The relational body: sharing body representations with significant others

人类本质上是社会性动物。我们与他人建立密切的关系，并典型地生活在由兄弟姐妹、恋人和我们的婴儿组成的小而亲密的社会群体中。社会心理学家已经证明，我们处理来自家庭成员和亲密伴侣的社会信息的方式与来自陌生人和熟人的信息非常不同。例如，当我们的亲密伴侣痛苦时，我们会表现出更多的同理心，母亲对自己婴儿哭声的察觉能力增强，我们会表现出更多的利他主义和对兄弟姐妹的信任。进化心理学家认为，这些独特的社会行为具有重要的生物学功能，如长期的伴侣关系、抚养子女和维持亲属关系。在进化史上，这些过程对生存和繁殖至关重要。他们认为，我们今天的许多社会行为仍然服务于这些功能关系，通常是在隐性层面上。因此，进化心理学对这些特殊的社会过程存在的原因提供了解释，利用了它们特定的生物学功能。然而，还没有人能解释我们是如何以这种特殊的方式处理来自亲密家庭和伴侣的社交信号的。我们认为，关注身体在社会认知中的作用可能使我们能够理解这些进化上重要的社会过程的神经认知基础。我们表现自己和他人身体的方式在我们理解社会信号中起着核心作用。有证据表明，当我们观察他人的身体体验时，比如触摸、疼痛、情绪和运动，我们会“分享”这些体验。例如，当我们看到别人被触摸时，我们大脑的特定区域就会被激活，就像我们自己被触摸一样。这种对他人身体状态的分享，也被称为“身体重叠”，可能是许多重要社会过程的基础，比如同理心、情绪识别和理解他人的意图。到目前为止，研究这种身体重叠的实验只使用不熟悉的其他人作为社会刺激，因此我们对身体在社会处理中的作用的理解仅限于我们如何与陌生人互动。这就忽略了其他重要的人，比如家人和伴侣。我们表现他们身体的方式与我们自己身体的不同，能否解释我们对伴侣的同理心增强，我们在兄弟姐妹的脸上看到的可信度增加，或者母亲读懂婴儿情绪和需求的特殊能力？如果我们改变身体重叠部分，这是否会影响我们与亲密他人关系的质量？该项目将研究生理上重要的社会关系中身体重叠对社会认知的作用，重点是兄弟姐妹、母亲和婴儿以及伴侣之间的关系。对于每种关系，我们将使用各种实验方法来评估身体重叠和社会处理。我们还将通过实验增加个体之间的身体重叠，看看它如何改变感知到的关系质量。我们的研究结果可能有许多不同的应用。我们的研究可能影响的一个领域是健康和幸福。密切关系对身心健康的好处以及家庭破裂的不利影响都有充分的记录。我们的研究将调查在这些关系中增加身体重叠对改善关系质量的影响，这使得我们的研究与关系治疗和其他家庭干预非常相关。我们还预见到在其他领域的应用，包括工作场所，我们对亲密成人关系的研究可以扩展，以增加我们对身体在创建和维持同事之间功能性和生产性关系中的作用的理解。

Humans are fundamentally social animals. We form close relationships with others and characteristically live in small, close social groups of siblings, romantic partners, and our infants. Social psychologists have shown that the way in which we process social information from our family members and intimate partners is very different to that from strangers and acquaintances. For example, we show increased empathy when our intimate partners are in pain, mothers have enhanced detection of their own infant's cries, and we show enhanced altruism and trust for our siblings. Evolutionary psychologists argue that these distinct social behaviors serve important biological functions, such as long-term pair-bonding, child-rearing, and maintenance of kin-relationships. In evolutionary history, these processes were central to survival and reproduction. They argue that much of our social behavior in the present day still serves these functional relationships, often on an implicit level. Therefore, evolutionary psychology has provided an explanation of why these special social processes exist, appealing to their specific biological functions. However, no-one has yet provided an explanation of how we are able to process social signals from our close family and partners in this special way. We suggest that a focus on the role of the body in social cognition may enable us to understand the neurocognitive basis of these evolutionarily important social processes. The way we represent our bodies and the bodies of others plays a central role in our understanding of social signals. Evidence suggests that when we observe the bodily experiences of others, such as touch, pain, emotion and movement, we 'share' these experiences. For example, when we see someone being touched, specific areas of our brains are activated in the same way as if we were touched ourselves. This sharing of others' bodily states, also known as 'bodily overlap', might underlie a number of important social processes, such as empathy, emotion recognition, and understanding others' intentions. So far, experiments investigating this bodily overlap have only used unfamiliar others as social stimuli, and so our understanding of the role of the body in social processing is restricted to how we interact with strangers. This neglects significant others, such as family and partners. Can differences in the way we represent their bodies in relation to our own explain the enhanced empathy we have for a partner, the increased trustworthiness we see in a sibling's face, or the special ability of a mother to read her infant's emotions and needs? And if we change bodily overlap, can this affect the quality of our relationships with close others? This project will investigate the role of bodily overlap for social cognition in biologically important social relationships, focusing on relationships between siblings, mothers and infants, and partners. For each relationship, we will use a variety of experimental methods to assess bodily overlap and social processing. We will also experimentally increase bodily overlap between individuals, and see how it changes perceived relationship quality.The results of our research may have a number of diverse applications. One area which our research might impact upon is that of health and well-being. The physical and mental health benefits of close relationships and the adverse effects of family breakdown are well documented. Our research will investigate the effects of increasing bodily overlap within these relationships to improve relationship quality, and this makes our research very relevant to relationship therapies and other family interventions. We also foresee a number of applications in other areas, including the work-place, whereby our research into close adult relationships could be extended to increase our understanding of the role of the body in creating and maintaining functional and productive relationships between work colleagues.