Status and Longevity
Over on the Radar, Dale writes about Desperately Seeking Status. Dale’s a bit perturbed by the rather cold statement: “It never hurts to remind yourself of the business you’re really in: providing your customers and clients with status.” Though I agree, I also think that we don’t see enough conversation around this important topic.
As we enter the Web 2.0 era, where the social aspect of computing plays an increasingly important role, we need to see more social psychology and research being applied too.Much of harnessing collective intelligence is really also about groups and group behaviour. While Dale doesn’t think in terms of status, the majority of people do-perhaps unconsciously. We live in groups, and status within these groups and the hierarchies that we build are innately human things.
I’ve just started reading a fascinating book the subject: Michael Marmot’s Status Syndrome
This health gradient is reflected in many different hierarchies (some overlapping): for example, income, amount of schooling, parent’s social classs. But, he argues, it’s not about how much money people have, but about two features of societies: hierarchies and cooperation, which he translates as how much control individuals have over their lives and how widely spread are the opportunities for social participation.
The knowledge economy has its own hierarchy:perhaps Tim’s alpha-geeks are nearer the top. If I learn more Ruby and Web 2.0 and mashups I will undoubtedly be improving my status within my group of peers. I am acquiring status skills, whether I like it or not. And if there’s any truth in Marmot’s research, I’m also going to live longer because of it. That’s a good enough reason for me.
December 30th, 2006 at 5:13 am
I saw an interesting documentary that related stress to position in hierarchy to death from heart attacks. They found a strong correlation between early death and low position in hierarchy. During their research, the scientists found that the US military took blood samples from their soldiers and stored the blood (or the results, I forget which) and the researchers than did a correlation between colesterol and position in hierarchy. It appeared that low position = higher colersterol = coronary disease.
They then did an experiment on a group of monkeys (or apes, I forget which). They ranked each monkey in terms of its position, then did blood tests (all was normal), then fed the monkeys very high colesterol diets. The high ranking monkeys were OK, but the low ranking ones had the highest colesterol in their blood and presumeably buildup on their blood vessel walls. It appeared that the high stress resulted in the release of hormones which lowered the bodies ability to handle colesterol.
Just one small example of how hierarchy position can affect health and longlevity.
On a second note, I think individuals are interested not only in status, but also in RECOGNITION. This is one of the reason that sites which support member recognition are more popular.
November 30th, 2007 at 7:11 am
Longevity and hierarchy go hand in hand
French Statistics have monitored the birth rate in France, and are now encouraged, that in the last 25 years infant mortality has decreased by more than 5%, while the average life expectancy of people across France has increased by more than 6%, the reason explained for this turnaround is to a better way of life.
It’s a well know fact that years gone by the north south divide effected the longevity of peoples lives, people living in the north were likely to be poorer and sicker which would have had a big impact on life spans, where as people in the south had milder winters, making life a little easier this undauntedly would have increased the lifespan and longevity of the upper classes or hierarchy.