There is much wisdom in improv. I would encourage anyone and everyone to take at least a "Intro to Improv" or "Improv 101" course. It can definitely change your outlook.<p>And as far as "hacking the status game" goes, this is part of what the Pickup Artists have been teaching for a while... how a given woman reacts to you is largely about how <i>you</i> present <i>yourself</i>. Act like she's the superior in the relationship, "the prize" as it were, and she'll lower her view of you. Treat her as a peer, or someone of lower status, and you actually become more attractive. Well, that's the theory anyway, and it definitely seems to be borne out at times.<p>Of course this concept is more general than just interacting with the opposite sex. But you have to be careful... too much of this with your boss, and you may get written up for insubordination or something. :-)
If you're interested, try reading Keith Johnstone's Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre, which has gems like this in it:<p>"Once you understand that every sound and posture implies a status, then you perceive the world quite differently, and the change is probably permanent. In my view, really accomplished actors, directors, and playwrights are people with an intuitive understanding of the status transactions that govern human relationships. This ability to perceive the underlying motives of casual behaviour can also be taught" (72).<p>Or this: "A further early discovery [in theatre status games] was that there was no way to be neutral [...] The messages are modified by the receivers" (37).<p>Consequently, we all have to play status "games" (an imperfect term that nonetheless gets used frequently) whether we wish to or not. Attempting not to play such games might confer the highest status of all, implying that one doesn't need to rely on status modifications to achieve social standing: one is beyond the petty concerns and judgments of others. Chances are that almost one actually is beyond such judgment, but we would like to pretend that we are.
Fascinating. And furthermore, smart people may be at a major disadvantage with this game; as Bertrand Russell said, "The trouble with this world is that the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt." Put another way, overconfidence and bravado come readily to those with the least real skill and insight; people who know enough to realize they don't know may often stay quiet and deferential.<p>But at the other extreme, people who have reached mastery in something often exhibit a subtle authority which shows up in body language alone.
One thing that's always important to emphasize to people who first discover status games is that it's not always about high status. High status is high reward but also high risk. Properly playing the status game means being able to move fluidly from high to low status as the situation and context demands.
<i>Almost every person correctly guessed the number on his or her forehead, or was off only by 1! Could this mean that it wasn’t a game we were playing for the first time? Could it be that we’re playing that game over and over every day?</i><p>Really? Maybe it's just that, once everyone knows the rules of the game, they are reasonably successful in communicating a tiny piece of information (a single number) to each other.<p><i>This demonstrated that by simply deciding to change my own status and acting accordingly, the other person almost immediately granted me that status and at times, changed their own.</i><p>That's because he thought he was <i>supposed</i> to, not because it was necessarily something he would normally have done.
The timing of this post is a coincidence because I just did the "status game" this past weekend at my improv class. It's a fun insightful game and Amir is spot on about the fact that we are always playing this game. In fact, we were in a class with 12 people, and after walking and interacting around the room (while only knowing the numbers of everyone but yourself on the forehead), the instructor asked us to arrange ourselves in ascending order in a line. It was amazing how almost everyone knew where exactly they were with respect to everyone else (especially when a #5 and a #6 interact, its hard to figure out if you are the superior or not, but the subtleties do tell quite a bit). Both times we did the exercise, only one person was out of place, and that too, they were right next to each other.<p>Like mindcrime says, there is quite a bit of wisdom in improv. I enrolled in classes because I wanted something very different to break up my usual routine that mostly involves writing code. What was really enlightening to me was that most of improv was not about being funny, but really about the fundamentals of how to communiciate and convey something to a fellow improviser as well as the audience, in the least amount of time (short scenes).
The scene in <i>Office Space</i> where Peter is talking to the two Bobs, while presented as comedy, is a perfect example of how this actually works. As soon as he acts like he isn't subordinate to them, they begin to feel that he's "management material".
This is such a key insight. Coming from a lower-middle class background and working my way up in large corporations, the power of "status" slowly dawned on me. Some kid from a well-off background comes in and acts like he owns the place, and it works with 7 out of 10 people! Meanwhile a guy from a lower socioeconomic class comes in, works his arse off and hesitates asking for a raise because he's afraid of overstepping -- this guy gets looked down on or taken advantage of by 7 out of 10 people.<p>Would be nice to have learned about this earlier.
