Status does not predict stress: Women in an egalitarian hunter-gatherer society.

Piotr Fedurek,Laurent Lacroix,Lee Cronk,Cathryn Townsend,Volker Behrends,E Jerryson Makambi,Julia Lehmann,J Colette Berbesque,Ibrahim Mabulla,Athena Aktipis

doi:10.1017/ehs.2020.44

Abstract

It is widely believed that there is strong association between physiological stress and an individual's social status in their social hierarchy. This has been claimed for all humans cross-culturally, as well as in non-human animals living in social groups. However, the relationship between stress and social status has not been explored in any egalitarian hunter-gatherer society; it is also under investigated in exclusively female social groups. Most of human evolutionary history was spent in small, mobile foraging bands of hunter-gatherers with little economic differentiation - egalitarian societies. We analysed women's hair cortisol concentration along with two domains of women's social status (foraging reputation and popularity) in an egalitarian hunter-gatherer society, the Hadza. We hypothesized that higher social status would be associated with lower physiological indicators of stress in these women. Surprisingly, we did not find any association between either foraging reputation or popularity and hair cortisol concentration. The results of our study suggest that social status is not a consistent or powerful predictor of physiological stress levels in women in an egalitarian social structure. This challenges the notion that social status has the same basic physiological implications across all demographics and in all human societies.

Highlights

IntroductionThe biosocial model of status, in which every member of a social group signals social status through behavioural signs (e.g. demeanour, speech, physical conflict) (Mazur, 1985) is a model that has relied far more on research on males than females
The biosocial model of status, in which every member of a social group signals social status through behavioural signs (Mazur, 1985) is a model that has relied far more on research on males than females
Media Summary: By analysing women’s stress in egalitarian hunter–gatherers, we find that social status does not have the same impact across human societies

Summary

Introduction

The biosocial model of status, in which every member of a social group signals social status through behavioural signs (e.g. demeanour, speech, physical conflict) (Mazur, 1985) is a model that has relied far more on research on males than females. Most of the literature on social status and both perceived stress levels and physiological stress levels in humans comes from large-scale, industrialized populations. These typically use socioeconomic status (operationalized as income and education) as a proxy for social status (Marmot, 2004; Sapolsky, 2004; Wilkinson, 2001). The vast majority of human evolutionary history was spent in small bands of hunter–gatherers with little economic differentiation between individuals (Bowles et al, 2010; Mattison et al, 2016), in contrast to the large-scale social and economic interactions that characterize industrialized populations. There is very little research on social status and stress in small-scale populations. Hunter–gatherer populations are distinct from other small-scale societies in that they have well-documented, explicit levelling mechanisms to prevent hierarchy, rather than an absence of central authority (Boehm et al, 1993; Cashdan, 1980)

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