Mann und Rang – die Rolle von Konkurrenz für die Männergesundheit

Abstract

There exists a consistent, continuous, and partly strong gender-specific association between social status and health: Men react more sensitively than women to their social status, e.g., concerning mortality. A gender-difference becomes apparent especially concerning partly psycho-socially determined diseases with a conspicuous role of subjective social status. Status-induced psycho-social strain seems to be even more relevant for men than for women. A chronic over-activation of the HPA axis plays a central role in the neurophysiology of status-induced psychic stress. The strongest HPA activity is triggered by competitive situations. On the one hand men are more competitive than women; on the other hand they show a stronger stress response to social-evaluative situations. Chronic HPA over-activation is a risk factor for many widespread diseases and is particularly associated with depressive disorders. Therefore, a high grade of competition and a hierarchy-oriented self-image is considered to be a salient societal hazard factor. So far human rank behaviour has attracted relatively little scientific attention and competition-specific health-related approaches are rare until now. One currently and broadly discussed approach to influence the degree of competition focuses on societal egalitarianism. Approaches that are founded on culturally established competition-decreasing strategies may be more sophisticated, for example, humility-inducing approaches. Setting approaches in particular could represent a promising template to focus on competition as an important topic in health promotion and prevention in formative environments. Attention should be paid to the conflict of objectives between competitiveness as a risk-inducing health determinant and its role as a growth engine for our society and economy.