The evidence here is thinner than the confident commentary suggests, and the honest position is a shrug with a direction of travel. Put a number on status and it becomes a target; put a target on it and the number stops meaning what it meant. The strange thing about the last biscuit is not that it exists but that it works, most of the time, for most people. A pattern this consistent is not a character flaw. It is a design feature, and design features can be worked with.
Where the model breaks
In the studies we have, the effect is modest, reliable and almost entirely ignored by the people it describes. If you want to see status at work, watch a queue form where there is no reason for one. Notice how rarely anyone is argued out of the last biscuit, and how often they are simply moved past it by a change in circumstance. None of this is new. Adam Smith noticed most of it, and then the profession spent two centuries forgetting.
Notice how rarely anyone is argued out of the last biscuit, and how often they are simply moved past it by a change in circumstance. A better account of status would begin with the ordinary case rather than the laboratory one. If you want to see status at work, watch a queue form where there is no reason for one. We describe the departure from the model as an error. We might equally describe the model as a hopeful guess about us.
