A study by the universities of Manchester and Liverpool
observing monkeys has found that those in the middle hierarchy suffer the most
social stress. Their work suggests that the source of this stress is social
conflict and may help explain studies in humans that have found that middle
managers suffer the most stress at work.
Katie Edwards from Liverpool’s Institute of Integrative
Biology spent nearly 600 hours watching female Barbary macaques at Trentham
Monkey Forest in Staffordshire. Her research involved monitoring a single
female over one day, recording all incidences of social behaviour. These
included agonistic behaviour like threats, chases and slaps, submissive
behaviour like displacing, screaming, grimacing and hind-quarter presentation
and affiliative behaviour such as teeth chatter, embracing and grooming.