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- Feb 22, 2025
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INTRODUCTION:
People can estimate the socioeconomic status of individuals around them with astonishing accuracy:
It can take as few as seven seconds of recorded speech to correctly determine someone’s income level:
and people can deduce income levels at significantly better rates than chance just from looking at a picture someone’s face!
psycnet.apa.org
I‘d speculate this is because successfully determining a stranger’s resources confers evolutionary advantages — but ultimately, the reason why the average person is so good at detecting wealth doesn’t matter. What matters is the fact that people’s perceptions of others’ SES inform their actions, meaning that perceptions of socioeconomic status have measurable impacts on employment, as well as romantic, economic, and health outcomes.. There are objectively gorgeous young women that still get dismissed as trashy or ghetto when really, they’re just poor.
Fortunately, in telling us how socioeconomic status is detected, the research tells us (somewhat) how to fraud higher socioeconomic status...
People can estimate the socioeconomic status of individuals around them with astonishing accuracy:
It can take as few as seven seconds of recorded speech to correctly determine someone’s income level:
and people can deduce income levels at significantly better rates than chance just from looking at a picture someone’s face!
APA PsycNet
I‘d speculate this is because successfully determining a stranger’s resources confers evolutionary advantages — but ultimately, the reason why the average person is so good at detecting wealth doesn’t matter. What matters is the fact that people’s perceptions of others’ SES inform their actions, meaning that perceptions of socioeconomic status have measurable impacts on employment, as well as romantic, economic, and health outcomes.. There are objectively gorgeous young women that still get dismissed as trashy or ghetto when really, they’re just poor.
Fortunately, in telling us how socioeconomic status is detected, the research tells us (somewhat) how to fraud higher socioeconomic status...
BODY:
- Start using anti-aging and anti-wrinkle skincare early. One of the reasons people can determine your SES from your face is because the stresses of poverty are visible on your skin:
APA PsycNet
Retinol cream is inexpensive, and as an ingredient, retinol has a lot of science backing it.
- The same study above speculated that haircuts played a role in determining SES, so cut hair regularly, every 3 to 4 months or so.
- Good teeth are a predictor of higher SES:
Socioeconomic status, oral health and dental disease in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States - BMC Oral Health
Background Socioeconomic inequalities are associated with oral health status, either subjectively (self-rated oral health) or objectively (clinically-diagnosed dental diseases). The aim of this study is to compare the magnitude of socioeconomic inequality in oral health and dental disease among...
bmcoralhealth.biomedcentral.com
which anecdotally seems especially strong in the US. Teeth whitening is available at most pharmacies, or on Amazon.
- In the developed world, obesity is a disease of poverty:
Lower-energy-density diets are associated with higher monetary costs per kilocalorie and are consumed by women of higher socioeconomic status - PubMed
Higher-quality diets were not only more costly per kilocalorie but were also consumed by persons of higher educational level. The influence of diet quality on health, observed in some epidemiologic studies, might be modulated by unobserved indexes of socioeconomic status.
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Count your calories and burn more than you consume. Remember that nutrition is more important than exercise for achieving and maintaining good fitness.
- Body language and non-verbal communication/cues matter. Don’t have an RBF!!
APA PsycNet
Botox sometimes helps with stubbornly negative resting expressions.
- Correct your posture:
Shoulders back, head straight, sit tall, think confidence and ease.
- If you are solo in a public space, it is safest to ignore everyone. Approachability and warmth negatively correlate to socioeconomic status:
APA PsycNet
While a certain amount of aloofness correspondingly reflects a higher status. Don’t be afraid to disengage from conversation!
Additionally, too much smiling is seen as low-status behaviour, along with raising your brows too much (lol)
Nonverbal behavior and the vertical dimension of social relations: a meta-analysis - PubMed
The vertical dimension of interpersonal relations (relating to dominance, power, and status) was examined in association with nonverbal behaviors that included facial behavior, gaze, interpersonal distance, body movement, touch, vocal behaviors, posed encoding skill, and others. Results were...
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
VOICE:
- Speak with a steady and unvaried pitch (meaning, slightly monotonous) and vary your volume. Do not speak softly.
- Limit long pauses in your speech:
Nonverbal behavior and the vertical dimension of social relations: a meta-analysis - PubMed
The vertical dimension of interpersonal relations (relating to dominance, power, and status) was examined in association with nonverbal behaviors that included facial behavior, gaze, interpersonal distance, body movement, touch, vocal behaviors, posed encoding skill, and others. Results were...
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Avoid slang and insults:
Socioeconomic Patterns of Twitter User Activity - PMC
Stratifying behaviors based on demographics and socioeconomic status is crucial for political and economic planning. Traditional methods to gather income and demographic information, like national censuses, require costly large-scale surveys both in ...
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Both accent and vocabulary are best gained through exposure in childhood.
Frontiers | Independent and Combined Effects of Socioeconomic Status (SES) and Bilingualism on Children’s Vocabulary and Verbal Short-Term Memory
The current study explores the influence of socioeconomic status (SES) and bilingualism on the linguistic skills and verbal short-term memory of preschool ch...
www.frontiersin.org
If your environment doesn’t regularly expose you to “elevated” conversation, I recommend finding podcasts featuring academic discussions between highly-educated people. The goal is to sound formally educated, even if you’re not.
- High-income individuals are more likely to discuss certain things (politics, technology, literature, and travel) than low-income individuals (sports, TV shows).
Socioeconomic Patterns of Twitter User Activity - PMC
Stratifying behaviors based on demographics and socioeconomic status is crucial for political and economic planning. Traditional methods to gather income and demographic information, like national censuses, require costly large-scale surveys both in ...
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Be humble; trying to send social signals can sometimes backfire:
CULTURE:
- Dressing “richer” directly affects not only perceptions of wealth, but competence as well:
Economic status cues from clothes affect perceived competence from faces - Nature Human Behaviour
Subtle economic status cues from clothes affect perceived competence from faces even when perceivers are warned that such cues are non-informative or are instructed and incentivized to ignore them. This bias puts low-income individuals at a disadvantage.
www.nature.com
What constitutes “richer” appearing clothing versus “poorer” appearing clothing can be debated, but in this study, “richer” clothing had either “professional” or “country club” vibes.
Shoes matter — and given the context, I am more than comfortable extrapolating that the same applies to other visible accessories like purses and jewelry.
- develop tastes for an inclusive, wide variety of “genres” while simultaneously being exclusive and picky about the things in that genre you like:
People born with high SES like beer, of course, because almost everyone likes beer. But, they will tend prefer the most exclusive of craft beers, and developing a “cultured taste” in beer is a taught behavior that happens to serve as an SES display.
- Poverty mindset is a real thing. So is a growth mindset. This is why financial literacy is so incredibly important - not only will it allow you to identify and correct bad habits, but you can speak performatively about it too.
Actively pretending to belong to another social class is very mentally taxing. If you use any of this, please, be cognizant of your mental health and the increased potential for burnout.
