It’s a hot topic in many places, the sometimes huge differences in wages between CEO’s and other bosses and the rest of the employees. An argument often heard is that being the boss is more stressful. But is it? Well, this article in Scientific American (HT @fanseel) sheds some light on this. There are still other arguments for the difference, but they aren’t being tackled in this article.
First of all, the often cited research claiming being boss is more stressful, is maybe a bit problematic:
“This type of silliness usually cites research from the 1950’s on “executive stresssyndrome.” The research was not on executives, but rhesus monkeys. In a famousexperiment, neuroscientist Joseph Brady subjected one group of monkeys to regular electric shocks every 20 seconds for six hour shifts. Another group of “executive monkeys” had the same schedule, except that they could prevent the shocks by pressing a lever in each 20 second period. The “executive monkeys” quickly learned to prevent the shocks by pressing the levers. This situation sounds awful for both monkeys, but decidedly worse for the monkeys with no escape. And yet, it was the “executive monkeys” with greater responsibility and control who started dropping dead from stomach ulcers. These results seemed to suggest that being responsible for making important decisions was so stressful that it posed a serious health risk. Executive stress syndrome was born.
There are of course two problems with an executive monkey: the executive and the monkey. For Rhesus monkeys are not people, and controlling electric shocks is not making business decisions. We can do better.”
And what does it mean to do better:
“In fact there are hundreds of studies on the relationship between stress, health, and power. And they virtually all show the opposite of the executive monkeys.”