Towards quantitative modeling of status games and pageantry

Three agents meet and coordinate and vie for status.

We have three agents.

They each have three traits: race, gender, and height.

Each trait is bipolar, on a five point spectrum

race (5-1): very white, more white than black, equidistant from white and black, more black than white, very black
gender (5-1): very masculine, more masculine than feminine, equidistant from masculine and feminine, more feminine than masculine, very feminine
height (5-1): very tall, more tall than short, equidistant from tall and short, more short than tall, very short

The three agents exist in the context of a social reality, which ranks traits along the spectrum according to status.

ranking for race: 4, 5, 3, 2, 1.
ranking for gender: 4, 2, 1, 5, 3.
ranking for height: 4, 3, 5, 2, 1.

The agents are within fixed points along the trait spectrum (we can play with where those starting points are).
However, in larger society they have an incentive to maximize status by covering: making themselves appear to have a more higher status place on the trait spectrum.
Another factor I want to consider in this simplified model is that these three agents have just met, and are in a room by themselves (although they are part of larger society).
The goal of each agent is to maximize their status within the group of three.
At the same time they're playing a game to maximize their status within society as a team of three.

I'll try to think about this model later, an attempt to move to a simplified model of pageantry and trait competition.

Comments

[Hopefully Anonymous]

also thinking about the psycho-organizational-micro-macro bridges regarding identity, motivation, and coordination generally, and status, traits, and pageantry specifically.

[TGGP]

You've been using the term "covering" a lot lately. Have you given a fuller definition elsewhere?

Are the rankings arbitrary? I know before you've suggested that the male/female dichotomy works against the intersex, so they are fittingly at the end, but I'm surprised you have the short outranking the tall. I don't have a clear view of white v black, but I also think that the light-blacks clearly seem to outrank darker blacks (particularly for women). FeministX has a post on that:
http://feministx.blogspot.com/2009/07/barely-black-is-beautiful.html
Her previous post was how overrepresented the black+asian combination is among celebrities:
http://feministx.blogspot.com/2009/07/blasian-sensation.html

[Hopefully Anonymous]

A theory I'm sympathetic to is that the somewhat tall are able to outsmart the median height for status, but that the very tall are unable to do so (fewer of them, more natural cognitive biases in the masses working against them).

So I think it's higher status to be 6'2" than to be 5'10", it's probably higher status to be 5'10" than to be 6'8".

I'm aware there's a gendering to these traits, but I'm going for a simplified but not to simplified model (which will probably have to become more complicated by factoring in gendering). I think I'll be able to avoid factoring in sexual orientation though, and just treat all my agents as heterosexual.

As for blackness and status, I think it's complicated. Making this model, I'm more sympathetic to the temptation of racial reductionism (I'm engaging in it), but I think some Taleb-styel skepticism is good as a permanent presence to the model and analysis process.

In general, I think being "too white" is harmful like being "too black", although much less so, and that's reflected in my rankings. Think of the majoritarian power of folks like Angelina Jolie and George Clooney. I'm placing all non-black non-whites in the 2-4 categories, not just light skinned blacks. I consider swarthy whites to be "4".