Ever made an absolute arse of yourself?
It probably doesn’t feel great. We want other people to like us, to respect us, to think we’re cool or respect-worthy or whatever. We worry about how we came off in that conversation earlier – sometimes we cringe about it years later! We are, in short, very concerned with our reputation; what other people think of us. Why?
Over millennia, evolution has shaped our genes and our bodies to help us survive and pass on those genes to the next generation. It did the same thing with our minds: after all, these are what control said bodies and get them to do things. All the myriad phenomena that exist inside our heads: hunger, libido, emotions, morality, rationality, concern with our reputation – everything that collectively forms the human condition – these are all psychological tools that in some way benefit human survival. They became inherent in the human species because having them helped our species survive and reproduce. Each of these tools that makes up our survival toolkit can be thought of as evolutionary adaptations. They are all intangible – but very real – survival mechanisms that humanity evolved, and they allowed us to survive from 200,000 years ago to the present day.
But here’s the thing: that psychological toolkit evolved to help us survive in a very different environment than the one we live in now. We evolved as hunter-gatherers: evolution moulded our minds for that lifestyle. Humanity, using those pesky brains of ours, then began to create agriculture, states, industrialisation, and LinkedIn. An unimaginably vast suite of changes occurred in the past 12,000 years or so. Evolution hasn’t stopped during that time, but it can’t keep up with the pace of human-made change; we’re all running on software made for a completely different environment than we’re living in now. Things that we needed to survive – like having a good reputation – aren’t life or death anymore. But our brains, moulded by evolution for an environment we no longer live in, haven’t got the memo.
Humans are social animals, because a lone hunter-gatherer is leopard scran. Without modern technology, living in the wild you would need a group of people to stay alive. Evolution has shaped our minds so that we’re strongly motivated to find a group and be accepted within it. Your innate desire to fit in, to be accepted, to avoid rejection – that drive is an evolutionary adaptation. The drive for social acceptance – to not be a social outcast – still strongly motivates us because without that drive, your ancestors (and you) wouldn’t be here.
But we don’t just crave social acceptance – we also want respect, to matter, to not just be accepted but liked and valued, to keep up with the Joneses and, if we can, better them. This is the drive for social status. Because even if everyone in a group is accepted, some people will be thought of more highly than others. This differential in reputation matters for hunter-gatherers; individuals with higher status have better access to food, resources, and mates. All these things affect the chances of you surviving and passing on your genes, which is the only thing that natural selection ‘selects’ for. So it makes complete sense that we’ve evolved a psychological tool to make us care about social status. You want to be seen as cool, charming, clever – whatever characteristics the people you’re around associate with social status – because that drive is why your ancestors survived all those generations as hunter-gatherers.
But where it comes from is all well and good – how do we live with them?
The drives for social acceptance and status are inherent evolutionary adaptations infused into our consciousness – people who tell you they can erase them entirely are probably trying to sell you something. The drive to accumulate resources is also an evolutionary adaptation.
But you can change how these drives affect you, and you can change how unhappy they make you. And that, ultimately, is the main goal – there’s nothing inherently wrong with caring about how others perceive you; it can help make you be nice, be principled, and maintain friendships. The problem is when these drives affect how you feel.
Your brain has many different parts, all contributing to what you feel and think in different ways. You have a rational, conscious, ‘internal monologue’ part of your brain that you can use to talk down the emotional, automatic part of your brain where your instinctive drives spring from. You can’t prevent this latter part of your brain from generating feelings and making you aware of them. You need to focus on what you can control, which is your response to it.
You can then tell yourself that these feelings of caring are there for good reason and are OK to have, but you don’t need to let them motivate you. You can accept their presence in your head but not let them change your behaviour. This is at first stressful and difficult, but over time gets easier and easier. Eventually, the intensity of these drives for social acceptance and status fades. This modulation doesn’t occur by you forcing them away, but just telling yourself repeatedly that they’re OK to have, and it’s OK to defy them even if defying them feels very stressful. You can accept that stress, too.
