competence is the basis of both prestige and dominance.
And although we tend to agree with that, the dominance/prestige dichotomy still provides a useful model.

So let’s dive in:

1. Dominance

Dominance is older, inherited from our primate ancestors, and it’s usually described as ‘the path of force and fear’.

In some contexts, it may include more forceful means.
For example, we agree with several researchers who consider bullying a tool for social power and status (Olweus, 1993; Vaillancourt et al.; 2007). And it’s unfortunately toxic but potentially effective.

However, contrary to more simplistic definitions, dominance goes beyond overt aggression and bullying.
The most extreme forms of dominance are rarer in most contexts of modern society.
Dominance can come from simple rank, or be more covert. Even threats—as Cheng and Tracy (2014) note—can be more psychological.

Dominant dyads also include everyday examples such as:

• Boss over employee
• Police over citizen

Also see:

• Dominant men archetypes

Advantages

• Works for individuals, despite the costs on others.
  • Value-taking approach can also work: bullying, rude, demeaning, and anti-social individuals tend to be higher rank and more influential in both experimental contexts (e.g., Van Kleef et al. 2011) and real-world relationships (e.g., romantic couples, fraternity members) (Keltner et al. 1998 on value-taking teasing).

• Works fast

• Bottom line power: control over resources and violence are bottom line of human social hierarchy. When societies disintegrate they represent the ‘hardest currency’

Disadvantages

• Resistance and pushback (e.g., Falbe and Yukl 1992; Kipnis and Schmidt 1988) and I expect stronger resistance from higher-value and empowered individuals

• Lower performance at work (e.g., Falbe and Yukl 1992; Higgins et al. 2003; Yukl et al. 1996)

• Sub-communicates incompetence: studies found that leaders who felt incompetent were most abusive (i.e., who lack Prestige), suggesting that aggression replaces a lack of Prestige

• Shallower influence: complying out of fear doesn’t shift opinions

And potentially:

• lower health outcomes than prestige as observed in small-scale societies, but I feel more studies are needed
• Less attractive to women who generally indicate a preference for prestigious men. But dominants still beat submissives, and may be preferred in competitive contexts, or for short-term mating. But it’s more true for dominance, rather than aggression (Snyder et al. 2008).
  ⛏️ See: dominance and dating success

2. Prestige

The prestige route earns respect through competence, wisdom, and the ability to give value.

Henrich claims that prestige evolved later as part of homo sapiens’ cultural learning.
People defer to prestigious men in exchange for learning, a logic that aligns with social exchange theory, and social power dynamics.

Prestige is more stable, longer-lasting, and admiration-based since people defer voluntarily.

Advantages

• Deeper influence: because people shift their underlying opinions, beliefs, and practices to be more similar to the prestigious individual (Henrich, 2015). Even ‘agreement as deference’ is deeper than coercion

• Well-liked

• Better relationships

• More loyal followers

• Largest genetic payoffs: the evidence is still limited, but Henrich reports that prestigious men’s children die less frequently, and prestigious men marry younger (neither of which held for dominant men) (Ruden 2008 and Ruden 2011)

3. Joining The Upper Class

Social status can be achieved, or it can be ascribed—for example, being born into a wealthy upper-class family.

However, one can also enter upper classes, for example:

• Marrying into upper class
• Moving and matching the elites
• Joining the ruling class as a top politician
• Etc., etc.

4. Influencer Approach & Digital Popularity

Attention has always been a currency of status, and the digital age changed the game.

Digital popularity breaks the traditional barriers of status to achieve global status.

Written language first endowed writers to transcend interpersonal interactions, and it accelerated with Internet and social media.

Influencers can also lean more toward prestige or dominance, but prestige works better for influencers.

5. Status Signaling

In The Cambridge Handbook on Evolutionary Perspectives, Chapais claims that, together with seeking and defending status, signaling status is a universal human adaptation.

Many verbal and nonverbal behaviors help signal and attain status.
Some of them include:

• Visual dominance, defined as the ratio of looking while speaking to looking while listening (Exline, Ellyson, & Long, 1975)
  • High-status subjects look in equal measure speaking and listening, looking more than most others (Dovidio et al., 1988)
  • Low-status subjects looked more while listening and less while speaking (Ellyson et al., 1980)
• Dominant men look less at subordinates while listening (Exline, Ellyson, & Long, 1975)
• People look more at high-status men than low-status males or females (Maner, DeWall, & Gailliot, 2008)

Carmey looked at Trump more than Trump looked at him, while rotating toward him more than Trump did. Trump was dismissive, but signaled higher power

Of course, as for most human adaptations and behaviors, men likely differ in their ability to signal status.
And the most skilled signalers reap the largest rewards.

Learn more about status signaling:

• High-status behavior
• Low-status behavior

Status VS Liking

Status and acceptance are different, and sometimes opposite.

For example, Cheng and Tracy state that touting status-related traits conveys superiority. That may afford status, but the competitiveness or envy it generates may decrease liking.

The status/acceptance tradeoff is likely related to the ‘pratfall effect’, or being more liked after a blunder.

People seem subconsciously aware of this tradeoff, and acceptance-craving individuals underestimate their status (Anderson et al. 2006).
This may be linked to people pleasers’ tendency to over-self-deprecate.

