What's your status? Health risks of low social status (ScienceDaily)

October 10, 2014

Chris von Rueden, assistant professor of Leadership Studies, is quoted in an article highlighting research on the health risks of low social status.

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In western society, where keeping up with the Joneses -- or, better yet, surpassing them -- is expected and even encouraged, status matters. So important is it that for many people, physical and emotional wellbeing are directly connected to their place in the social hierarchy.

That's hardly news to anthropologists at UC Santa Barbara, but they were taken by surprise when research findings indicated that the same relationship exists among the Tsimane, an egalitarian society of forager-farmers in the Bolivian Amazon. Their work is published online in the journal Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health.

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