Status Signals
Talks about status signals, designing products using status signals, and countersignaling to improve lives.
I got recently interested 'Status signals' after getting to know about it from 'The elephant in the brain' book and Kunal Shah
Everything that we do in life has some sort of hidden agenda or motives. Let us go through a few questions.
If getting tastier food is the agenda, why do we prefer going to luxurious hotels? If getting to know the time is the only thing that matters, why do we have to buy Rolex or apple watches?
Everything we do, right from the place where we live and the cars we drive, we are constantly signaling the outside world about ourselves. Even myself writing this blog post would be to signal you about my understanding and intellectual curiosity.
Let's imagine you're walking into the office of a lawyer. He has 1000's of books stacked in his room behind his chair. All of them are neatly designed in red and the entire room looks a lot intellectual. And when the moment the lawyer walks in, he'd have a lot of leverage because your brain already made up a lot of assumptions about the lawyer.
Assumption 1: This lawyer is intellectual since he read many of the books
Assumption 2: The neat look of the room definitely means we might win the case since he's intellectual.
The books in the lawyer room are a signal of the intellect for the client to develop trust. We do a variety of status signals like this with different hidden objectives.
What is this signaling and why?
The concept of signaling came from biology. For any species, two things are really important
Surviving
Passing on genes from one generation to the next
In order to survive, animals must signal to other predators that they’re stronger and not afraid. For eg: Coral snakes produce bright red venom which can be seen from a long distance so that it’d save them from predators.
In order to pass the genes or to attract a successful mate, the animal has to be attractive and grab attention in its own way. For eg: A male peacock has this beautiful feathers to attract females. It is just to have better probabilities of mating finally.
Let’s get back to humans. We signal various things like the place we live, the shoes we wear, the phone models we use to gain social status. So all of this to survive and find a better mate? The short answer is yes.
So to define signaling, it’s a hidden dimension of the way we communicate the outside world. It’s beyond language and other forms of communication.
Mating and survival are basic needs. Where as the psychological needs includes prestige, feeling of accomplishment. Signaling happens on both the basic and psychological needs. The need to be superior.
Since you understand signaling a little bit, let’s get down to it’s usage in real life scenarios.
Signaling in products:
Many softwares and products like bags, phones uses this signaling concept to their advantage. Let me give you some examples
Twitter for iPhone badge - Indicates that I can afford iPhone and even the likes and quote tweet are byproducts of signaling.
2. Mails like sanjai@hey.com. Your psychology goes like - Woah, he can afford paying 99 dollars for an email service even when there’s free service like emails.
3. Wearing costly suits indicates that you can afford buying those hence you feel confident/superior while having conversation with the peers.
4. Advertisements mostly indicates a happy life when you buy certain product. They signal prestige. A lifestyle.
5. Wearing skins and having badges - Badges and skins in games are signaling affordability or singnaling the experience that you have in game
6. Reviews in apps - It signals whether a product is worth buying or no. It helps you make decisions. You can’t let any random person to get inside your home gate but now more delivery people are visiting and delivering products. Reviews helps there. It signals the trust, the experience of the particular person with the company. That’s why zomato or other food delivery apps introduce various badges like temperature, vaccine certificates, number of rides etc.
All of the information given above signals trust.
But all the signals we receive are honest? We have to think based on situations. It’s easier to fake the signals. For eg: Influencers posting all happier pictures in Instagram even if they’re not happy. We like to buy costlier products even if we are broke
Wealth isn’t what you see. Wealth is what you don’t see
We calculate someone’s wealth by their ability to spend. We calculate someone’s intelligence by the number of likes and retweets on twitter. We celebrate people based on their looks. Most of them are useless. We make these assumptions because it’s easier to think. The more easier it is, less energy it needs for the brain to think. That’s why assumptions spreads faster. Signaling can be deceptive. But being consious and understanding about signals helps you reap the benefits.
But signaling what takes a lot of energy. Imagine you putting up 10 years of lifesaving into buying a car just to look rich infront of others? It’s almost a bad financial decision. In animals, the peacock can’t fly because of it’s own beautiful feather
If you’re a product manager or enterpreneur reading this, do think of ways on how to introduce signaling concept in products you build. Making people feel cool about using the product almost never fails.
Countersignaling
Countersignaling is where you’ve reached certain position that you don’t necessarily feel the pressure to signal your wealth or status or expertise.
For eg: CEO’s wearing same Tshirt everyday. Smart students unwilling to raise their hands to answer the questions in class. It’s all countersignaling because they already are contented and they don’t have the need to showcase anything more or they’re much well established already.
Countersignaling let you free up your resource, time and energy.
Conclusion
Be consious about what you signal the outside world and what signals you receive. Don’t let your brain takes assumptions because it’s easier.
Thanks to Kunal Shah, Paras Chopra and research articles on internet which let me think about different dimension of life and psychological behaviors.