![]() Childhood SES has been shown to affect brain structure. Thereby status has been linked, among other factors, to cardiovascular disease ( Winkleby et al., 1992), depression, obesity, and diabetes ( Everson et al., 2002), with low-status groups being more vulnerable to such diseases than high-status groups (reviewed in Adler et al., 1993). Many negative health symptoms are related to physiological stress reactions in individuals representing low levels of SES ( National Center for Health Statistics, 2012 Saydah et al., 2013 Mackenbach et al., 2015). An important aspect of human social hierarchy is its effect on health ( Marmot, 2004). The socioeconomic factors most frequently used in SES are occupation, income and education. SES is a multidimensional construct comprising diverse socioeconomic factors that is used to conceptualize an individual’s social standing or class ( Braveman et al., 2005). Socio-economic status (SES) is the most commonly used concept to study effects of status in humans. For instance, it has been argued that social hierarchy reduces in-group conflicts by enhancing voluntary cooperation, supports the division of labor, and capitalizes on the complementary psychological effects of having versus lacking power ( Halevy et al., 2011). In evolutionary terms, social hierarchies are thought to bear adaptive advantages. In humans hierarchy is defined as an implicit or explicit rank order of individuals or groups with respect to a valued social dimension ( Magee and Galinsky, 2008). ![]() Social hierarchies exist in virtually all human societies as well as in many non-human species. We conclude that social status, in the form of military rank affects fairness behavior in social interaction and endocrine levels. This would be in line with the observation that unequally shared duty favored HR in most cases. We assume that the elevated C levels in HR were caused by HR feeling their status challenged by the situation of having to negotiate with an individual of lower military rank. C levels were also elevated in the manipulated experiment compared to the un-manipulated experiment, especially in LR. C levels in the HR group were higher than in the LR group. Rank was a significant predictor for C but not for T levels during the experiment. We found that in the un-manipulated setup high-ranking soldiers spent less time standing guard than lower ranking individuals. Saliva samples for hormone analysis were collected at regular intervals throughout the experiment. Our aim was to test whether unfair behavior causes a physiological reaction. In the manipulated version both soldiers started in the standing guard position and were never relieved, believing that their opponent was at rest, not relieving them. ![]() ![]() In order to trigger perception of unfair behavior, an additional experiment was conducted which was manipulated by the experimenter. The participant who started at rest could choose if and when to relieve his fellow soldier and therefore had control over the experiment. At the beginning of the experiment, one participant was assigned to start standing guard and the other participant at rest. One soldier from each rank group participated in every experiment. The rank groups were (1) warrant officers (high rank, HR) and (2) enlisted men (low rank, LR). For this purpose 180 members of the Austrian Armed Forces belonging to two distinct rank groups participated in two variations of a computer-based guard duty allocation experiment. The present study investigated the impact of military rank on fairness and behavior in relation to salivary cortisol (C) and testosterone (T) levels in male soldiers. Its effects on human behavior and related physiology, however, is relatively little studied. Status within social hierarchies has great effects on the lives of socially organized mammals. ![]()
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