The study, detailed in The Harvard Business Review, asked participants to view fake social-media posts from a busy person who wrote phrases such as: “I have been working non-stop all week.” Then they were asked to view posts from a leisurely individual who wrote phrases like: “Enjoying a long lunch break.” Participants rated the individuals who signaled busyness as higher in social status than people who posted about their leisure time.

The researchers conducted another experiment where participants read about a 35-year-old man who worked long hours and had a full calendar, versus a 35-year-old man who didn’t work and had a slow-paced lifestyle. Again, the participants rated the man who supposedly worked longer hours as having higher status.

Culture also affected the results, per the report. Americans, who often perceive themselves to be very socially mobile, were the most impressed with busyness. Europeans, who generally view their socioeconomic status as a fixed state, saw those with a leisurely lifestyle as having higher status.

“In general, we found that the busy person is perceived as high status, and interestingly, these status attributions are heavily influenced by our own beliefs about social mobility,” wrote the authors of the report. “In other words, the more we believe that one has the opportunity for success based on hard work, the more we tend to think that people who skip leisure and work all the time are of higher standing.”

So what’s made busyness such a status symbol? The researchers believe the shift from “leisure-as-status” to “busyness-as-status” could be linked to the development of knowledge-intensive economies.