The Influence of Status Games on Teenagers

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During adolescence, our brains undergo changes that make us more conscious of other people's opinions and care deeply about our reputation within our peer group. This leads to a combination of risk-taking and intense embarrassment. Teenagers flock to peer groups in order to engage in status games and form social groups. They drive too fast and take crazy risks to gain status from their peers, but are also easily embarrassed because their brains are highly sensitive to these new status games. Despite thinking of themselves as individuals, they actually become clones of their social group. This shift from simplistic games of family and youth to adult status games marks the transition into adulthood.

In this episode we welcome back author Will Storr whose new book, The Status Game, feels like required reading for anyone confused, curious, or worried about how politics, cults, conspiracy theories communities, social media, religious fundamentalism, polarization, and extremism are affecting us - everywhere, on and offline, across cultures, and across the world.

What is The Status Game? It’s our primate propensity to perpetually pursue points that will provide a higher level of regard among the people who can (if we provoked such a response) take those points away. And deeper still, it’s the propensity to, once we find a group of people who regularly give us those points, care about what they think more than just about anything else.

In the interview, we discuss our inescapable obsession with reputation and why we are deeply motivated to avoid losing this game through the fear of shame, ostracism, embarrassment, and humiliation while also deeply motivated to win this game by earning what will provide pride, fame, adoration, respect, and status.