You are attending a conference or other event which brings together a large group of people vaguely acquainted but not tightly connected. There is a dinner where there are many tables seating 6-8 people each. There is no assigned seating. Assuming you care about whom you will sit with, what is your strategy for finding a place to sit?
- To the extent possible, the high-status people will contract early and grab a table to themselves. This is usually possible because in groups like this it is the high-status people who are most likely to know each other well.
- Low-status people often prefer to sit with higher-status people, so they tend to play the waiting game and hop in on a table with some open seats. This usually turns out to be a bad idea (dull and awkward conversation) but it takes a few bad experiences to figure this out. By that time the lesson is irrelevant because your status has improved.
- Middle-status people have learned to care less about the status of those they dine with. And they are not yet so visible that everyone wants to sit with them just out of status-mongering. So their optimal strategy is to move early and find an empty table and sit there. They will be joined by people who are really interested in them and those are the people you want to sit with.
- The latter is generally my strategy. However, usually people don’t want to sit with me. Consistent with the logic of the strategy, this is optimal when it happens.
- There is must be something unique about weddings because there is almost always assigned seating.
- The closer people are to being total strangers the stricter the status ranking becomes, in my experience. Without anything to go on, it boils down to attractiveness. A strict, linear status ranking leads to unraveling as everyone waits to join the best table. This is when assigned seating is necessary. But I don’t think this explains weddings.
The question is ripe for experimental research.
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October 28, 2009 at 12:22 pm
Sean
Come on, Jeff, name a large economics conference where you are not a high status participant! The low status participants just don’t want to sit with you because the cost of dull, awkward conversation is greater when there are only two people in the group.
I went to my first conference in my second summer of grad school. Like you, I played out of type (but in the opposite direction), sitting down with my wife at the first empty table we could find. We were joined by an elderly couple and several grad students from different universities. Throughout the entire meal, each time someone at our table got up to get some food from the buffet line, someone else instantly borrowed their seat, and would only grudgingly give it back when the owner returned. It took the set of grad students a little less than 30 minutes to finally figure out that we were having dinner with John Nash.
November 2, 2009 at 10:05 pm
Jai from Home and Away
I think that at weddings, status is associated with sitting at the front. Whether this is a by-product of assigned seating (we have been conditioned to think that front tables are better), or would similarly arise under non-assigned seating is not necessarily clear. I suspect the latter since status is related to your proximity (and by extension, importance) to the bridal party rather than the company at your table.
Perhaps status at a wedding is more concentrated than at a conference? Perhaps it is associated with how well you can see the bride and groom, or how the focus is constantly on the bridal party whereas it is only intermittently for distinguished speakers, or how rapidly the connection with the bridal party degrades with distance compared to that for a distinguished speaker.
November 2, 2009 at 10:37 pm
Jai from Home and Away
On your last point, how (presumably) aesthetically attractive are high status people in economics conferences? I thought that status in economics typically comes with age, and that unattractive people will often self select into economics (their opinions are typically disregarded in mainstream society, so they bring their unconventional or contrarian thinking to economics).
November 8, 2009 at 8:11 pm
The Happy Contract « Cheap Talk
[…] including Paul Milgrom’s Nemmers’ Prize lecture and a conference in his honor. (My relative status was microscopic.) A major theme of the conference was market design and I heard a story […]
November 20, 2009 at 2:11 pm
peter
I have long been amazed at the reluctance of many high-status academics to sit with those they perceive to be of low-status, particularly grad students, at conference dinners. Having done my PhD in my 40s after a successful business career, perhaps I felt the snubs keener than most other grad students. In any case, having since acquired higher status, I have made a point of sitting with and engaging grad students at these events. My personal payoffs have included – interesting conversations, interactions without macho posturing (since I am not sitting with status rivals), leading to long-term friendships and to many successful research collaborations.