BEING an underdog could seriously damage your health, the British Association meeting was told on Monday.
People at the bottom of a hierarchy consistently live less long than those at the top, Professor Robert Evans of the University of British Columbia said.
The traditional explanations - poverty, smoking, diet and unequal access to health care - could not explain the large differences in death rates, he said.
A study of some British civil servants had shown a strong correlation between status and mortality.
Over a 10-year period, those in the lowest grades had three times as large a probability of dying as those at the top.
Studies of wild baboons in the east African Serengeti had shown very similar patterns, with subordinate animals under chronic strain, mostly generated not by fear of predators or a lack of food, but by social interactions with their superiors in the tribe.
'What really bothers subordinates is not being attacked by a leopard, or even worrying about being attacked by a leopard,' he said.