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Socializing  Establishing levels of social status with other people

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bombman

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Dec 22, 2012
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I don't know why I have this sort of mindset, but I seem to have an issue on how to treat others of differing social class, or social status, levels or whatever. With the people I meet in my everyday life, I seem to notice people's approximate range of social status/class relative to mines, and it feels like I can't treat everybody the same, for example, someone who is much younger than me, or someone who's 10 years old, or someone who's 5 years younger, and someone who's 40 years old--and I am talking mainly about men here. And when i say social status, i'm talking about life experience, maturity and social calibration for the sake of this matter here. (Sound like ego's involved here?)

It seems if I am the older and more experienced person relative to the other younger fellow, then I feel compelled to hold onto a high respect and wouldn't be talking to him or open up in the way I would talk to someone at my own level or higher, and I would also feel the need to establish that frame/respect with him, subconsciously and implicitly. I would wonder how I would go about doing that deliberately, and also wonder how I would assess or test a person's social status relative to mine, of course because I can't judge/read everyone in first impressions. Im thinking maybe throwing out an inoffensive friendly challenge and see how he deals with it to predict the level of respect I should give him. Is my mentality flawed in some way? Because it seems like I'm putting ranks on people. I still think my concept is mostly valid, but maybe I still just need to attain more life references in the social aspect.

PS. I think this post should rather be in General?
 
you miss 100% of the shots you don't take
A

Anonymous

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It seems like you've tangled social status, age and respect together, and that's making your interactions suffer. It's as you mentioned a mindset that is mostly wrong in socializing, at least as far as I've seen. I'm not going to delve into social status, just follow the posts on the subject on this blog and make yourself a higher status person and soon enough you'll stop having problems when interacting with people of any social class since you'll be able to see them as equals or be comfortable, even when someone else has higher status than you.

As for age, what I've found interesting is that usually the more years on someone's back, the more interested he is on talking about himself or his interests, so with just a few questions either on a topic at hand or for a topic you know or can guess they're interested (or something you're picking up through small talk) you can get them to easily open up. Make sure to really listen and find something you're a little bit interested in though.

Respect on the other hand is a delicate issue. Currently i handle it by starting conversations on a very respectful manner and slowly toning it down till i can make an estimate of where the other person sets his own limit. Sometimes it can backfire and mess a bit of her impression of you, but you'll usually be pretty comfortable by that time that with a simple apology you'll be back on track. A general rule is to treat others as you'd like to be treated, and as long as you follow that, you'll generally not cross any lines.

Edit: Another thing with social status is that it's both internally and externally granted to everyone. Do not assume that just because he has A/B/C qualities/characteristics/positions/etc he's higher social status than you. I've seen many people which some would assume high status consider themselves much lower than they should be and vice versa. Make sure you actually gauge their status yourself and not get caught in your initial assumption, cause it might as well be off.
 
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