Its hard to give it a proper treatment here but I think its an important topic. So I'll give a couple of links back to websites where there is a lot of related material and where much of my current thinking comes from.
I've been reading Robin Hanson's blog for at least six years. A lot of what he writes about relates to the topic of status-seeking motivations in disguise. Here is a short one that is pretty decent (if a little argumentative): http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/12/hiding-status-grubbing...
I'm not sure if this next particular article is a good starting point either, but it is the one where the light-bulb finally went on and I realized nearly all my own motivations are related to status-seeking (you can see my comment, I'm "jhuffman" on this website). http://lesswrong.com/lw/8gv/the_curse_of_identity/
