Relationships as psychological protective factors: Neural and behavioral markers

描述（由申请人提供）：人际关系对个人身心健康至关重要；例如，社会孤立是死亡率、心血管疾病和情绪障碍的一个重要风险因素。这一现象的主要科学模型认为，社会关系通过压力缓冲来促进健康：在他人的支持下减少压力反应。虽然压力缓冲提供了相当大的解释力，但并不是所有的关系都能减少个体的压力；有些形式的支持并不能减轻——甚至会加重——主观和生理上的压力指数。科学家们已经开始研究人际关系和支持行为的具体特征，这些特征可能会缓和人际关系对压力和心理健康的影响，但这些努力至少在两个方面受到限制。首先，这项工作几乎只关注压力缓冲的关系水平预测因素（例如，婚姻满意度），而不是有效缓冲他人压力的个人特征。这一点尤其重要，因为对同理心的研究表明，深刻理解他人情感状态（同理准确）并倾向于间接分享这些状态（情感分享）的人也可能参与亲社会和适应性人际行为。其次，现有的工作倾向于使用自然的自我报告方法（例如，每日日记）或控制实验室任务来检查压力缓冲，但很少将这些技术结合起来，从而阻碍了每种方法所获得的知识的整合。所提出的工作将解决这些知识上的空白，并提出一个多层次、综合的、概念新颖的压力缓冲模型。该模型假设，共情个体提供高质量的支持，反过来，减少支持接受者的压力和负面影响。我们将使用我们小组最近开发的混合实验室和现场范例来测试这个模型。我们将选择一对亲密的朋友，并通过共情准确性的行为标记（我们开发的准确性任务的表现）和情感分享的神经标记（我们也开发的情感分享神经标记）来检查每对人中一个成员的共情，即个人在观看他们的朋友获得金钱奖励时对中脑边缘多巴胺能目标的参与。然后，一对对朋友将完成每日日记，报告他们的压力模式和社会支持。最后，我们将从朋友对的其他成员那里收集每日唾液皮质醇（应激反应的典型神经内分泌测量）的样本和持续威胁和损失（负价系统RDoC域的子域）的报告。我们预测，支持提供者共情的神经和行为标记将预测支持接受者对压力的内分泌反应的减少，以及主观持续威胁和损失的减少，并且这种关系将被高共情个体提供的支持质量所调节。这些数据将提供有关心理健康的社会基础的多种新颖见解，并为旨在广泛改善心理健康的转化工作铺平道路。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Relationships vitally support individuals' physical and mental health; social isolation, for instance, constitutes a powerful risk factor for mortality, cardiovascular disease, and mood disorders. The predominant scientific model of this phenomenon holds that social ties bolster health through stress buffering: reduced stress reactivity in the presence of supportive others. Although stress buffering offers considerable explanatory power, not all relationships reduce individuals' stress; some forms of support fail to reduce-and can even worsen-subjective and physiological indices of stress. Scientists have begun to examine the specific features of relationships and support behaviors that may moderate the effects of relationships on stress and mental health, but these efforts have been limited in at least two ways. First, this work focuses almost exclusively on relationship-level predictors of stress buffering (e.g., marital satisfaction) as opposed to characteristics of individuals who effectively buffer others' stress. This is especially important because research on empathy suggests that individuals who insightfully understand others' affective states (empathic accuracy) and tend to vicariously share those states (affect sharing) might also engage in prosocial and adaptive interpersonal behaviors. Second, existing work has tended to examine stress buffering using naturalistic self-report measures (e.g., daily diaries) or controlle laboratory tasks, but has rarely combined these techniques, preventing an integration of knowledge garnered by each approach. The proposed work will address these gaps in knowledge and propose a multilevel, integrative, and conceptually novel model of stress buffering. This model posits that empathic individuals provide high quality support that, in turn, reduces support recipients' stress and negative affect. We will test this model using a hybrid laboratory and field paradigm our group has recently developed. We will select pairs of close friends and examine empathy in one member of each pair through a behavioral marker of empathic accuracy-performance on an accuracy task we have developed-and a neural marker of affect sharing we have also developed-individuals' engagement of mesolimbic dopaminergic targets while watching their friend receive monetary prizes. Friend pairs will then complete daily diaries reporting on their patterns of stress and social support. Finally, we will collect samples f diurnal salivary cortisol-a canonical neuroendocrine measure of stress reactivity-and reports of sustained threat and loss (subdomains of the Negative Valence Systems RDoC domain), from the other member of the friend pair. We predict that neural and behavioral markers of empathy in support providers will predict support recipients' reductions in endocrine responses to stress, as well as reductions in subjective sustained threat and loss, and that this relationship will be mediated by the quality of support high empathy individuals provide. These data will provide multiple novel insights concerning the social underpinnings of psychological well-being and pave the way for translational work aimed at improving mental health on a broad scale.