Richard Wilkinson The link between inequality and anxiety TED
Transcriber:
I’m sure you’ve noticed the difference
between posed photographs
and pictures taken of people
who are unaware of the camera.
The pictures where people are unaware –
they often look like this.
This picture was taken in central London.
People in the prime of life,
and yet everyone there looks
haggard, depressed, anxious.
Some of them look quite angry.
Not a smile to be seen.
And yet, if you look at pictures
of people posed,
they put their arms around each other,
as in this picture.
They smile.
That’s, I think, how we’d like to be seen,
how we think we should be together.
Unfortunately, the data
tells a different story.
In the UK, surveys have shown
that 74 percent of adults
have felt so stressed
or overwhelmed and unable to cope,
32 percent have had suicidal thoughts,
16 percent have actually self-harmed.
In the USA, the picture’s very similar:
79 percent felt stressed every day,
and almost 60 percent
have felt paralyzed by stress.
When there are new figures
that come out in the media
showing levels of stress,
depression, self-harm,
drug abuse, eating disorders,
what’s the response?
It’s simply to demand more services,
more psychotherapists, more
psychologists, more psychiatrists.
It’s as if a large majority
of the population
were being seriously injured
and instead of finding out
what’s going wrong,
we simply want more surgeons
to stitch them up.
The crucial question we must ask
is: Why is this happening?
Why even in rich countries?
I’m an epidemiologist,
which means I’ve spent
my career doing research
on the causes of health
and illness in populations.
And I want to show you that inequality
is a really powerful cause
of higher levels of anxiety
and mental distress,
unhappiness, depression.
I’d like you to cast your minds back
to when you’ve felt anxious, embarrassed,
nervous in front of other people,
the social exposure,
maybe when you’re making a speech
or going to a party
where you don’t know anyone.
But all sorts of situations where we face
the threat of being seen negatively
cause these sorts of emotions.
This graph is a summary
of hundreds of studies
of exposing people
to different kinds of stress
while measuring what happens
to their stress hormones,
principally cortisol,
a central stress hormone.
And what it shows is that what most
pushes up our levels of stress hormones
are what is called “social
evaluative threat” –
threats to self-esteem or social status,
where others can negatively
judge your performance.
So although these social stresses
are widely recognized
and we’re all familiar with them,
people fail to see how inequality
makes them worse for all of us.
In this slide,
along the bottom, you’ve got
different income groups,
from the poorest tenth
of the population on the left
to the richest on the right.
And up the side,
you’ve got a measure of status anxiety,
how worried people are about
how they’re seen and judged by others.
The top line shows levels of status
anxiety across all income groups
in the more unequal societies.
And the bottom line shows the much lower
levels of status anxiety
in the more equal societies.
I think what we’re dealing with
is whether we live in societies
with a very steep
social hierarchy like that,
or a much shallower one like that.
If you like: bigger material
differences between us
increase the social distances
and those feelings
of superiority and inferiority,
and that makes a big difference
to social relationships within society.
Status and class become more important.
We’re less likely to marry people
with a different class background.
Community life, as I’ve said, drops away,
and violence also goes up,
because violence is triggered
by people feeling looked down on.
Loss of face, disrespected, humiliated –
those are the triggers of violence.
And of course, for people who
are more sensitive to status issues,
violence is triggered more often.
Consumerism also goes up,
because we’re all trying to enhance
our self-presentation.
All sorts of measures
of social interaction
show the whole social structure
becoming more ossified with inequality.
Social mobility goes down,
and with that, we’re even further away
from the equal opportunities
which we claim to be trying
to provide for children.
So inequality isn’t just about
unfairness or poverty.
It puts us in social relationships,
relationships of superiority
and inferiority.
It ranks us from better to worse.
It’s a really invidious process,
and it creates those feelings
of inferiority at the bottom.
It makes us judge each other more
by social status, and with that,
we become more worried about
how we are seen and judged by others.
There are two common responses
to feeling so worried about
how we’re seen and judged.
One is that you almost
accept your inferiority,
low self-esteem, lack of confidence.
You withdraw from social life
because you find it all too difficult,
and you become more
vulnerable to depression.
And indeed, rates of depression
are higher in more unequal societies.
The other common response
is almost exactly the opposite.
If you’re worried about what people think
of you, you talk yourself up.
You big yourself up. You flaunt
your abilities and achievements.
You become narcissistic instead of modest.
We see that, too, in more
unequal societies.
This next graph is from a study of what
psychologists call self-enhancement.
People in different countries are asked
how they think they compare to the average
on different characteristics.
And what it shows is, in more unequal
societies, people big themselves up,
They think they’re better at things;
they present themselves
in an exaggerated way.
They become narcissistic.
It’s like everyone thinking
they’re better drivers than average.
That tendency is greater
in more unequal societies.
Mental illness is also worse
in more unequal countries,
because mental illness is often
triggered or exacerbated
by issues to do with dominance
and subordination,
superiority and inferiority.
There was a recent study
of the 36 OECD countries
showing a tight correlation between
levels of inequality in those societies
and the 10 most common mental disorders.
I think the saddest part of this is that
studies of happiness and well-being,
studies of health, too,
show that one of the most
important determinants
is the quality
of our social relationships,
our social environment,
our friendships.
And that is where inequality
does its greatest damage.
To address this heavy burden
of depression, anxiety,
mental illness, self-harm,
what we have to do is reduce
the levels of inequality in society
that divide us from each other.
Inequality is, in a sense,
the enemy between us.