New Study: Leaders Are Less Stressed Than Their Subordinates

By measuring a stress hormone and asking questions about anxiety levels, researchers found that leaders experience less stress than subordinates.

A new study suggests that people in leadership positions experience less stress than their subordinates. Published on Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study was written by a group of seven academics from Harvard, Stanford and the University of California at San Diego who work in the fields of psychology, business and public policy.

In what the researchers said is the largest project to examine leadership and stress, the study recruited 148 leaders and 65 non-leaders from the Boston metro area and from a Harvard executive education program designed for senior-level officials in the public sector, which included members of the military.

To determine stress levels, the researchers measured the levels of salivary cortisol, a stress hormone, in the study subjects. “It was an interesting part of the study to bring all these leaders into the lab and have them drool into a vial for a few minutes,” says one of the paper’s authors, Christopher Oveis, a management professor at U.C. San Diego. Those in leadership positions had cortisol levels that were 27% lower than non-leaders.

To gauge anxiety levels, the researchers asked the subjects to respond to a series of statements like, “I get in a state of tension or turmoil as I think over my recent concerns and interests,” and rate them on a scale of one to four. The leaders’ responses to the anxiety questionnaire showed they were less stressed than the non-leaders.

A couple of other interesting things the study found: The leaders were more likely to be male and to have more money than the subordinates. They also exercised more, smoked less, woke up earlier, slept less and drank more coffee than the non-leaders.

In a second experiment, the researchers looked at a group of 88 leaders from other Harvard executive education programs with varying levels of responsibility for managing groups and subordinates. The leaders with a higher rank and more power had lower cortisol levels and they also exhibited less anxiety in response to statements like, “I can get people to listen to what I say.”

Though the study’s findings may seem counterintuitive—we think of leaders as pressurized workaholics, especially in these tight economic times—they are consistent with earlier research suggesting that people who have more of a sense of control, are less stressed.

This seems to also be true of non-human primates. The paper notes that Robert Sapolsky, a Stanford neuroscientist, has studied cortisol levels in baboons and found that animals with a higher social rank have lower cortisol levels. (One of Sapolsky’s studies, however, showed that the finding did not hold at the very top of the social hierarchy).

The new study raises a chicken and egg question. Does being high up on the organizational ladder cause bosses to be less stressed, or is it possible that people with less anxiety are more able to handle leadership roles, which gets them promoted? “We focused on the idea that leadership affords you an enhanced sense of control and this buffers against stress,” says Oveis. “But it’s certainly possible that people who tend to be less reactive to stress or those who develop great stress management skills are selected into leadership roles by others.”

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