|
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
and neuroendocrine 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.
Funding:
National Science Foundation Grant, DHB - Biopsychosocial
Bases of Social Responses to Threat.
Collaborators:
Dr. Teresa Seeman; Dr.
Alison Moore
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:
National
Institute of Mental Health Grant.
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
|
