This was an early contribution to a biocultural orientation in medical anthropology in that he examined how individual-level changes in social status related to economic development were associated with blood pressure.
He won the Stirling Award in Culture and Personality Studies from the American Anthropological Association in 1979 for a paper based on this research.
[6] In the early 1980s Dressler also established a long-term relationship with researchers in Brazil, including José Ernesto dos Santos, Mauro C. Balieiro, and Rosane Pilot Pessa.
Together, these investigators carried out five major projects over a thirty-year period, as well as a number of smaller studies, focused on the interaction of cultural, social, psychological, nutritional, and genetic influences on health.
"[1] Dressler also contributed to the development of "residual agreement analysis,' a way of quantifying aspects of variation and non-agreement in culturally shared ideas.