People don’t just care about how they are doing, they care about their performance in relation to others

Getting to board a plane a few minutes early is a nice perk of achieving Premier status. But part of what makes this a nice perk is that you get to board before everyone else. Because levels work on two, well, levels. They tell us where we are at any time in absolute terms.

But they also make clear where we stand relative to everyone else.

-Contagious, p.47