*Hat of Undeniable Wealth And
Respect*
The Hat of Undeniable Wealth And Respect, often abbreviated as HOUWAR, is a
promotional headwear item, wearable by all classes. It is a worn-out tricorne
hat worn backwards, topped with a cock-eyed octopus with orange spots grasping a
small treasure chest.
This hat was awarded to players that completed all 28 objectives in The Great
Steam Treasure Hunt. Users who completed the requisite number of objectives were
required to visit the promotion page and click the "Unlock Hat" button in order
to have the hat added to their backpack. If the user already had the Bounty Hat
or Treasure Hat, it was upgraded to the Hat of Undeniable Wealth And Respect
when all 28 objectives were completed.
When players equipped with this item kill an enemy unassisted by another player,
the killfeed shows everyone in Pyroland that it gets the assist, with its custom
name if it has one.
The respect of your peers is the root of happiness in life and more important
than how well-off you are, according to a report published yesterday.
It suggests that overall happiness in life is related more to relationships with
those around you than the status that comes from how much money you have stashed
in the bank.
Researchers from the University of California, Berkely explored the relationship
between different types of status and well-being in the study published in the
journal Psychological Science.
'We got interested in this idea because there is abundant evidence that higher
socioeconomic status - higher income or wealth, higher education - does not
boost subjective well-being (or happiness) much at all,' said Cameron Anderson
of the Haas School of Business, lead author on the study.
'Yet at the same time, many theories suggest that higher status should boost
happiness.'
Mr Anderson and his colleagues hypothesised that higher sociometric status -
respect and admiration in your face-to-face groups, such as your friendship
network, your neighborhood, or your athletic team - might make a difference in
your overall happiness.
Money really can’t buy happiness, research shows. Instead, a new study suggests,
those pursuing a happier life would be smart to sharpen their social skills.
In a series of four experiments, researchers found that it is the level of
respect and admiration we receive from peers—not overall wealth or success—that
more likely predicts happiness. They refer to this level of respect and
admiration as our “sociometric status,” as opposed to socioeconomic status
(SES).
In one experiment, 80 college students from 14 different student groups rated
how much they respected and admired the other people in their group, and how
respected and admired they felt themselves; they also answered questions about
their family’s income and their own level of happiness.
Jiri Kabele
The results, published in the journal Psychological Science, show that people
with higher sociometric status reported greater happiness, whereas their
socioeconomic status was not linked to their happiness.
In a similar experiment, more than 300 people answered questions about the
respect and admiration they received within their friends, family, and work
circles. They also reported their personal sense of power in those social
circles, and how liked and accepted they felt, along with their income and
happiness.
Again, people of high sociometric status were much more likely to be happy than
were people of high SES. Through their data analysis, the researchers also found
that these people were happier because they felt a greater sense of power and
acceptance within their groups.
“Where people stand in their local hierarchy matters to their happiness,” they
write.
But does feeling respected and admired actually cause people to be feel
happier—or could it be that people admire peers who project happiness?
The researchers addressed that question in two additional experiments. In one,
they manipulated people’s sense of status by asking them to compare themselves
to people who were much more or much less respected and admired than they were.
Other participants had to compare themselves to people who had much more or much
less wealth, education, and professional success. Then all participants had to
think about how their “similarities and differences” might come into play if
they were to interact with these imaginary others.
In this case, people temporarily made to feel like they were of higher
sociometric status were happier than people made to feel like they were of lower
sociometric status, regardless of their actual status outside of the experiment.
By contrast, people made to feel like they had high socioeconomic status were
not happier than people made to feel like they had low SES. The results strongly
suggest that feeling respected and admired can actually cause our happiness to
increase, whereas feeling wealthy (without also feeling respected) doesn’t carry
the same effect.....
“You don’t have to be rich to be happy, but instead be a valuable contributing
member to your groups,” says Anderson. “What makes a person high in status in a
group is being engaged, generous with others, and making self sacrifices for the
greater good.”