Two Routes to Status, One Route to Health: Trait Dominance and Prestige Differentially Associate with Self-reported Stress and Health in Two US University Populations.

Objective: Social status has been extensively linked to stress and health outcomes. However, two routes by which status can be earned - dominance and prestige - may not uniformly relate to lower stress and better health because of inherent behavioral and stress-exposure differences in these two routes. Methods: In one exploratory and two preregistered studies, participants (total N = 978) self-reported their trait dominance and prestige and self-reported several stress and health outcomes. Results: The meta-effects evident across the three studies indicate that higher trait dominance was associated with worse outcomes - higher stress, poorer physical and mental health, poorer behavioral health, poorer life satisfaction, higher negative affect (range of absolute values of non-zero correlations, | Conclusions: This work indicates that evolved traits related to the preferred route by which status is earned likely impact self-reported stress and health outcomes. Future research is necessary to examine physiological and other objective indicators of stress and health in more diverse populations. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s40750-022-00199-3.