You may be wondering why our brains function like this. It’s almost as though we’re handicapped in some way — being at the mercy of our emotions; struggling to properly value things in the future. But the truth is that for most of human evolution, these were not the handicaps but the benefits of our minds.

Fifty thousand years ago, out on the savannah, you couldn’t consider whether something would be more valuable a year from now or not. No, you had to kill a big fucking animal or be killed by that big fucking animal. That’s all that mattered. You needed to be overly concerned with the present.

Similarly, we inherit a retinue of biases and prejudices around social status as well. Why? Because we’re a bunch of fucking monkeys with fancy colorful screens in front of us. That’s why.

Despite thousands of years of our best efforts, humans self-organize into status hierarchies with the few reaping the most resources and opportunities at the top… and everyone else scrounging for the leftovers.

Now, I know what you’re saying, “I don’t give a fuck about no status hierarchies. I am my own man/woman. I do what I want. I will not be swayed by silly social markers of prestige and class.”

Well, that’s nice… but you’re wrong.

The fact is that we are all subconsciously affected by what we perceive as valuable and socially desirable in others. It’s automatic. It colors our perceptions. It skews our emotions. When in the presence of extreme beauty, wealth or power, we all become a little bit dumber, a little bit more passive, and a lot more insecure.

celebrity bias

I noticed this the first couple times I met Will Smith. I realized that, without even meaning to, I laughed harder at his jokes, paid more attention to his stories, watched if he got up and moved around the room. It was totally involuntary. And I wasn’t the only one. When he’s in a room, it’s like a vacuum sucking up all of the attention in it. Knowing that I was going to work with him on a book, I had to start consciously checking myself to make sure I wasn’t agreeing to something stupid just because he was famous. I had to question myself around him.

We tend to give way too much credit to people we perceive to have social status. In psychology, this is known as “The Halo Effect.”4 It’s our tendency to assume that physically attractive people are smarter or nicer than they actually are. That successful people are more interesting than they actually are. That powerful people are funnier or more charismatic than they actually are.

As with most of our cognitive biases, marketers take advantage of this to make money. Think about all of the celebrities doing car commercials and shilling worthless supplements and beauty products. Think about how former presidents and heads of state can get paid half a million dollars to simply be in a room. Think about how you’ve convinced yourself that you like different clothes, different food, different music, because somebody you really respect or admire likes them. We all do it. It’s impossible not to.

Like I said, we’re fucking monkeys with screens.

The best we can do is simply be aware of how we are influenced by our perceptions of status and modify our reasoning accordingly.5 Notice how you react around people you deem as particularly successful and admirable. Notice how much more agreeable you become. Notice how you tend to make positive assumptions about them, even though you don’t necessarily know whether they are true or not.

Then, question these things. Ask yourself, “If some random person I know said this, would I react the same way?” And if you’re honest with yourself, you’ll find that sometimes the answer is “no.”

It sucks to admit it. But welcome to being human.

Our biases around people of status and prestige are important because we’re likely to overvalue things related to them and undervalue things not related to them. As someone who spent much of high school and college getting drunk and high in desperate hopes of impressing the people around me, I can tell you: poor decisions were made.