Status for the ambitious, acceptance for nice-guys…

Hierometer theory suggests that some men, including grandiose narcissists, focus on status, rather than inclusion.

In general, a stronger drive for status and power over inclusion is associated with masculinity, over femininity (Hays, 2013; Yang & Girgus, 2019).

This isn’t to say that plenty of men don’t prioritize inclusion, of course. However, as Storr suggests, connection without status is hollow.
As a man, you’re neither successful nor happy being ‘accepted’ as the lowest rung.

Storr calls that “connected but low status” state “likable but useless”.
Instead, successful men are driven both to “get along and get ahead”.

We agree with Storr’s analysis, but you can combine status and liking:

… And both for life winners

Status and liking Matrix, Lucio Buffalmano, 2025

Prestige allows for both liking and status.
And our power/warmth approach strengthens it with the best of both worlds:

• Combining liking and status with power and warmth

Why Status Even Exist?

Status is a constant of all social animals.

But one may wonder: why lower-status individuals accept it?

Evolution, game theory, and power dynamics explain why.

Most lower-status individuals accept hierarchies because little is better than nothing, and subversion would incur bigger losses.

Species with near-zero resources for low-status individuals see more rebellion and conflict because ‘with nothing to lose, you can risk everything’.

But most commonly, low-status men retain some of the following benefits:

• Better health and survival
  • Stay in the group
  • Partake in shared resources
  • Avoid harm
• Better mating odds
  • Kin reproduction
  • Lower-status women mating
  • Sneaky mating
• Future status re-negotiations (biding time strategy)

In short, hierarchies are an ‘evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS)’ because there is something in it for everyone, and it beats any alternative strategy.

Over time, evolution also shaped behaviors and physiologies that reinforce hierarchy formation and acceptance (eg.: high status feels good, submission to high-status individuals decreases stress, and self-regard tracks social power to act accordingly).
As mentioned already, evolutionary theories suggest depression may be linked to social status, helping low-status men avoid the costs of challenging higher-status individuals (Price et al., 1994).

Superior Group Performance

Hierarchies’ fewer fights also translate into saved energy and increased cooperation (Berger et al. 1980).

Evolutionary theories of cooperation and morality suggest that human status is deeply tied to the evolution of moral systems and collaborative behavior—key factors behind our success as a species.

In competition within our species, hierarchical groups tend to outperform and displace non-hierarchical ones due to their greater coordination and efficiency (see Henrich, 2020 for cultural expansion).

Hardwired, but also learned

Sapolsky argues that submission and aggression are hardwired, but we learn the calibration -when and how to use them-.

While we can’t easily test in humans, a monkey raised in isolation displayed all the “correct” aggressive and submissive behavior, but at the wrong times and with the wrong people.
For example, challenging the alpha without strength and allies, and losing.

Learn more:

• Social calibration

Who Seeks Status

Status-seeking is a human universal drive (Anderson et al., 2015).
Meaning that everyone prefers more status.

But some want it more than others, including:

• Men, more than women because of their reproductive differential
• High testosterone individuals (Sapolsky, 2017)
• High social-dominance orientation men, a scale measuring the preference for social hierarchies and group-based inequality
• Narcissists

Let’s dig deeper:

Dark Triad Traits & Status

Dark triad men pursue status and power more than the average (Lyons, 2019).

• Narcissists pursue status: although vulnerable narcissists may not be as effective, grandiose ones are
  • Grandiose narcissists gain status (Grapsas et al., 2019), but lose reputation with growing intimacy (probably as the ‘real’ them is revealed).
    One study found that the ‘dark’ aspects of narcissism (ie.: manipulativeness) lowered leadership ratings but ‘bright’ expressions like self-confidence helped (note: lower ratings doesn’t mean one can’t become the leader)

• Machiavellians gain status. I find ‘socially strategic’ to overlap with Machiavellianism, which has been shown to facilitate influence and leadership (Christie and Geis, 1970)

• Psychochpathy is a double-edged sword: psychopathy is probably related to the dominant approach, which can be effective. But higher psychopathy is maladaptive for long term and society-wide socio-economic status

Why Power Beats Status

Status binds you to other people’s acceptance. Power frees you

Status is important, and it’s one of Power University‘s key outcome.

However, we approach status-building at the group level as a stage toward empowerment.
The original dominance and prestige researchers explain why:

since status relies on others, (…) high-status parties (…) strive to fulfill others’ expectations
(…)
This description of the effects of status stands in stark contrast to the effects of power, which liberates people from social and normative pressures 

Meaning: power is superior for self-empowerment.
Especially if we include the time and energy cost of the games people play in groups.

Status is also a double-edged sword for our ‘win-win’ preference.
Status games that reward contribution build empires and propel civilization forward.
But antisocial status games and status-awarding inter-group competition can turn toxic.

Fortunately, modernity frees you from status dependence because you can achieve your goals alone, or enter and exit countless groups.

So we advise you to learn the skills to acquire status in any group, while being independent of any specific group.
Think of ‘abundance mindset’, but applied to socialization.

In the vernacular of male self-development status-seeking relates to ‘alpha males‘, while our approach relates to ‘sigma males’.

We help men master to game, so they can transcend it 🦅.

Learn more:

• The big fish in the small pond syndrome
• High-value men
• Power University: for top-1% status -and transcending it-