Ruling Class Shows No Effects of Physiological Stress

[phantom power]

The traditional narrative, that it's hard to be the leader, operated on the assumption that there were consequences to failure, and also the assumption that the leaders weren't sociopaths, and so they would actually have emotional skin in the game. Both assumptions are in serious doubt in the here and now.

This is my favorite scientific study of the year so far, even if it falls under the category of “scientific studies we didn’t need.” It turns out that the myth of high-stress positions of power is unfounded. Our lords of industry, our masters of the universe get along just fine. And if you had the benefits of a golden parachute to fall back on with none of the threats of accountability for your performance, you would too.

A new study reveals that those who sit atop the nation’s political, military, business and nonprofit organizations are actually pretty chill. Compared with people of similar age, gender and ethnicity who haven’t made it to the top, leaders pronounced themselves less stressed and anxious. And their levels of cortisol, a hormone that circulates at high levels in the chronically stressed, told the same story.

The study doesn’t totally elaborate on how this control plays out in terms of their capacity for failure. That concept only causes stress among those who may actually pay a price for failure. The “leaders” in this study can commit crimes, blow up their organizations, damage the credibility of their institutions as a whole – but they will feel no pain. Why wouldn’t you be happy?

The study relates this to the world of other primates. The leaders in groups of baboons and monkeys display less anxiety, too, because “their status is not under constant challenge.” So too in the society we’ve set up, that walls off the powerful behind a concrete pouring of privilege.

http://news.firedoglake.com/2012/09/25/ruling-class-shows-no-effects-of-physiological-stress/

[HiPointDem]

1. kr.

[SheilaT]

2. I have long noticed that white collar workers

in the upper echelons "work" a lot less than most others. They may spend hours in the office, but they're not chained to their desks, grinding away at whatever. Blue collar workers, on the other hand, are expected to be productive every single minute they're on the clock. And there are certain, relatively low-level but nominally white-collar jobs that have that same expectation. Think grocery clerks, telephone operators, airline ticket agents, all of those kinds of jobs where the workers stay in one place and must wait on everyone who approaches them. Management tends to get quite bothered if those people have more than an odd minute here or there not actually working.

Meanwhile, the upper levels (ruling class) has enormous control over their time. Not to mention they're paid some significant multiple of the lowest workers' wages. No wonder they don't show much stress.