“The important issue is not how much
inequality there is but how much opportunity there is for individuals to get
out of the bottom classes and into the top….If you have opportunity, there is a
greater tolerance for inequality.”
--
Economist Milton Friedman
Opportunity
Friedman’s perspective is the American popular stance on
the exchange of the egalitarian model for social mobility and the potential
gains it represents. Americans more or
less constantly imagine ourselves as upwardly mobile—hence the current focus on
the “fact” that we are the first generation fated to do less well than our
parents. Ambition causes us to ignore
the many insults to our status at the lower end as we work our fortunes up the
progress ladder.
This upward identification also explains the popularity of
luxury brands in designer clothing, accessories, beauty, and housewares for a
large and growing middle class—the 90% of Americans who identify this way. That is quite a range of occupation, income,
and education (the way the US government defines social categories) that all
consider themselves middle of the curve.
As Americans, that’s just our start point. Almost every decision we make is in the service
of moving our status upward, or at least holding it steady against slipping
downward. That includes the career we
hope to build, the money we hope to make, and the school and working experience
we bring to the first two.
Hierarchy
Humans are the most hierarchical of the primates. We live in the most complex universe of ways
to be ranked by competence, esteem, resources, relationships, and power. This
is the reason that everything we engage in involves some range of unequal
opportunities and rewards (Cecilia Ridgeway describes this world as a “struggle
for precedence.” (2013, American Sociological Review)
Fear and aggression are not just consequences of living in
difficult times or environments, but natural outcomes of the anxiety humans
experience because of our hierarchies; the way we need to think about, and
interact with, others. This state is based on our higher or lower relationship
with them. This is why we spend most of our time in “social thinking,” trying
to determine our standing, our potential standing, and the intentions of others
by navigating our way through social situations, real, contingent, and
imaginary. Its extreme form is Social
Anxiety Disorder, a distraught condition in which these thoughts are highly
anxiety-producing.
Stress anxiety
The psychic outcome is social anxiety resulting in negative
effects on GI functioning, sleep, sex drive, and blood pressure acted on by
adrenaline and cortisol. Our large
social brains are always subconsciously addressing complex social situations
and transactions. The resulting stress
correlates well with our relative place in the social pecking order. What keeps
this stress loop going is the difficulty of predicting what constitutes either
a social threat or promise, and to what extent we can determine these are either
real, likely, or projected by our own fears, doubts, and uncertainty.
For example, social media leads to insecurity because
everyone is posing and posting their own lives as better than others. Poverty is connected with a lower level of
neuronal connectivity in the frontal cortex (inhibition control and restraint,
focus, decision-making ability). Chronic
and generalized stress leading to hypertension and depression is an expression
of feeling subordinate or less powerful.
Our feelings of self-efficacy—how competent and confident we are—are
tied to the way we perceive our social rank.
Social rank and dominance are directly linked to feelings
of confidence, self-possession, optimism about the future, relatedness to
others, and ability to navigate the social landscape. The American values of mobility and choice
are tied into a lack of connection and obligation to others—but only the
positive side of that ethic, that of being free to make autonomous choices, to
make up and then change our minds, and choose our associates as we see fit
without loss of stability and support.
Neurobiologist Robert Sapolsky comments in an interview on
stress in primates that “Up until 15 years ago, the most striking thing we
found was that, if you're a baboon, you don't want to be low ranking, because
your health is going to be lousy. But what has become far clearer, and probably
took a decade's worth of data, is the recognition that protection from
stress-related disease is most powerfully grounded in social connectedness, and
that's far more important than rank."
(3.7.07, Stanford News)
Analog: Alpha-companies
versus Beta-consumers
Is there an operational analogy between being one-down on
the social hierarchy ladder and being a consumer? Why do consumers feel so contentious and
adversarial about systems they have bought into that are pledged to “work with
you” to resolve problems? Our current research with a consumer rights agency has
inspired some digging into the company-consumer relationship, which has become
more and more complex and difficult to navigate.
A major clue can be found within the legalese of contract
language. This is the elite code that
requires a lifetime of education and experience--just to read through. Outside
the legal profession, almost no one is able to accurately and with facility
read the most basic contract – for example, an insurance policy for home
appliances, the home warranty agreement.
These contracts specify long lists of conditions under which the policy
holder is NOT covered and the policy not in force, making only the most basic
statements about when coverage will be granted for repairs and replacements. This is the start-point for policy-holders
feeling incompetent, outranked, and swindled.
This is also how consumers learn about what they are
entitled to. It isn’t by careful preparation
for the worst situations—those are too abstract and uncertain, and also too
numerous, to imagine in detail or even guess at. The way we do learn is by failing. We make an unsuccessful claim, ending in
denial of payment. At that point our
frontal brains get busy at focusing on the small print, trying to work out what
happened, why and how, and what we can do about it now.
The real problem is this: The company holds all the
cards—it is their contract, and so they will read it to their own advantage,
not ours. They are the alpha party as the arbiters of what gets covered and
what ends up out-of-pocket. The consumer
is quickly one-down on the social ladder and stressed by the self-esteem loss. This
is why customer service is more accurately termed “customer management.” The goal is to control and contain customer
demands, not to meet them. Consumer advocates are always having to assure
clients that their problems are not unique and they are not alone.
Consumer advocates are hired expert guns. They take over the job to define the problem,
negotiate between the parties (often from two to ten involved), and understand
how to work toward a solution that defends the rights of the beta, the consumer,
and still plays within the alpha rules. In this role, the advocate acts as a
counter-balancing social connection, an equalizer. Its role is that of the third
party coming to the table with the authority of expertise and the standing to
negotiate between adversaries. This role in itself mitigates the disparity
between unequals. This process acts to form a bonding alliance
with the consumer-client that reduces the normal hierarchical stress symptoms
while improving self-efficacy by actually enhancing the beta’s status.
