Rule 1: Stand Up Straight With Your Shoulders Back

This article is an excerpt from the Shortform summary of "12 Rules for Life" by Jordan Peterson. Shortform has the world's best summaries of books you should be reading.

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In 12 Rules for Life, Rule #1 is “Stand Up Straight With Your Shoulders Back.” What does this mean? Do you stand up straight physically? Or is this more of a metaphor for being confident?

It turns out Jordan Peterson’s Rule 1 means both. We’ll discuss what he meant by stand up straight, and how your physical posture affects your mental state.

This chapter of 12 Rules for Life discusses social status from a biological point of view, and how your body language affects how others perceive you and how you feel about yourself.

The Biology of Social Status

(This is the most science-heavy chapter of 12 Rules for Life, so if you don’t enjoy reading this, don’t worry – the rest of the book isn’t like this.)

Inequality of ability occurs through natural biological variation – within a species, some animals are more capable than others. Those higher in ability command greater resources:

Higher position in social hierarchy
More advantageous home locations
More reproductive interest from higher-quality mates
More cooperation with peers and subordinates

Because social status is so important in life outcomes, you try to figure out where on the social hierarchy you are, you signal that position to other people, and you jockey for a higher position. Sound familiar? These are deeply evolved, biological behaviors.

Even crawfish do this. Two stranger lobsters, placed in the same tank, will within 30 minutes determine the dominant and the subordinate lobster. Their subsequent behaviors match their position – one strutting, claws in the air; the other sulking, dejected, prone to flight.

When a behavior is common among divergent species, the behavior was strongly selected for in natural selection and promoted survival in some way.

According to Jordan Peterson’s Rule 1, the function of this signaling and recognition behavior is to distribute scarce resources between individuals, without the need for costly conflict. This is the important part of Rule 1: “Stand Up Straight With Your Shoulders Back.”

Consider the confrontation between two lobsters sizing each other up. At each stage in conflict, one lobster may yield and opt for subordinance.

Failing this, the conflict escalates.
- First the lobsters examine each other’s claw and body size, and secrete chemicals indicating their health, size, and mood.
- Failing this, the lobsters face off, making threatening advances to one another.
- Failing this, the lobsters wrestle, trying to flip the other.
- Failing this, the lobsters engage in physical combat, using claws to damage body parts.

Because actual fighting is risky for both parties, being able to non-violently determine the stronger through signaling is beneficial.

Similar animal behaviors:

Elk will wrestle with horns to prove the stronger one.
Defeated wolves will roll over and expose their throats.

Among animals, females let the males sort themselves out into a hierarchy, then choose the best individual to mate with.

(Peterson connects this to the romance trope where a large, powerful, aggressive male is subdued and charmed by the female, as in Beauty and the Beast.)

(Shortform note: How is standing up straight helpful for survival, especially in the case of the subordinate lobster?

Consider an average lobster that refused to defer to every lobster as a rule. In some cases it would actually be superior, and the other lobster would back off. But sometimes it would have its bluff called by a stronger lobster, and it would be injured or killed. So “knowing your place” prevents injury from conflict, thus promoting survival.
Likewise, a supreme alpha lobster would rather avoid conflict, since injury could allow an inferior third lobster to take advantage of the situation. The alpha also doesn’t necessarily want to kill submissive individuals, since they could be useful partners later.
From a group perspective, if ability is concentrated unequally, and if a group is best served by following the unequally good people, then hierarchies are useful.)

Serotonin and Social Status

The neurotransmitter serotonin is thought to be the internal mediator of social status. If you feel (or are) dominant in status, more serotonin circulates in your bloodstream. Experimental results support this:

Submissive lobsters have physiologically different serotonin circuits that potentiate differently.
Administering SSRIs (antidepressants that increase serotonin levels ) to lobsters makes them adopt the dominant body posture and fight longer before retreating.
Low serotonin is associated with less happiness, more illness, and shorter lifespan (Shortform note: though it’s unclear what the causation is – those who are less fit and more prone to illness may naturally have lower status and thus lower serotonin.)

(Shortform note: more research results not cited in the book that supports Jordan Peterson’s Rule 1:

If an alpha male is removed from a group and a new male given Prozac inserted, the Prozac male becomes the new alpha consistently.
Serotonin also seems to improve pro-social behavior and reduces aggression. Makes sense since high-status people have much to lose with violence, while low-status ones do not.
In humans, frat leaders have higher serotonin levels than mere members.)

What Is the Point of All This Lobster Talk?

The important point is that there is a primordial calculator in your brain (the medial prefrontal cortex) that monitors signals to figure out your position in society. It recognizes how others behave around you, and it infers your social standing. Then, based on where you think you are in the hierarchy, you change your perceptions, values, emotions, and actions.

Rule 1: Stand Up Straight With Your Shoulders Back