Alternative status signals

Status symbols are a way for people to communicate their social rank or hierarchy to others. Symbols of status are everywhere. They are in the clothes we wear, the cars we drive, the homes we live in and the schools we attend. They are even in the food we eat. Social media is one of the preferred ways people communicate their status to friends and even strangers.

Sociologists distinguish between traditional and alternative status symbols, with the latter gaining more popularity in recent years. In every culture, certain things signify wealth, power and prestige. But status symbols vary from country to country.

Silvia Bellezza is an associate professor of business in marketing at Columbia Business School. Her work examines traditional status signals (e.g., conventional luxury brands and products) and alternative status signals (e.g., minimalism, vintage, sustainable luxury). In one of her papers, Bellezza discusses how busyness has become one of the most prevalent alternative status symbols for today’s glitterati.

In 1899, the sociologist Thorstein Veblen wrote in his book Theory of the Leisure Class that “conspicuous abstention from labour…. becomes the conditional mark of superior pecuniary achievement”. Put simply, the richer one gets, the less one works and the more likely one is to try to show off one’s ample leisure time. 

Veblen’s theory is less true today, even though, in many cultures, flaunting wealth through ownership of luxury cars, Rolex watches or designer handbags remains prevalent. However, in the US and increasingly in some advanced Western economies, one can guess how rich someone is by the long hours they put in at work. Bellezza argues that in the US, the wealthiest people, on average, work more than those who are poorer than they are.

Being well-off and time-poor is a status symbol driven by the perception that a busy person possesses the desired human capital characteristics (competence, ambition and motivation) that are scarce in the job market. Wannabe executives try to impress job interviewers by asserting they do not mind working long hours and hate taking sick or vacation leave. Nice watches or cars are now mass-produced and more widely available than they used to be, so they no longer signal status for many.

Describing oneself as a ‘workaholic’ has become a claim to the admiration of those other mortals who do what needs to be done without bragging about how much they work. Social media has amplified the workaholic syndrome.

Just look at Facebook every morning, and you are bound to see a picture of a politician or a public organisation high priest sitting in business class on an aircraft, ready to take off for an important conference. Business and political leaders want you to believe that jetting off the island every few days, wining, dining and attending ‘boring’ conferences are some of the ‘tedious chores’ successful leaders must do for our common good. 

Being well-off and time-poor is a status symbol driven by the perception that a busy person possesses the desired human capital characteristics that are scarce in the job market

Bellezza makes an interesting observation about how different cultures perceive busyness. Most Western economies are now based on services rather than manufacturing or agriculture. When people are told that a hypothetical person is very busy, they immediately think about a white-collar job. When the same people are told that it is a blue-collar job, the inference regarding status is significantly weakened.

People who think that if you work hard, you can make it to the top seem more likely to believe that the busy person is higher in status. But in work environments where people are always expected to work hard, bragging about being a workaholic is hardly a status symbol. In fact, in such environments, being capable of having leisure time may signal that you are actually excellent and capable of striking the right balance between work and leisure.

Bellezza, who is Italian, compares Americans’ and Italians’ attitudes towards hard work. Mediterranean countries like Spain, Italy, Greece, and, to some extent, France, undoubtedly have a culture in which leisure time and what you do when you are not working is as central as work.

In her research, Bellezza found that when she asked Italians what they thought of someone who is not working as much, they immediately concluded that the person was rich.

When she asked the same question of Americans, they figured this person probably could not work and must be something wrong with them.

As long as we live in a social context, anything we do can be interpreted and have some signalling value. Why are so many unreasonably obsessed with what others think of them?