|
Research
Socioemotional
Resources/Positive Illusions
Socioemotional resources, including
optimism, mastery, self-esteem, and social support, have
biological and psychological benefits, especially in
times of stress. Our research program of the last
twenty-five years has explored these resources and
documented their many benefits, and, as such, attests to
the powerful ability of the human mind to construe
threatening events in ways that are protective of
health.
In recent years, we have shown that these
socioemotional resources can retard the progress of
diseases and/or delay the onset of conditions prognostic
for chronic illness. The underlying mechanisms appear to
depend, at least in part, on the fact that people with
strong socioemotional resources have reduced neural,
autonomic, neuroendocrine, and immune responses to
stress. The cumulative damage to stress regulatory
systems that might otherwise occur, then, is lessened,
as people deploy their resources.
Under some circumstances, socioemotional
resources can assume the form of "positive illusions."
That is, people often have overly positive self
perceptions, an illusion of personal control, and
unrealistic optimism about the future. Moreover, just
as socioemotional resources more generally are
protective of health, so these illusory beliefs have
been found to be largely beneficial as well and
associated with criteria indicative of mental and
physical health: positive self-regard, the ability to
care for and about other people, the capacity for
creative and productive work, the ability to manage and
grow from stressful life experiences, and reduced
biological (cardiovascular, HPA axis) responses to
threatening events.
Our current work explores the genetic,
early environmental, and neurocognitive origins of these
resources in conjunction with their beneficial
consequences. Specifically, we examine genes related to
serotonergic and dopaminergic functioning; childhood
socioeconomic status and early family environment as
indicators of childhood environment; and neural
mechanisms (ACC, amygdala, hypothalamus, prefrontal
cortex) that link socioemotional resources to low
psychological and biological stress responses
(cardiovascular, HPA axis, and pro-inflammatory
cytokines). As such, our current work integrates
perspectives from genetics, psychoneuroimmunology,
health psychology, and social neuroscience.
Funding:
National Institute of Aging,
Psychological and Biological Antecedents of Health Behavior Decisions.
Collaborators:
Dr. Naomi Eisenberger; Dr. Matthew Lieberman;
Dr. Baldwin Way
Tend and Befriend
In threatening times, people seek
positive social relationships, because such contacts
provide protection to maintain one's own safety and that
of one's offspring. This tend-and-befriend account of
social responses to stress is the theoretical basis for
our work. Until recently, the biosocial mechanisms
underlying human affiliative responses to stress have
remained largely unknown. Our previous research suggests
that oxytocin and endogenous opioid peptides are
implicated in these responses, especially in women. Our
current research assesses whether oxytocin acts roughly
as a social thermostat that is responsive to the
adequacy of social resources, that prompts affiliative
behavior if those resources fall below an adequate
level, and that reduces biological and psychological
stress responses, once positive social contacts are
reestablished. Recently, we found that vasopressin (AVP),
a hormone closely related to oxytocin, similarly acts as
a barometer of close relationship quality in men.
Funding:
National Science Foundation Grant, DHB - Biopsychosocial
Bases of Social Responses to Threat.
Collaborators:
Dr. Teresa Seeman
Early Nurturance/Risky Families
Early nurturant experience is believed to
help shape children's responses to stress, conferring
the ability to respond to stress with good coping skills
and low biological reactivity. Correspondingly, a
conflict-ridden, neglectful, or harsh family environment
in childhood has been linked to a high rate of mental
and physical health disorders in adulthood. Our research
documents these relations and explores the mechanisms
underlying them, pursuing a model of the social,
affective, and physiological pathways that may help to
explain these links. We examine socioeconomic status (a
contributor to chronic stress during childhood) as an
input to family environment processes; assess family
environment processes through questionnaires and/or
interviews; and examine social relationships, chronic
positive or negative emotional states, and alterations
in biological stress regulatory systems as mediators of
the impact of a nurturant or "risky" early family
environment on mental and physical health outcomes. Our
recent work has related this model to risk for metabolic
syndrome, levels of C reactive protein, and the
development of hypertension. We have also explored how
early family environment can lead to dramatically
different phenotypes underlying a common genotype,
depending on how nurturant that environment is.
Funding:
Institute of Aging, Psychological and
Biological Antecedents of Health Behavior Decisions.
Collaborators:
Dr. Naomi Eisenberger; Dr. Rena Repetti;
CARDIA; Dr. Teresa Seeman
Culture and Social Support
Social support has long been known to
promote psychological health and to protect against the
adverse health effects of stress. Yet, in
conceptualizing social support, researchers have
inadvertently adopted a Western definition that
emphasizes explicit efforts to extract or provide help
or comfort (i.e., support transactions). Past research
has suggested that Asians and Asian-Americans are
significantly less likely than European-Americans to
seek such explicit social support for coping with
stress, because the harmony of their social relations
may be disrupted by so doing. In our studies, we
investigate implicit social support (which we define as
drawing on the awareness and/or company of supportive
others without explicitly requesting or receiving
support vis-à-vis a specific stressful event) and
explore cultural differences in the use of implicit and
explicit social support for managing stress.
Funding:
National Science Foundation
Collaborators:
Dr. Heejung Kim; Dr. David Sherman
Vulnerability to Financial Fraud
Older adults are disproportionately
vulnerable to a wide range of dubious financial schemes,
although the reasons for their vulnerability are not
clear. Our research uses experimental and neuroimaging
methodologies to explore the social and neural bases of
this vulnerability. Stay tuned.
Funding:
National Institute of Aging, Social and
Neural Bases of Vulnerability to Fraud in Older Adults.
Collaborators:
Dr. Naomi Eisenberger;
Dr. Mark Grinblatt; Dr. Teresa Seeman
|
