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Musings Report 2016-44 10-29-16 The Sources of Stress in a Stressful Era
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For those who are new to the Musings reports: they are basically a glimpse into my notebook, the unfiltered swamp where I organize future themes, sort through the dozens of stories and links submitted by readers, refine my own research and start connecting dots which appear later in the blog or in my books. As always, I hope the Musings spark new appraisals and insights. Thank you for supporting the site and for inviting me into your circle of correspondents.
Welcome to October's MUS (Margins of the Unfiltered Swamp)
The last Musings of the month is a free-form exploration of the reaches of the fecund swamp that is the source of the blog, Musings and my books.
Apologies in Advance
Construction projects will occupy much of my time for the rest of the year, so my time online will be severely curtailed. I will read every email received but please accept my apologies in advance for being unable to respond to every email.
The Sources of Stress in a Stressful Era
We recently hosted our friend Davefairtex for a week (he also writes for Peak Prosperity). Dave introduced us to the work of baboon researcher Robert Sapolsky, who found that stress levels in hierarchical baboon society is highly correlated to social status:
while high-ranking males experience high levels of stress from constant confrontations, it's energizing "good stress" that is short-term. In contrast, lower rank males experience chronic "bad stress" that erodes their health. Higher rank males also receive more grooming and social support than lower ranking males.
Recent studies by other researchers have found that high ranking males heal much faster than lower rank males, a finding that indicates the negative health consequences of chronic stress and low levels of social support.
(The social order for female baboons is not based on confrontations establishing a pecking order, and as a result the stress sources experienced by males are not present in females.)
Sapolsky's findings identified four sources of chronic stress in baboons. (Researchers are quick to point out that human societies have multiple layers of hierarchy.)
1. Inability to differentiate between truly threatening situations and low-threat situations. Reacting to every threat as if it were do-or-die generates far more stress than responding appropriately to low-level threats--i.e. monitor the threat rather than going to a high-stress fight-or-flight level.
2. Waiting for the other party in a potential conflict to act rather than taking control of the situation first. Waiting around worrying about what might happen creates chronic stress, while taking charge generates the shorter-term energizing kind of stress.
3. Being unable to conclude if you won or lost the confrontation/ conflict. While we assume winners immediately realize they won and losers immediately realize they were defeated, the aftermath is often ambiguous, and the ambiguity is highly stressful. Confrontations aren't elections with clear winners and losers, nor are they necessarily boxing matches with knockouts or other clear win-lose bifurcations.
4. Having a social network to provide calming, nurtuting comfort and support after one has lost a confrontation.
The importance of this social support clearly carries over to humans:
Baboon Study Shows Why High Social Status Boosts Health
"In humans, decades worth of data suggest it is higher social status itself that improves health, and the chronic stress of low social status that harms it, particularly when this stress starts early in life.
As pioneering stress researcher Robert Sapolsky told me: “When humans invented inequality and socioeconomic status, they came up with a dominance hierarchy that subordinates like nothing the primate world has ever seen before.”
There is, however, a remedy for status stress that works even in the face of social inequality. While humans don’t typically groom each other like baboons, research finds that high levels of social support — especially physical contact like hugs and massage — can mitigate the effects of stress for humans, too. We can’t all be alphas or betas, but we can all love and be loved."
Robert Sapolsky discusses physiological effects of stress
"Non-life-threatening stressors, such as constantly worrying about money or pleasing your boss, also trigger the release of adrenalin and other stress hormones, which, over time, can have devastating consequences to your health, he said: "If you turn on the stress response chronically for purely psychological reasons, you increase your risk of adult onset diabetes and high blood pressure. If you're chronically shutting down the digestive system, there's a bunch of gastrointestinal disorders you're more at risk for as well."
But when it comes to stress-related diseases, social isolation may play an even more significant role than social rank or personality. "Up until 15 years ago, the most striking thing we found was that, if you're a baboon, you don't want to be low ranking, because your health is going to be lousy," he explained. "But what has become far clearer, and probably took a decade's worth of data, is the recognition that protection from stress-related disease is most powerfully grounded in social connectedness, and that's far more important than rank."
According to Sapolsky, happiness and self-esteem are important factors in reducing stress. Yet the definition of "happiness" has less to do with material comfort than Westerners might assume, he noted: "An extraordinary finding that's been replicated over and over is that once you get past the 25 percent or so poorest countries on Earth, where the only question is survival and subsistence, there is no relationship between gross national product, per capita income, any of those things, and levels of happiness."
What's the key take-away from all this research? I would say there are two:
1. Look for the four sources of stress listed above and try to limit them in our own lives.
2. Bolster the characteristics of high-status stress reductors in our lives, even if we are low-status in terms of income and society's hierarchical pecking order.
In other words, a low-status person who takes charge of their own life and has a robust social support network has the same stress reduction benefits as a high-status person.
From Left Field
Robert Sapolsky: The Psychology of Stress (3:18)
Exxon Enters No Man's Land Slowly, in fits and starts, Exxon's investors are pushing it to take better account of climate-change risks. (via Joel M.)
It's About to Get Harder to Seek Student Debt Relief (via Joel M.)
College Is Still Getting More Expensive. What Can Stop It?
Tuition and fees at private and public schools alike keep rising faster than inflation. (via Joel M.)
The spy who couldn’t spell: how the biggest heist in the history of US espionage was foiled (via Maoxian)
Trump’s Family Fortune Originated in a Canadian Gold-Rush Brothel -- many fortunes started from illicit trade....
China capital flight flashes warning as authorities forced to prick property bubble -- inflating the bubble every time it starts deflating...
The veins of America: Stunning map shows every river basin in the US
Ignoring the Debt Problem -- ignoring it is the only way to maintain the status quo...
Rentier Capitalism – Veblen in the 21st century
Decoding the Misleading Metaphors of Money and Banking (via Lew G.)
Nonsense paper written by iOS autocomplete accepted for conference (via Steve K. and Lew G.)
"Every man has inside himself a parasitic being who is acting not at all to his advantage." William Seward Burroughs
Thanks for reading--
charles |
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