Bosses have lower levels of stress than their employees, according to a recent study by a team of Harvard and Stanford experts.

The report says that the famous Shakespearean quote, “Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown,” is actually very rare, because people who wear the “crown” are usually at ease more than those beneath them.

The trial, which was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and conducted by Gross and Jennifer Lerner, a professor of public policy and management at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, suggests that positions of leadership are directly linked with decreased stress levels.

Gross commented: “We live as social beings in stratified society. It’s our relative status in a group that disproportionately influences our happiness and well-being.”

The Whitehall studies of health in British civil service recently revealed that high rank of government officials was directly linked to decreased death rates. Robert Sapolsky, a biology professor at Stanford, measured cortisol, a stress hormone, in baboons. He found that the hormone was less prevalent in the baboons who were ranked higher in the troop.

Stanford and Harvard experts analyzed cortisol amounts, as well as self-reported anxiety levels, among a group that has not been studied often – military officials from a Harvard executive leadership program and high ranking government.

Authors note that even though examining stress levels is difficult because cortisol levels and anxiety are not automatically associated with one another, they have discovered that leaders who are high in the ranks are less stressed in relation to both measures. The intensity of the relationship between cortisol and stress was related directly to how much power the person had. The more power, the less stress.

Gross, in order to make the results clear, asked, “What exactly about a job makes it a leadership role?”

Control is a main characteristic of a leader, according to the experts. They noted that the amount of peacefulness a leader feels is directly related to how many people they have working under them, and how important their authority position is.

A study published earlier this month revealed that people who have demanding jobs and not much freedom to make decisions have an increased risk of heart attack. The report adds that when a person has control over their own life, that control fills in for the stress that would normally be perceived with a higher rank. Therefore, stress levels are not as high as expected.

Authors note that this study is correlational, and it is impossible to tell whether low stress levels are a result of leadership roles, or whether those who don’t feel much stress in general are more likely to be leaders. However, Gross and Lerner believe this is the start to looking at the lifestyles of those who have higher power in society.

Gross concludes: “By looking at real leaders, people who really have a lot of real-world responsibility, can we learn a lot about stress and health in general.”

Written by Christine Kearney