According to a study published in the journal Current Biology, social rank, particularly in females, does indeed affect the stress response. Tulane psychology professor Dr. Jonathan Fadok, Ph.D., and postdoctoral researcher Miss Lydia Smith-Osborne looked at two forms of psychosocial stress: social isolation and social instability. They also studied how they manifest themselves based on social rank.

They conducted their research on adult female subjects after putting them in pairs and allowing them to form stable social relationships over several days. In each pair, one of the subjects was considered to have a high, or dominant, social status, while the other was considered a subordinate with a relatively low social status. After establishing a baseline, they monitored changes in behaviour, stress hormones, and neuronal activation in response to chronic social stress.

In the study, the researchers analysed how these different forms of social rank impact behaviour and the stress hormone corticosterone. The findings of the study showed that subjects with lower social status were more susceptible to social instability. On the other hand, those with higher ranks were more susceptible to social isolation, or loneliness.

The study also showed that depending on the social standing of the animal responding to it and whether they had previously gone through psychosocial stress, there were also variations in the brain regions that became engaged by social encounters.

Miss Osborne stated that some areas of the brain in the dominant subject react differently to social isolation than to social uncertainty. She further explained that rank gave the subject a unique neurobiological `fingerprint` for how they responded to chronic stress. 

(Source: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-03-social-affects-response-stress.html )