If you get really good at this sort of thing you can take people's wallets just by asking
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DR4y5iX4uRY" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DR4y5iX4uRY</a>
Was it just me or did anyone else think of "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell? The author of this article implicitly assumes that all the participants of the game come from similar cultural backgrounds.<p>Read: <a href="http://bokardo.com/archives/what-malcolm-gladwells-book-outliers-can-teach-us-about-interface-design/" rel="nofollow">http://bokardo.com/archives/what-malcolm-gladwells-book-outl...</a><p>Some cultures, e.g. Colombian or South Korean, are more geared towards respecting authority than other cultures, e.g. New Yorkers. A collision of two such disparate cultures can result in disasters such as Flight 052:<p><a href="https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Avianca_Flight_52" rel="nofollow">https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Avianca_Fligh...</a><p>More details about the Power Distance Index (PDI): <a href="http://www.maximizingutility.com/2009/06/culture-clash-power-distance-index.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.maximizingutility.com/2009/06/culture-clash-power...</a>
Well said. Skills and attitudes from improv are incredibly useful in all kinds of situations ...<p>A variant I'd suggest when playing the game in real life: as well as imagining an ace on your own forehead, imagine that the other person also has an ace.
Strikingly similar to "karma". People don't care about some number, but their status.<p>When pg experimented with visually distinguishing people with high avg karma (an orange dot IIRC), many people noticed the changing status dynamics (a lower "cringed" before a higher), and it discouraged discussion between equals.
I wonder if this guy is hacking the status game with this 'my latest project Keynotopia was built in 3 hours with a budget of $47' claim.<p>It's like he's saying, 'yeah, that's right, I'm a fucking rock star programmer. The type that makes things happen. The type that's 100x more productive than the average coder. The type you need to hire.'<p>Cause otherwise, why would he bother saying that, as customers usually want to believe a lot of work has gone into something before they buy it.
A few summers ago when I was in Sunnyvale I took a course at the SF Comedy College (<a href="http://www.sfcomedycollege.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.sfcomedycollege.com/</a>). The course opened my mind up to being completely in the moment and creative without overthinking things (applicable to almost everything you do in life). They go through common improv exercises like Yes-ands and scenario role plays. Highly recommend improv classes.
I've always liked the phrase, "99% of success is just showing up", although to be honest 0% of success happens when you don't. Self-confidence is a hard thing to gain but really worthwhile trying all you can.
Isn't this analogous to a "guess a number" game? You have a stack of cards that range from 2 to Ace. If I were to play this game I would not start talking to a guy who has a King on his forehead. I would go to a 5-7 and then determine where I ranked, if I felt I were below 5-7, then I know I am in 2-4 or if I were above them, 8-K. It would seem it would only take only a few more iterations to figure out which status I have.
There is an excellent discussion of status games in the book "Impro." Highly recommend it if you're interested in hacking the non-tech side of things.<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Impro-Improvisation-Theatre-Keith-Johnstone/dp/0878301178" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/Impro-Improvisation-Theatre-Keith-John...</a>
I guess this could be good advice for manipulating status for short time periods (dating, job interviews, business meetings, etc.), but fortunately once it goes beyond that (relationships, careers, business deals, etc.) the status of everyone involved will settle down to the natural order of things.
if you go into a conversation mentally giving people status', and then swap in the middle unbeknownst to the other people in the conversation, wouldnt that just really confuse them and make them think, "wait, am I the alpha male or is he.....i coulda sworn he was but then, it just kinda changed..."
Also, think like a winner.<p>(Yay, games with life.)<p>Be careful with this when there are <i>actual</i> status labels in play. Like rank or position. Act like you're an Ace around a boss or slight superior who's not an idiot and you may find yourself wearing that person's patience down <i>very</i> fast.
Interesting. I imagine that observers notice "tells" of some kind when a person is acting above their own internal status estimate, and downgrade their own status estimate of that person accordingly.
Great post until the end, when it was mentioned that everyone should be treated as an ace. I don't agree, because quite simply, not everyone is an ace.