In animal hierarchies, dominance must be communicated so that subordinates can defer and avoid costly conflict. Status signals solve this: visible displays of strength, health, resources that indicate rank without requiring constant fighting.1
In humans, status signals range from body language (posture, gait, eye contact patterns) to wealth displays (clothing, property, ornamentation) to behavioral signals (confidence, willingness to take risks).2
True status signals are costly—they're expensive to produce if you lack the underlying quality they signal. A healthy person can display flamboyant plumage; a sick person cannot afford the energy cost. A wealthy person can display luxury goods; a poor person cannot.3
Yet individuals have incentive to fake status—to display wealth they lack or confidence they don't feel. This creates selection pressure for detectors who can distinguish honest signals from dishonest mimicry.4
The evolutionary stable equilibrium maintains both honest and dishonest signals: some displays are too costly to fake (remaining reliable), while other displays are readily faked and thus provide no real information.5
The specific good used to signal status is not fixed — it migrates across eras and contexts while the underlying drive to signal remains constant (cars in 1980s-90s London → higher education → experiential travel), because any signal that becomes broadly attainable stops functioning as one regardless of its absolute merit.6 For the full mechanism — including the Machu Picchu vs. Lincoln Cathedral thought experiment, the Singapore hotel-prize case, and why the currency has to keep moving rather than settling — see the dedicated deep-dive: Status Currency Migration: Cars, Education, Experiences.
Perry Belcher's frame, adopted by Brunson, is a distinct variant: status here is self-perception, not social perception — every buying decision resolves to "will this raise or lower my status in my own eyes?" See Status as the Only Mover and Temporary Status Decrease for Future Gain.