The Three Status Games
Identify whether people seek status through dominance, virtue, or success
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 98%
People do not compete within one universal hierarchy; they join groups that reward different symbolic claims to status. Will Storr distinguishes dominance, virtue, and success games. Dominance relies on aggression, threat, or coercion. Virtue rewards moral behaviour, generosity, courage, rule-following, and service to the group. Success rewards competence, achievement, and useful contributions. The practical mechanism is to identify the relevant group, observe what it praises or condemns, and determine which game sets its hierarchy. This explains why a person can feel prestigious in one environment and insecure in another: the scorecard has changed. Used carefully, the model helps people choose healthier games, interpret slights less personally, and avoid assuming that everyone values the same status symbols.
Origin
Will Storr developed the model after noticing mutual discomfort between himself and a physically formidable ghostwriting client. Each had entered a world where the other's criteria for status—physical achievement versus books and cultural accomplishment—carried more weight. Extracted from Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal.
Core principles
- 01People pursue status using different criteria.
- 02Dominance gains compliance through aggression or coercion.
- 03Virtue gains respect through moral conduct and group service.
- 04Success gains prestige through demonstrated competence or achievement.
- 05Conflict often arises when people apply different status scorecards.
How to run it
- 1
Define the group
Identify the specific community, profession, team, or audience in which status is being allocated. Avoid treating society as one undifferentiated hierarchy.
Pro tip Look for the people whose approval or rejection changes participants' behaviour.
Watch out A person may belong to several games at once.
- 2
Find the scorecard
Observe what the group praises, displays, measures, and condemns. These signals reveal its symbolic status currency.
Pro tip Pay attention to possessions, credentials, moral positions, stories, rankings, and insider language.
Watch out Your own status symbols may have little value in this group.
- 3
Classify the game
Determine whether status is mainly claimed through dominance, virtue, or success. Some environments combine all three, but one may dominate a particular interaction.
Pro tip Ask whether people gain rank by intimidating, behaving morally, or demonstrating results.
Watch out Virtue and success signals can be used manipulatively as well as sincerely.
- 4
Choose a healthy contribution
Create value using conduct appropriate to the game without coercing or humiliating other participants. Prefer earned prestige over forced submission.
Pro tip Make your contribution useful to both the group and its members.
Watch out Winning a toxic game can reinforce the environment that made it toxic.
- 5
Recalibrate across contexts
Expect your relative standing to change when the group or scorecard changes. Treat the discomfort as contextual information rather than proof of personal inadequacy.
Pro tip Maintain several meaningful communities so no single hierarchy defines your identity.
Watch out Constantly switching comparison groups can produce endless dissatisfaction.
In the wild
Storr expected a highly masculine client with a military background to dismiss him as a bookish outsider. Instead, both appeared slightly intimidated. The client possessed status through physicality and success in a violent world, while Storr possessed status through books, reviews, art, and cultural knowledge. Each became less secure when entering the other's environment because the local status scorecard had changed.
→ Storr recognised that people compete in multiple local games rather than one universal hierarchy.
On social media, aggressive attacks and doxxing express dominance; political and moral declarations express virtue; and displays of bodies, holidays, meals, or professional achievements express success. A single platform can therefore host all three games simultaneously.
→ Users can identify what reward they are gambling for before posting or reacting.
Common mistakes
Assuming one universal hierarchy
People value different status symbols, so rank in one community may not transfer to another. Treating every encounter as the same contest produces needless insecurity and misjudgment.
Confusing dominance with prestige
Coercing compliance can create rank, but it does not create the voluntary respect earned through virtue or competence.
Pretending to be outside the game
Rejecting conventional status symbols can itself become a way of claiming superior status within an alternative group.
Is it for you?
Best for
It is best for people navigating workplaces, communities, online platforms, or unfamiliar social environments.
Not ideal for
It is not ideal for reducing every human motive to status while ignoring affection, curiosity, survival, or other needs.
From the transcript
“we're not all competing with each other, we're playing different status games.”
“there's two forms of prestige. We get them from other people, other people voluntarily give them to us when we do good thing.”
“If you think about those three, those three games, dominance, virtue and success? Yeah, that's what social media is.”
From the episode
How and Why We Play Social Status Games - Will Storr
Will Storr