Yahoo Finance 'Busyness’ seen to be associated with high social status
“What are you up to?”
“Oh, nothing much.”
This is how many people respond to an initiation of casual small talk.
But, according to findings from an upcoming paper, they should be reflecting on how busy they’ve been — at least if they want people to think highly of them.
In a series of experiments, researchers at Columbia and Harvard Universities asked participants to read about people, their habits and asked them to describe the person’s social status.
One set of trials involved asking about a 35-year-old named Jeff who “works long hours and his calendar is always full,” or a Jeff who “does not work and has a leisurely lifestyle.”
Other experiments tested to see whether products that were associated with busyness offered a boost to a person’s social status on par with owning luxury items.
That involved asking participants about a middle-aged shopper who went to one of three different food marketplaces: a grocery delivery service such as Peapod, the high-end grocer Whole Foods, or Trader Joe’s, which acted as a control.
Another experiment involved asking participants about a 35-year-old named Anne who used a Bluetooth headset to listen to music or an Anne who used headphones.
The researchers found that participants linked “busyness,” and products that implied this type of lifestyle, with high social status.
Anne with the Bluetooth headphones and busy Jeff were seen as belonging to a higher class. The middle-aged shopper who used the grocery delivery service was seen as just as high class as the shopper who went to Whole Foods, which is known for its upscale offerings.
“In general, we found that the busy person is perceived as high status, and interestingly, these status attributions are heavily influenced by our own beliefs about social mobility,” the authors, Silvia Bellezza, Neeru Paharia and Anat Keinan, wrote in the Harvard Business Review.
“In other words, the more we believe that one has the opportunity for success based on hard work, the more we tend to think that people who skip leisure and work all the time are of higher standing.”
The researchers measured participants’ perceptions of social mobility based on the degree to which they believed that work leads to success.
Interestingly, the authors noted that the ties between busyness and perceived social status have flipped over the past century.
They said that living a leisurely life and not working were previously associated with being in the upper class.
This makes sense: if you’re really rich, you can afford a life of leisure.
However, they pointed to an analysis that found a dramatic increase of holiday letters that referenced “crazy schedules” since the 1960s, and a study of celebrity tweets about “having no life” or “being in desperate need for a vacation” as signs that times have changed.
The authors believe that the perception of busyness as being tied to social status may be linked to the development of knowledge-intensive economies, where people who have valuable skills — such creativity, ambition and knowledge — are in short supply.
“Thus, by telling others that we are busy and working all the time, we are implicitly suggesting that we are sought after, which enhances our perceived status,” they said.
In order to see if this perception was present in other countries, the study also included participants from Italy.
And, among them, the association between busyness and higher status was reversed.
The authors said this had two possible implications: That Italians have a “somewhat-healthy attitude toward work-life balance”; or that they do not feel like they live in a socially mobile society.
The latter is consistent with other findings that showed that Americans are more likely to believe they live in a fluid society, where effort decides your place on the social hierarchy, whereas Italians are more likely to believe that they live in a society that is less mobile.
Ultimately, the authors stress the importance of a balanced perspective, as there is a long list of physiological and, yes, economic downsides to being overworked.
