CHAPTER 7
The Language of Status, Power, and Leadership
THE MOVIE IS The Godfather. The scene is a boardroom in New York City. Around the table are the Mafia dons from the Five Families, including the Godfather, Vito Corleone. The meeting is to discuss whether the families should get into the illegal drug business. The two dons with the most to gain from the meeting are Philip Tattaglia and Emilio Barzini. Corleone, who called the meeting, suspects that Tattaglia was behind his son Santino’s murder. After some discussion, a solution is reached:
DON BARZINI: Then we are agreed. The traffic in drugs will be permitted, but controlled—and Don Corleone will give up protection in the east—and there will be the peace.
DON TATTAGLIA: But I must have strict assurance from Corleone—as time goes by and his position becomes stronger, will he attempt any individual vendetta?
DON BARZINI: Look—we are all reasonable men here; we don’t have to give assurances as if we were lawyers …
In the next scene, Corleone is leaving the meeting in his limousine with his lawyer Tom Hagen. Hagen assumes that he will next meet with Tattaglia to discuss the details of the arrangement. Corleone interrupts him, indicating that the real decision maker is actually Barzini rather than Tattaglia: “Tattaglia’s a pimp … But I didn’t know until this day that it was Barzini all along.”
Whoa. How did the Godfather know that Barzini was the strongman? In the boardroom scene, Barzini appeared more at ease whereas Tattaglia was more rigid and nervous. The language of the two men also differed. Barzini’s dominant pronoun was we, whereas Tattaglia used the word I. The use of we-words is, in fact, a consistent indicator of high status and I-words of lower status. Although Mario Puzo, the author of The Godfather, didn’t know about pronoun research linking we-words to power and status, he intuitively knew how to shape the language of his characters.
If you hang around with a bunch of murderers, the ability to detect the real boss can save your life. In fact, knowing who is in charge of any group is adaptive. At work, those above us can promote or fire us. The journal editor can accept or reject our papers. With a warm smile or raised eyebrow, the high school cheerleader or football quarterback can make us popular or pariahs. As social animals, we are enmeshed in social hierarchies. We see them in ant colonies, dog packs, chimpanzee troops, elementary school playgrounds, boardrooms, and nursing homes. No matter what group we happen to be in, most of us are trying to fit in and, at the same time, seeking to have as much influence as possible.
There is something inherently unpleasant about the topic of social status. Being consciously aware of it seems, well, inappropriate. After all, most of us have been brought up to believe that we are all equal. Unfortunately, to paraphrase George Orwell, some people are more equal than others. The grim truth is that to be a healthy human being you must be attentive to social status. Indeed, those individuals who are most successful and happy in life are particularly good at decoding and working within social hierarchies.
FIGURING OUT WHO’S THE BOSS: DECODING SOCIAL HIERARCHIES
We have all found ourselves among a group of strangers who all know each other. Part of the puzzle of being the new guy is in trying to determine who is who and how everyone fits together. Some of the mental calculations involved in understanding the social hierarchy include figuring out who is the person in charge, who else may be new or uncomfortable in the situation. Two types of information are available—nonverbal and language cues.
NONVERBAL INDICATORS OF STATUS
A generation of researchers has tried to identify how people behave if they are high versus low in the social hierarchy. It isn’t as easy as it appears. In a thoughtful analysis of dozens of good scientific studies, Judith Hall of Northeastern University was able to identify only a small group of behaviors linked to status:
Loudness High-status people tend to talk more loudly than lower-status people.
Interruptions High-status people are more likely to interrupt others than are lower-status speakers.
Physical closeness Higher-status people tend to stand or sit more closely to others than do those lower in status.
Openness Higher-status people have a more open body orientation, meaning that their arms and legs extend out more. Lower-status individuals are more likely to have their arms and legs in a more closed position.
Before you memorize these four nonverbal factors associated with status, you should note that even these dimensions are not too reliable. Hall concluded that some nonverbal cues are trustworthy in some situations but not others. Loudness, for example, is a modest predictor of dominance when people are talking to others who share the same social class. However, when people of different social classes are talking with each other, the person from the lower social class tends to speak more loudly.
What made Hall’s analysis so important was that many of the behaviors that most people believed were related to status weren’t. For example, most people are convinced that higher-status people fidget less, smile less, talk more quickly, have a more relaxed and deeper voice, touch others more, and stand farther away from others. Not true. In other words, what you think is signaling status and power in a group probably isn’t.
