And then you see these same people giving their full attention to other people, who are seen as being popular.

Doesn’t that just piss you off? I remember that used to happen to me all of the time. It seemed like everybody cared about themselves and other social people, but nobody seemed to care what I had to say, even if I tried to be more outgoing. Even if what I said was funny or interesting.

Why Does This Happen?

To understand why this happens, you have to first understand one basic but VERY important idea: Social Value. (I wrote a whole post explaining social value here.)

Here’s the basic overview: In every interaction between two people, one person is higher status. He or she may be better-connected socially, more dominant, a better leader, or just more popular with everyone. For girls, good looks also are a factor.

So one person is always “cooler”. The person who is lower status usually ends up “trying harder” to get the high status person’s approval. Even you do this.

Are you ever much more energetic or do you try harder than usual to come up with something interesting to say when you’re talking to someone popular and well-known?

You Try Harder To Get Them To Like You

And I bet you’re much more laid back and “natural”, much less shy, when you’re talking to someone most people think is a loser?

I know it sucks when you are on the lower end of this “social value scale”, but it’s very important to see how this works. And to understand that everybody does this unconsciously. They don’t know they are doing it. You probably didn’t even realize you were doing the thing you hate to othe people until now.

But here’s a warning: now that you understand that people pay more attention to people of higher status, and almost ignore people who are lower status, YOU’RE GOING TO SEE THIS HAPPENING EVERYWHERE.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Why Do You (And Everyone Else) Do This?

 People are selfish. I’m not going to try to convince you of this here, but it’s true. Whatever people do, they do to please themselves.

It’s an idea I came across in advertising books. Almost all of the best advertisements in history succeeded because they were aimed at solving a problem someone had.

They didn’t say “Buy This Product Now!”, instead they said “Do You Have This Problem?” and then led the prospect to see the advertiser’s product as being the solution to the problem.

You are selfish by nature. Even people who donate to charity do it because of the feeling donating gives them. That feeling is worth more to them than the money they give, so it’s a good deal.

Everyone’s Climbing The Ladder

Because you’re selfish, you are always trying to better your current situation and climb higher up the social ladder.

You do this by befriending people who are above you on it. People below you won’t make a difference or they may even lower your social value.

That’s why many people don’t care about their interactions with shy people, but place so much importance when they’re talking to someone popular. They want to go up, not down, and shy people are naturally low status.

It’s a function built into humans to be able to survive. We don’t need it as much today as we did in our caveman days.

How Do You Reverse It?

If you want to make people care about you, you have to make them believe you are higher social status than they are.

This has nothing to do with showing off or being loud. It has nothing to do with how many friends you have, or how interesting you are.

I’ll give you a hint: It’s all about your personality. And your personality is NOT “who you are”, it’s what you do. It’s your habits and behaviors. 

Your behaviors need to shift from neediness to indifference.

I’m working on a book right now that explains exactly how do that, and how to transform yourself from a low status person to high status. I don’t want to spoil the surprise in this one article.

The Summary:

So what can you learn from what I’ve taught you above?

• In every human interaction, there is always a person who has higher social status.
• It is natural for the lower status person to “try harder“ to become the high status person’s friend.
• The higher status person usually doesn’t give much attention to the lower status one, because it doesn’t give him/her any benefit. (Actually, this is a self-fulfilling prophecy: the not caring makes the person seem high status.)
• In order to make people care, you have to know what habits and behaviors make people think you are low status, and reverse them. These habits are very closely related to shyness and social phobia.

The good news for you is, this website is all about the habits and behaviors of shy people, and how to change them.

Photo by dhammza