A new assumption

I think I've found some sort of silver bullet. Not a magic solution to a problem, but an assumption that nullifies most questions I had. What questions? Questions about human behaviour.

Behaviour can be predicted when you're observing a situation and you either have all the information that contributes to a decision, or you make the right assumptions. Since the former is impossible, the latter is what all of us resort to.

But to me, too many decisions didn't make sense. What I thought was 'rational behaviour' was clearly at odds with some of the decisions I saw people making. They weren't maximising their utility when I thought they would be. They weren't maximising the resources available to themselves or their kin when I thought they would be. They weren't making obvious decisions that every economic model would call no-brainers.

My assumptions had to be wrong.

That's when it struck me. In a world of abundance, people undervalue utility and overvalue status. In other words, when needs are met and wants are being attended to – the relative importance of status increases when compared to utility.

When observing humans that have their needs taken care of, 'Status Maximisers' is now a default assumption in my head.

The exploration of status and its role in human behaviour is a rabbit hole I'm only just entering. Thus far though, based on anecdotal evidence, my hypothesis looks promising. The world makes more sense. In fact, I'm now testing the assumption that most (all?) wants are status driven, not utility driven.

I'm curious to know what you think. Hit the reply button and let me know?