One reason people are so bad at detecting the powerful people in the room is that the less powerful often do things to make themselves appear more important than they really are. A few years ago I attended a museum exhibit that tested people’s abilities to identify status. A video displayed a series of brief office encounters between pairs of adult men. The viewer guessed which of the two people was the boss and who was the underling. Generally, one of the two people sat upright, didn’t smile much, and leaned forward in his chair. The other sat back in his chair and seemed more informal. Because there was no sound, the viewer had to guess status based solely on nonverbal behaviors.
Most of the viewers wrongly thought that the serious and more rigid person was the one in command. In fact, the videos were job interviews and the person sitting upright was the person looking for the job. The job seekers were trying to look in control, serious, and not nervous. The interviewers were simply being themselves. They had interviewed dozens of people before and were much more relaxed in their roles. The museum visitors were fooled because they thought that people who acted dominant were really dominant.
LANGUAGE INDICATORS OF STATUS
The words people use in their conversations, e-mails, and letters predict where they rank in the social hierarchy surprisingly well. As you might guess, status is revealed by function words rather than the content of what is being said. Of all the types of function words, the single dimension that separates the high- from the low-status speakers is pronouns. And even among the pronouns, only a small group of words is important:
Low use of I-words People higher in the social hierarchy use first-person singular pronouns such as I, me, and my at much lower rates than people lower in status. In any interaction between two people, the person with the higher status uses fewer I-words. This is not a typo. High-status people, when talking to lower-status people, use the words I, me, and my at low rates. Conversely, the lower-status people tend to use I-words at high rates.
High use of we-words Those higher in status use first-person plural pronouns (we, us, our) at much higher rates than those lower in status.
High use of you-words In written and spoken conversation, the person who uses more second-person pronouns like you and your is likely to be the person higher in status.
Depending on the situation, other classes of words can be related to status as well. But in reality, the pronouns I, we, and you are by far the words that consistently reveal status. In many ways, it isn’t too surprising that pronouns are so tightly linked with status. Pronouns are the most social of all word categories and we use them at particularly high rates in conversations. Recall from chapter 2 that pronouns reflect where people are paying attention. People who use the word I at high rates are focusing on themselves. Those usin
g you are looking at or thinking about their audience.
In fact, there is some interesting experimental research that tracks people’s attention as they are involved in a conversation. Those who are more dominant tend to look at their audience while they speak but look away while listening. Low-status people tend to do just the opposite. They focus on the speaker when listening but look away when talking. Where are they looking? Probably inwardly at themselves.
It is quite reasonable that I-words reflect attention to the self and, at the same time, go along with being lower on the social ladder. The you-word findings are also logical. You can think of using you-words as the equivalent of pointing your finger at the other person while talking.
You hear what I’m saying?
I mean you there.
You better be paying attention.
If you pop that gum one more time …
The link between I-words and you-words with attention and status make sense. What about we-words? Remember from earlier chapters that words such as we, us, and our are tricky. On the surface, we-words sound warm and fuzzy and should, in theory, be related to feelings of group solidarity. The problem is that, in conversations with others, the word we is really at least five different words:
The you-and-I we. This is the we that everyone wants to be part of. Let’s you and I get a cup of coffee. The two of us enjoy coffee. The you-and-I we is a public acknowledgment that a specified person or group of people and I are all part of the same group. We do, in fact, share an identity. Note, however, that there is a subtle problem with the you-and-I we: It can be a little presumptuous. I may think that you and I are in the same group, but you might not. In fact, in both Japanese and Korean, speakers are extremely careful in their uses of the word we in normal conversations for that very reason. It can be insulting to say we to others who may not share the same group identity.
The my-friends-and-not-you we. You have just returned from a camping trip with high school friends and are explaining this to your office mate. As the tale unfolds, you will likely say something like “and then we ate breakfast.” Very often when talking to people, it is necessary to tell them some action or experience that you shared with others but not with the listeners of your story. Use of we in this case is exclusionary in the sense that the message is being broadcast that this tightly knit we does not include you.
The we-as-you we. My personal favorite. This is where the speaker makes a we statement but is politely asking or telling someone else to do something. At the beginning of class when the students are all talking with one another, I have been known to say, “Could we please stop talking with one another?” Or last night at a restaurant, the server asked, “Have we decided what we are going to order for dinner tonight?”
The we-as-I we. Sometimes referred to as the royal we, the we-as-I we is invoked to diffuse responsibility and imply support from others that may not exist. I’ve overheard an administrator say to an employee, “We don’t feel as though you have completed the forms accurately enough.” The only person who knew about the forms was that particular administrator.
