Abstract
BackgroundAlthough a wealth of literature points to the importance of social factors on health, a detailed understanding of the complex interplay between social and biological systems is lacking. Social status is one aspect of social life that is made up of multiple structural (humans: income, education; animals: mating system, dominance rank) and relational components (perceived social status, dominance interactions). In a nonhuman primate model we use novel network techniques to decouple two components of social status, dominance rank (a commonly used measure of social status in animal models) and dominance certainty (the relative certainty vs. ambiguity of an individual’s status), allowing for a more complex examination of how social status impacts health.MethodsBehavioral observations were conducted on three outdoor captive groups of rhesus macaques (N = 252 subjects). Subjects’ general physical health (diarrhea) was assessed twice weekly, and blood was drawn once to assess biomarkers of inflammation (interleukin-6 (IL-6), tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α), and C-reactive protein (CRP)).ResultsDominance rank alone did not fully account for the complex way that social status exerted its effect on health. Instead, dominance certainty modified the impact of rank on biomarkers of inflammation. Specifically, high-ranked animals with more ambiguous status relationships had higher levels of inflammation than low-ranked animals, whereas little effect of rank was seen for animals with more certain status relationships. The impact of status on physical health was more straightforward: individuals with more ambiguous status relationships had more frequent diarrhea; there was marginal evidence that high-ranked animals had less frequent diarrhea.DiscussionSocial status has a complex and multi-faceted impact on individual health. Our work suggests an important role of uncertainty in one’s social status in status-health research. This work also suggests that in order to fully explore the mechanisms for how social life influences health, more complex metrics of social systems and their dynamics are needed.
Highlights
Social life influences mental and physical health (Thoits, 2011; Nunn et al, 2015)
Our research demonstrates the importance of more complex representations of social status for understanding its impact on health
Our data show that the effect of social status on health is much better understood by accounting for status certainty
Summary
Social life influences mental and physical health (Thoits, 2011; Nunn et al, 2015). For example, a lack of satisfactory social relationships has been shown to be associated with poor health and high quality relationships can buffer individuals from stress (Hostinar, Sullivan & Gunnar, 2014; Hawkley & Capitanio, 2015). The absence of social relationships has been associated with poor health outcomes, social life consists of more than just the presence or absence of social relationships. Qualities of these relationships, such as stability and role within the community, are important factors (Sapolsky, 1992; Thoits, 2011). We use a measure of status certainty to test whether greater uncertainty in status relationships is coincident with greater levels of inflammation and poor health outcomes. This work suggests that in order to fully explore the mechanisms for how social life influences health, more complex metrics of social systems and their dynamics are needed
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