Srna, Barasch, and Small researched the implications of viewing objects that signal the status of owners; their findings have broad implications for the design of both spaces and the objects in them. The Srna team reports that they “stud[ied] the implications of status signaling for cooperation. Cooperation is principally about caring for others, which is fundamentally at odds with the self-promotional nature of signaling status. . . . we find that people recognize the relative advantage of modesty (i.e., the inverse of signaling status) and behave strategically to enable cooperation. That is, people are less likely to cooperate with partners who signal status compared to those who are modest . . . and more likely to select a modest person when cooperation is desirable. . . . people also refrain from signaling status themselves when it is strategically beneficial to appear cooperative. . . . our findings contribute to a better understanding of the conditions under which the reputational costs of conspicuous consumption outweigh its benefits.”
Shalena Srna, Alixandra Barasch, and Deborah Small. 2022. “On the Value of Modesty: How Signals of Status Undermine Cooperation.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 123, no. 4, pp. 676-692, https://doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000303