The every-like-minded-person-on-earth we. The politician’s favorite, the every-like-minded-person-on-earth we is the vaguest of all. “We need a better government.” What distinguishes this form of we is that it is virtually impossible to specify who the we refers to.
As you look back at the five types of we, only the you-and-I we is truly personal and helps to cement or acknowledge a bond between the speaker and listener. The other four forms of we erect a barrier between the participants in the conversation. It is not surprising that as people move up the social hierarchy, they use the more distancing forms of we more often.
Taken together, both nonverbal cues and language can signal relative status in both formal and informal groups. To outsiders watching a group of people interact, the various types of cues typically reveal themselves periodically in an interaction. The problem is that the cues may appear briefly and then disappear. One person who is the leader may speak more loudly, have a more open body language, and use the words we and you for just a few moments—perhaps just long enough for others at the meeting to notice. If previous research is any guide, most observers will be able to identify the status hierarchy of a group at rates somewhat better than chance. With computer analyses of the group’s language, however, you will be far more successful.
DISCOVERING YOUR OWN STATUS THROUGH YOUR CORRESPONDENCE
Let’s get personal for a minute. What is your status compared to your friends? Are you intimidated by some friends more than others? Do you really want to know? The best way to appreciate status in human relationships is to see it in your own dealings with others.
It’s surprisingly simple. Look at the last ten e-mails that you sent to someone and compare them with the last ten they sent you. Calculate the percentage of I-words each of you used. If you have a great deal of time, you can do the same with the you- and we-words that you both used as well. Statistically, I-words are the most trustworthy. Here’s the rule: The person who uses fewer I-words is the person who is higher in the social hierarchy. If the two of you are about the same in I-word usage, you probably have an equal relationship.
We know this because of an e-mail study that Matt Davis and I conducted a few years ago. We recruited ten volunteers—some graduate students, undergraduates, and even a couple of faculty who let us analyze their incoming and outgoing e-mail to and from about fifteen people. Matt wrote a computer program that scrambled all of the e-mails so that they were unreadable and preserved the anonymity of the e-mailers and what they actually said.
In addition to the e-mails themselves, we asked each of our volunteers to rate each of their fifteen correspondents along several dimensions: sex, age, how well they knew them, how well they liked them, and similar questions. The pivotal question was about relative status. That is, for each of the fifteen correspondents, the volunteers made judgments in response to the question:
Evaluate this correspondent in terms of relative status:
All correspondents were rated for their relative status on the seven-point questionnaire. So if the volunteer was a graduate student, they might rate a senior professor as a 6 or a 7 and a high school student as a 1 or a 2.
The results were clear-cut. The person with the higher status used fewer I-words, more you-words, and more we-words. This was not a subtle finding. For most of the people, the effects were quite large.
As I pondered the findings, I kept asking myself if I did the same thing. You should know that I have always harbored the illusion that I am a very egalitarian guy. I have tried to treat undergraduates, graduate students, staff, people in the community, and my superiors in the academic world with respect. Certainly these analyses would not show large status effects in my e-mail. I’m the egalitarian guy, remember? I analyzed my data and that was the day I abandoned my I-treat-everyone-the-same self-view. The analysis of my words revealed the same status differences as others in our study. Some edited examples:
Dear Dr. Pennebaker:
I was part of your Introductory Psychology class last semester. I have enjoyed your lectures and I’ve learned so much. I received an email from you about doing some research with you. Would there be a time for me to come by to talk about this?
—Pam
Dear Pam—
This would be great. This week isn’t good because of a trip. How about next Tuesday between 9 and 10:30. It will be good to see you.
Jamie Pennebaker
Pam, as you may guess, had been a first-year college student in my Introductory Psychology class. Notice how she uses I-words in every sentence. Pennebaker manages to avoid the use of a single I-word in his return e-mail. Not coincidentally, Pam uses the honorific “Dr. Pennebaker” and Pennebaker refers to her by her first name. But now watch the same Pennebaker when writing to a world-famous faculty member trying to get him to attend a conference:
Dear (Famous Professor):
The reaso
n I’m writing is that I’m helping to put together a conference on [a particular topic] … I have been contacting a large group of people and many have specifically asked if you were attending. I would absolutely love it if you could come … The only downside is that we can’t pay for any expenses … I think the better way to think about this gathering is as a reunion rather than a conference … I really hope you can make it.
Jamie Pennebaker
Dear Jamie—
Good to hear from you. Congratulations on the [conference]. The idea of a reunion is a nice one … and the conference idea will provide us with a semi-formal way of catching up with one another’s current research … Isn’t there any way to get the university to dig up a few thousand dollars to defray travel expenses for the conference?
The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us Page 18