A World Shaped By Social Status

“Anointed

 

By Toby Stuart

 

Simon & Schuster, 288 pages, $29

 

It is hardly news that we take mental shortcuts to many of our choices. We are, to differing degrees, susceptible to habits of thought, social pressure and commercial persuasion.

 

Toby Stuart, a professor at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, adds to this list our tendency to defer to a category of people he calls the "anointed." They perch at the top of the social totem pole, have outsize influence on the rest of us and attract a disproportionate share of society's rewards.

 

The most significant way in which the anointed exert influence, says Mr. Stuart, is through eliciting what he calls "the big shift," which encourages us to define "something's value in terms of the identity of the person (or organization) tied to it rather than its merit." A doctor's success rate may matter less to patients than the fame -- or otherwise -- of the universities that granted the framed degrees on the wall.

 

The power of the anointed is to have us value them based on who rather than what they are, on association rather than substance.

 

But the anointed do more than blind us with their star power. They help us overcome life's uncertainties in three important ways. First, says Mr. Stuart, they dictate what we consume. To make today's endless choices manageable, all we have to do is follow their lead. Second, they guide our behavior in social situations. Social hierarchies tend to be clear and regularly enforced. The anointed do what they want, both limiting and leading the behavior of others.

 

Third, the anointed solve the puzzles about allocating resources within a group, though for an ironic reason. The powerful eat first. They take what they want. Others divide up the rest. "It might not be fair, but these hierarchies offer a clear benefit by precluding endless conflicts over who is entitled to what," says Mr. Stuart, who draws on Thomas Hobbes to illustrate his point.

 

There is a lot of unfairness in the world Mr. Stuart describes. In one study, academic researchers sent out 5,000 fictitious resumes for job openings in Boston and Chicago. Half had "white-sounding" names like Molly Smith or John Baker; half had "black-sounding" ones like Shanice Robinson or Tyrone Washington. Despite their contents being identical, the resumes with "white" names received 50% more callbacks for interviews than the "black" names. Skin color alone -- even perceived skin color -- can provide a degree of anointment.

 

When the anointed anoint in their turn, markets often abandon objectivity. Each year, the revered "mega wine critic" Robert Parker would issue his verdicts on wines around the world. His closely followed scores could drive up or depress wine prices, independent of any broader measures of quality. In the digital world, consumers of both ideas and goods tend to gravitate to the most popular, the most reviewed. Few want to listen to the world's second-best tenor when the best is on Spotify and there is a glass of top-rated Sauvignon Blanc at hand.

 

Awards for music, movies or books are similarly influential, especially when they are bestowed by academies or secretive panels. People are likely to buy tickets for an Oscar-winning film, even if they eventually wonder why on earth it was selected. But by that point, the anointment effect will have propelled such works to success. Mr. Stuart quotes Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam, who said, when accepting a Grammy, "I don't know what this means. I don't think it means anything. That's just how I feel."

 

Some are born into the ranks of the anointed. Their family name, the schools they attended, the networks of relations and friends they inherited, immediately place them there. Such birthright anointment involves the "Matthew effect," named for the Gospel verse that says: "Unto every one that hath shall be given . . . but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath."

 

The anointed aren't simply advantaged, in this view; they benefit from cumulative advantage. So the rich get richer and the powerful more powerful, Mr. Stuart suggests, at ever greater speed as their financial and social capital pile up. They inspire increasing deference and less objective scrutiny of their actions and choices. Even the constraints of the law may fall away. As Daniel Drew, the 19th-century stock-market manipulator, said: "Law is like a cobweb; it's made for flies and the smaller kinds of insects, so to speak, but lets the big bumblebees break through."

 

But "Anointed" is less a book about society writ large than it is a survey of microphenomena. Mr. Stuart's theory applies to all kinds of human behavior because, as he observes, "we are born comparers." We yearn to outdo our nearest rivals, and will risk humiliation to do so. Why do academics produce fake research despite the career-ending risk of being found out? To boost their careers and reputations in professions where anointment, by respected institutions or peer-reviewed journals, is invaluable. Why do men on dating sites tend to revise their profiles to appear younger and taller? Because those are the attributes, they suppose, that women seek in eligible partners.

 

There is a grimly deterministic quality in all of this. The strata of society seem impenetrable, except through exorbitant effort. There is little acknowledgment of the many forces that can break through, from great talent to financial success, neither of which are the preserve of some anointed class. This is a view from the ivory tower rather than the trenches from which people do scramble out, when there is opportunity, freedom and the chance of personal agency.

 

In a hasty conclusion, Mr. Stuart pins his hopes on artificial intelligence to "chip away at certain status hierarchies." Algorithms stripped of human biases, he writes, "won't strip away all of the gloss of pedigree, but it will likely scuff it up a bit." Like so many of the lofty expectations of AI, this one will take some proving.

 

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Mr. Delves Broughton is the author of "The Art of the Sale: Learning From the Masters About the Business of Life."” [1]

 

1. A World Shaped By Social Status. Philip Delves Broughton.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 10 Sep 2025: A13.