Our evolutionary ancestry
Everything comes down to evolution and our primate ancestors. We evolved to be social in nature and to follow hierarchies, these hierarchies imply status. Consider the following scenario: You are a female monkey and your monkey community is attacked by a foreign monkey tribe. Would you want to be behind the strong alpha monkey male or behind the weakling monkey that runs to a corner when danger arrives? When we look at celebrities our brains activate our sense of hierarchy and group affiliation. Professor of Biology Robert Sapolsky at Stanford University, has been studying baboon social interactions for many years and has found that the rank in a baboon community, is always on a baboon’s mind. Part of the reason for this importance is to eliminate future conflict and pain. A weaker baboon will not get into a conflict with a stronger (higher ranked) baboon because he understands that there will be pain or death associated with it. This dominance also determines their ability to mate with other baboons, which in turn shapes the gene pool. The higher rank baboon will most likely mate with the most desirable female baboon.
The human Rank
I understand we are not baboons and for the most part we do not possess the strict dominant interactions and hierarchies that baboons have. In general we belong to multiple hierarchies and for the most part, we rank very differently in all of them. You might be the boss at home but might be a low level employee at your job, and perhaps be the best basketball player at your community league. We tend to be happiest in the communities we are ranked the highest. Regardless of any of your ranks, we still have a primate sense of ranking in our brains and are driven by it. A study performed by Dr. Lotte Thomsen at Harvard University showed that we start differentiating status by 10 months of age.
Other brain studies have shown that our fascination with status like with celebrities, is in part engrained in our pre frontal cortex, and interestingly, it is our newest developed part of the brain. This suggests that we have evolved even further to understand social interactions and what status means. I believe part of this fine tuning identifying status is to ensure our own survival. Identifying who is above and who is under us socially can give us a great advantage for success. Imagine being a thief and trying to arm-rob the president of the US while he is walking down the park near the white house. His status will get this person killed in a matter of seconds. I know this is an exaggerated example but it helps illustrate how we can identify status and adapt to it to survive.
Understanding that social status and rank is so important helps us understand why it is natural to see celebrities as a social status image. We not only value the fame of a celebrity but we also assimilate status with money, and celebrities have plenty of that as well. The more they show and tell the more our brains are fed with a sense of power and desire to be that person. We desire to be them because of the social implications. This natural brain process allows us to rank them in comparison to where we stand placing ourselves as their subordinates.
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