
Low social status 'can damage immune system' - happy-go-lucky
http://www.bbc.com/news/health-38092146
======
Animats
This is well known. _Relative_ social status has an influence on health. Above
survival level, it's healthier to be at the top of a poor culture than at the
bottom of a rich one, even if the absolute level is lower.

~~~
John23832
I commented on this in a recent thread and was crucified for being a self
centered sociopath... better luck to you.

~~~
noelwelsh
Heh. I think think the sociopathic conclusion would be to claw one's way to
the top no matter what. The compassionate conclusion would be to reduce
inequality, so all benefit.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Unless you can reduce inequality to zero - Harrison Bergeron style [1] - you
can't fix this by reducing inequality. It's an ironclad law of mathematics
that 20% of the population will be part of the bottom fifth.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron)

~~~
noelwelsh
I believe the level of inequality, and the level of social mobility (which is
probably related to the magnitude of inequality), is more important than the
existence of inequality.

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cheald
Are you aware of any academic literature on the subject?

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noelwelsh
It's not my area, but putting some keywords in Google Scholar yielded some
results pretty quickly. E.g. this paper

[http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13504850701720197](http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13504850701720197)

"We investigate the relationship between inequality and intergenerational
mobility. Proxying fathers' earnings with using detailed occupational data, we
find that sons who grew up in countries that were more unequal in the 1970s
were less likely to have experienced social mobility by the late-1990s."

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AnthonyNagid
Has anyone else here ever read Keith Johnstone's 'Impro'? Coming from the
world of theater, Johnstone has a facinating perspective on the malleability
of social status.

~~~
drakenot
Can you give a brief summary of the points he makes about social status? I'm
curious but my reading backlog is already out of hand.

~~~
rukuu001
I was wondering if anyone had ideas on hacking social status for your own
benefit :)

~~~
solotronics
I have noticed a lot of engineers speak very quickly because you are in a
hurry and flit between points (ie. Elon Musk) this is a specific kind if
social status projection. Another way is to change how you dress. Another way
is how you carry your body. Interesting how much people use these signaling
queues to categorise each other.

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MichaelBurge
> The newest member nearly always ended up at the bottom of the social order
> and became "chronically stressed", received less grooming and more
> harassment from the other monkeys.

> A detailed analysis of the monkeys' blood showed 1,600 differences in the
> activity levels of genes involved in running the immune system between those
> at the top and bottom.

Could it be that the grooming procedure itself helps with the immune system?
For example, cats will often lick their fur, which could bring in small
quantities of pathogens to help build an immunity. If something similar
happens with the monkeys, the result might not generalize to humans.

> Dr Snyder-Mackler said: "Status is always relative, but if we could flatten
> the slope so the differences between the highest and lowest weren't as much,
> or find ways to focus attention on lower social environments so they are not
> as 'crappy' we could mediate some of those consequences.

It's fine for the doctor to have his own political philosophy and motivations
to do this study, but I would wait for a biologist to do a more careful
analysis of why those genes are being activated before using this to justify
any political action.

Certainly, if every conceivable biological variable except for feeling like
you're at the bottom is accounted for and the effect remains, that would be a
very interesting result.

~~~
bootload
_" I would wait for a biologist to do a more careful analysis of why those
genes are being activated before using this to justify any political action."_

Already done.

I refer to the _" Dunedin Study"_, (Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and
Development Study). [0] Read the summaries of how this was/is being conducted.
The most revealing insight into the links between poverty, disease and
mortality. People born into poverty and who increase their wealth considerably
in later life, do not get healthier.

Disease (damage to the immune system) is directly related to poverty.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunedin_Multidisciplinary_Heal...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunedin_Multidisciplinary_Health_and_Development_Study)

[1] [http://dunedinstudy.otago.ac.nz](http://dunedinstudy.otago.ac.nz) and
[http://dunedinstudy.otago.ac.nz/publications](http://dunedinstudy.otago.ac.nz/publications)

~~~
MichaelBurge
I'm not able to speak to the statistical validity of the test, but as a
software developer I find it more convincing if there's an explicit causal
connection.

Like, "Poor people live in darker homes, and the photosensitive ganglion cells
are connected to the part of the brain that controls melanin production. And
this triggers a sleep response more often, which causes the immune system to
behave in X, Y, and Z".

How does a statistician make a decision about what to change given only
statistical data? It seems very mysterious to me. I understand how to
interpret a scientific result(give people brighter homes), but not a
statistical one.

~~~
GFK_of_xmaspast
Causality is extremely difficult to prove in all sorts of reasonable
circumstances, much less the Rube Goldberg mess of horrible chemistry that is
the human corpus.

(See also for example Judea Pearl's work
[http://causality.cs.ucla.edu/blog/](http://causality.cs.ucla.edu/blog/) )

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Fomite
As with many things, this is also more complex. This article:
[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/303694650_Primate_r...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/303694650_Primate_reinfection_with_gastrointestinal_parasites_Behavioural_and_physiological_predictors_of_parasite_acquisition)
suggests that higher status animal in this particular group have a higher
parasite burden.

~~~
RockyMcNuts
Low status is stressful. And so is high status.

~~~
interfixus
Forced, involuntary low status is stressful.

Opting out and just not giving a four letter word does not have to be.

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thirstysusrando
I've always thought about this the other way around. When I feel sick or
depressed I tend to drop out of society for a bit.

~~~
Lxr
This was my initial thought too, and I haven't read the full text, but from
the abstract it seems they demonstrate causality in the other direction.

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fixxer
Being too rich can give you gout.

We all got problems.

~~~
adiabatty
Some people on a high-protein diet get this. The usual solution is to make
sure you're eating enough fat and veggies.

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du_bing
That's right, I have become more intent to have disease when not social at
all. Beccause nowadays, it's more difficult to commuincate with people with
others in real life, talking and interacting on internet can do much help.

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77pt77
directly related:

Stress, Portrait of a Killer - Full Documentary (2008)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYG0ZuTv5rs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYG0ZuTv5rs)

It studies this in humans and other primates.

------
known
High social status = Highly unethical
[http://www.pnas.org/content/109/11/4086](http://www.pnas.org/content/109/11/4086)

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bunchofdweebs
But is it necessarily a bad thing? It seems like a way for nature to filter
out less competitive genetic material. There are always going to be
hierarchies and there will always be people at the bottom. It's an inherent
part of how matter organises itself.

~~~
cyrusshepard
Logical fallacy. Social status ≠ genetics. Social status is unfortunately
often determined by income, race, religion, and a host of other nonlogical
designations.

In this experiment, social status was determined by "newness" to the group.
Nothing to do with genetics.

~~~
aaron695
You can't just name a fallacy from the wiki 'List of Fallacies' and try and
win an argument.

Social status in humans and other animals is a large part genetic. This is
take as fact by many people. If you believe it's not you really need proof.

The original OP didn't need to provide proof as they took it as a given and
was talking a different interesting premise.

------
known
Simple solution; Give a separate country to
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominant_minority](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominant_minority)

