Page 35 - Zenith 12호

INCHEON
35 FOREIGN LANGUAGE
HIGH SCHOOL

You can see how rich countries are on average. Moreover, you can check the countries on the right, like
Norway and the USA, are twice as rich as Israel, Greece, Portugal on the left. But there is no difference in their

life expectancy at all. But from here we can find a big paradox. When we look within our societies, there are
extraordinary social gradients in health right across society. So, this is life expectancy. Even the people just
under the highest income earners have less good health than the people at the top. In other words, income means
something very important within our societies. However, it’s not just the poor who are affected by inequality. It’s
possible to compare how people do in more and less equal countries at each level in the hierarchy. Interestingly,

some parallel work is going on in social psychology.

In one study, volunteers were invited to a lab and their response to stressful work was measured. Researchers
wanted to see what kind of stress increases levels of cortisol. The conclusion was it was tasks that included social

evaluative threat – threats to self-esteem or social status in which others can negatively judge your performance.

Lee chaewon (1-8)
dreamer0306@naver.com