Why do we all want to keep up with the Joneses

10 years ago, I had just left university. I was rushing around London, climbing the corporate ladder, and spending my wages on new clothes and nights out.

Today, I live in a self-converted van, my commute is a walk along the beach, and I spend my days writing.

What changed?

I stopped playing the game that society wanted me to play. Instead, I prioritised the games that brought me lasting happiness and satisfaction.

In this newsletter, I am going to explain why our need to play status games often drives behaviour that is sub-optimal for our long-term happiness and break down how we can ‘hack’ this same human urge to encourage actions more aligned to our true values.

We’ve evolved to crave status and to want to signal our status to others.

What is status signalling?

Every human on the planet engages in status-signalling but very few recognise the power it has over their actions.

Marketing departments realised it and they have long been using it to extract money from our wallets. An understanding of this simple human need is enough for you to wrestle the power back and armed with this knowledge, you can use it to benefit your life and your bank balance.

As a social species, our individual survival relied upon status. Those that were higher status ate first, partnered with the most mates, and parented the most offspring. We evolved to crave status.

We also evolved a sophisticated status detection system. This allowed individuals to measure how they’re performing against others based on status signals.

When we see someone with something we don’t have or ‘better’, our detection system sends signals that we are lower status. Our brain tricks us into taking the actions required to attain that item. It tells us that if we only get that thing, we’ll be happy.

This mechanism was useful in the past as it helped us to survive within the group. But today, instead of ensuring our survival, it’s used against us.

All day, every day, we’re told that to be happy you need the latest gadget, eat at the priciest restaurant, and wear the newest, most fashionable clothes.

Deep down we know this isn’t true, but we often feel powerless to resist it.

What can we do about it?

Status signalling comes in all shapes and sizes, and the most common form is to buy expensive items. For those that have played and won the game of money, there is nothing inherently wrong with this. But for most people, signalling they have more money than they do, leaves them broke and miserable.

The first step in reversing this downward spiral is to acknowledge that we are hardwired to engage in this behaviour and not to beat ourselves up about it.

The next step is to realise there is another way.

In his brilliant book, The Status Game, Will Storr wrote that humans play three different status games: games of dominance, virtue, and success. Games of dominance have little to no benefit today, but games of virtue and success explain a lot of what is brilliant and beautiful. It is the desire to win these games that drives people to build businesses, run governments and provide essential services to humanity.

Within these games there are different metrics of success. The most easily measured metric is money and, as already mentioned, people use money to buy expensive items to signal they have won. In the past this was a reliable indicator of someone’s success. Today, anyone can take out a line of credit and buy an expensive handbag.

A status game also never ends. It is why each billionaire feels the need to build a slightly bigger yacht than the last. And if you are competing in the game of money, your self-worth is obliterated the minute someone outdoes you.

Luckily, we are intelligent humans. We can rationalise and reason and we aren’t powerless to the whims of marketing departments.

Will Storr says by choosing which status games we play; we can prioritise those that bring lasting happiness and boost our self-worth. Instead of money, we can compete on metrics like skills, knowledge, or compassion. You could decide you want to be in the top quartile of runners at your local Park Run. Or you could pride yourself on being the person that shares interesting ideas and theories with your social group.

You can also play positive sum games where there isn’t a winner and a loser but rather everyone gains. Those that give to charity or build worthy businesses rarely do it anonymously but, in this status game, everyone benefits.

Where to go from here:

By simply understanding that you are playing a game, you can avoid many of the pitfalls of status signalling. Recognising that a large part of the impulse to buy a new car is in part to signal status, provides a buffer between you thinking it and buying it. This buffer provides the time required to rationalise the decision and ensure it is one that is going to bring lasting happiness rather than a quick dopamine hit followed by years of debt repayments and stress.

To further reclaim your happiness by shifting the status games you play, here are some actionable steps you can take:

Identify your true values:

What really matters to you - is it family, creativity or being outdoors?

Become the person that others describe as ‘The [insert your value]’.

· ‘The perfect family man’.

· ‘The artist’.

· ‘The outdoorsy one’.

· ‘The runner’.

I have been, and still am at times, guilty of buying something in the hope it will make me happy. But by reflecting on my values, and playing status games aligned to them, I find I need less and less stuff.

 Limit exposure to advertising:

Use ad blockers, unsubscribe from promotional emails, and get away from it all by spending time in nature. Advertisers prey on our human instinct to crave status and often convince you to buy things you don’t need or want. 

Set meaningful goals.

It is easy to get caught up in a game someone else wants you to play but doesn’t bring meaning to your life. Set goals according to your values identified above. 

Goals could include running a marathon, learning a language, building a business, or in my case, self-converting a van. You will inevitably find more satisfaction in the pursuit of these loftier goals, all the while having less time to spend money on things.

For some, the busy corporate life brings pure joy. Competing in this game is the right path for them. For others, they may need to go against the status quo to find what works for them.

Whatever path you take, if you spend less, invest the rest, and move toward financial independence you’ll have more freedom to focus on the games that suit you.

Choose your games wisely. It is the status games we play, that drive a lot of our behaviour and determine our journey in life.