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Home Posts Key Study: Social status and stress in Olive Baboons (Sapolsky, 1990)
Sapolsky's classic 1990 study on African Olive Baboons helps give us an insight into the links between social status as an explanation for chronic stress.
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An interesting finding in the field of stress and health psychology is that people with higher social status are generally in better health: they have lower rates of heart disease, are less obese and live longer. Why? One reason could be because they are less stressed.<br>A lot of our knowledge about stress and health comes from animal studies, particularly those on non-human primates (e.g. monkeys and baboons). Robert Sapolsky is one of the preeminent psychologists in the field of stress in primates he’s spent years studying social hierarchies in primate species. In particular, he has studied how social rank correlates with stress, stress hormones and health. We’ll look at some of this research in this blog post.<br>Olive Baboons (like these two babies) make for good animal models of human social hierarchies and their links with stress.
Read More<br>10 ways to stress a monkey (How the link between status and stress isn’t as easy as we link)<br>But researchers didn’t always agree on this. In the 1950s psychologists believed that it was the high-powered and high-status individuals who had the highest stress levels. It was believed they suffered from what they called the “executive stress syndrome.” But by the 1960s this research was discredited and it was then believed that subordinate (lower ranking) individuals had higher stress (Sapolsky, 2005).<br>This article is written with material adapted from our "Stress" unit for Health Psychology.
An important study in the field of stress and its link with status was conducted by Sapolsky in 1990. In this classic study, Sapolsky observed a troop of Olive Baboons in the Serengeti plains of Africa for 12 years. Data was collected every year with the aim of understanding how social rank was correlated with stress levels.<br>These particular baboons in the Serengeti make excellent animal models of human societies because they live long lives in large social groups (of about 50-200 baboons in a troop) and they are very intelligent. They also live in an environment abundant with food and they’re large, so they don’t have to worry about predators. This means they have no immediate threats and have all the time in the world to create complex social hierarchies and the social stressors that go with it – much like our own modern societies.<br>Social rank and stress in baboons (Sapolsky, 1990)<br>One aim of this study was to see how rank is associated with stress.<br>Olive baboons are social animals with clearly defined hierarchies, like humans. (Credit: Stolz Gary M, USFWS, pixnio.com)
Methods:<br>12-year longitudinal study.<br>Observational data was gathered to learn the social ranks and behaviours of the baboons. Data was also gathered on their personality traits.<br>Blood samples were gathered using blowguns to tranquilize the baboons and measure their stress levels by analyzing cortisol levels in the blood (i.e. cortisol levels are the measurement of stress).To control for extraneous variables affecting the blood samples, the animals would be tranquilized by shooting them with darts from a blowgun. To avoid confounding factors influencing the blood sample, the samples were taken at the same time of day because our circadian rhythm (body clock) alters our levels of hormones throughout the day (cortisol levels tend to peak in the morning and are lowest in the evenings). They were not taken immediately after sex, a fight, or during illness. The animals were shot with the dart while they were relaxed and not expecting it.
Results:<br>One finding from the study was that the subordinate, lower ranking males were hypercortisolemic – they had elevated levels of cortisol in their blood. This is because they experienced more stressors. High-ranking baboons tended to have lower levels of cortisol.<br>In one year (1981), 6 males formed an alliance to remove the highest ranking male. They succeeded, but then all...