Dominance Hides in Prestige Clothing

21 months ago, I said: 

We like to give others the impression that we personally mainly want prestige in ourselves and our associates, and that we only grant others status via the prestige they have earned. But let me suggest that, compared to this ideal, we actually want more dominance in ourselves and our associates than we like to admit, and we submit more often to dominance. In the following, I’ll offer three lines of evidence for this claim. First consider that we like to copy the consumer purchases of people that we envy, but not of people we admire for being “warm” and socially responsible. … Second, consider the fact that when our bosses or presidents retire and leave office, their legitimate prestige should not have diminished much. … Yet others usually show far less interest in associating with such retirees. … For my third line of evidence, … for long term mates we more care about prestige features that are good for the group, but for short term mates, we care more about dominance features that are more directly useful to us personally. (more)

Today I’ll describe a fourth line of evidence: when ranking celebrities, we don’t correct much for the handicaps that people face. Let me explain.

Dominance is about power, while prestige is about ability. Now on average having more ability does tend to result in having more power. But there are many other influences on power besides individual ability. For example, there’s a person’s family’s wealth and influence, and the power they gained via associating with powerful institutions and friends.  

As I know the world of intellectuals better than other worlds, let give examples from there. Intellectuals who go to more prestigious schools and who get better jobs at more prestigious institutions have clear advantages in this world. And those whose parents were intellectuals, or who grew up in more intellectual cultures, had advantages. Having more financial support and access to better students to work with are also big helps. But when we consider which intellectuals to most praise and admire (e.g., who deserves a Nobel prize), we mainly look at the impact they’ve had, without correcting this much for these many advantages and obstacles. 

Oh sure, when it is we ourselves who are judged, we are happy to argue that our handicaps should be corrected for. After all, most of us don’t have as many advantages as do the most successful people. And we are sometimes willing to endorse correcting for handicaps with politically allied groups. So if we feel allied with the religious and politically conservative, we may note that they tend more obstacles in intellectual worlds today. And if we feel allied with women or ethnic minorities, we may also endorse taking into account the extra obstacles that they often face. 

But these corrections are often half-hearted, and they seem the exceptions that prove a rule: when we pick our intellectual heroes, we don’t correct much for all these handicaps and advantages. We mainly just want powerful dominant heroes. 

In acting, music, and management, being good looking is a big advantage. But while we tend to say that we disapprove of this advantage, we don’t correct for it much when evaluating such people. Oscar awards are mostly the pretty actors, for example.