Social rank and status by themselves do not provide objective measures of an individual's worth.

Research does not show that having less status, power, or money has any objective meaning.

People at different levels of a social hierarchy have different responsibilities, not better or worse ones.

We live in a world that places enormous emphasis on being at the top. We are encouraged to make more money, gain more power, move higher within organizations, and achieve greater recognition. There is nothing inherently wrong with wanting any of these things. The problem comes when we assume that having them makes someone more important, more successful as a human being, or somehow better than people who have less.

From a scientific perspective, there is surprisingly little reason to make that assumption. Research on social hierarchies across animal species does not support the simple idea that individuals lower in a hierarchy necessarily experience greater stress, poorer health, or worse functioning than those at the top. Dominance can certainly provide advantages, including greater access to resources. However, the effects of rank vary considerably depending on the species and social environment, and being at the top can carry significant physiological and behavioral costs.

Robert Sapolsky's (2004) research on primates is particularly interesting in this regard. His work demonstrates that there is no universal relationship between low social rank and elevated stress. Whether dominant or subordinate animals experience greater physiological stress depends on characteristics of the particular social system. Being lower in a........

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