“The Stress of Higher Status”

// February 2nd, 2010 // Information Overload

An article in the December 2009 issue of the American Sociological Review by Scott Schieman, Paul Glavin and Melissa Milkie analyses research conducted on US workers to establish the relationship between the extent of bleed of work into non-work life and the circumstances of the worker. They have found a “paradox” that has been apparent for some time i.e. that the more senior you are, the greater the bleed, in spite of also having greater control over a number of aspects of work. They coin the expression “the stress of higher status”.

The definitions of status are pretty soft and include social indicators such as having a degree so the organisational indicators you might hope for are not there. Also, the data is from 2005. However, it is good to see this issue quantified.

I am not sure how you could research it but my suspicion is that this level of “stress” is self-inflicted – the more senior we are, the more likely we are to work at all hours because, now that most other indicators of seniority have evaported, we have come to equate activity with status. If you don’t agree, seat yourself in the business lounge at any airport and watch…

One Response to ““The Stress of Higher Status””

  1. Nathan Zeldes says:
    6 February 2010 at 3:10 am

    I’d hazard a conjecture that the soft line demarcating the senior-who-overstress from their juniors who retain some sanity is creeping downward in the hierarchy over the years…