Relationships as psychological protective factors: Neural and behavioral markers

作为心理保护因素的关系：神经和行为标记

• 批准号: 8912545
• 负责人: Jamil Zaki
• 金额: $ 20.06万
• 依托单位: STANFORD UNIVERSITY
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2014
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2014-08-15 至 2016-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/8912545
• 关键词: Address; Affect; Affective; Anxiety; Area; Basic Science; Behavior; Behavioral; Biological; Buffers; Cardiovascular Diseases; Characteristics; Data; Emotions; Empathy; Endocrine; Endocrinology; Family; Friends; Future; Health; Hybrids; Hydrocortisone; Individual; Intervention; Knowledge; Laboratories; Measures; Mediating; Mental Depression; Mental Health; Methods; Modeling; Mood Disorders; Negative Valence; Neurosecretory Systems; Obesity; Patient Self-Report; Pattern; Performance; Personal Satisfaction; Physiological; Prize; Process; Provider; Reporting; Research; Research Domain Criteria; Rewards; Risk; Risk Factors; Salivary; Sampling; Scientist; Smoking; Social Interaction; Social Psychology; Social isolation; Social support; Stress; System; Techniques; Testing; Work; base; cognitive neuroscience; diaries; experience; follow-up; hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis; improved; indexing; insight; member; mortality; novel; physical conditioning; prevent; psychologic; relating to nervous system; response; satisfaction; scaffold; social; stress management; stress reactivity; stressor

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.

描述（由申请人提供）：人际关系对个人的身心健康至关重要;例如，社会孤立构成了死亡率、心血管疾病和情绪障碍的一个强大风险因素。这种现象的主要科学模型认为，社会关系通过缓冲压力来促进健康：在支持他人的情况下减少压力反应。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人的压力;某些形式的支持不能减少，甚至可以减少压力的主观和生理指标。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，这项工作几乎完全集中在关系层面的压力缓冲预测（例如，婚姻满意度），而不是个人的特点，谁有效地缓冲他人的压力。这一点尤其重要，因为对同理心的研究表明，那些深刻理解他人情感状态（同理心准确性）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，现有工作倾向于使用自然主义自我报告措施来检查压力缓冲（例如，日常日记）或控制实验室任务，但很少结合这些技术，阻止了每种方法所获得的知识的整合。拟议的工作将解决这些知识的差距，并提出了一个多层次的，综合的，概念新颖的压力缓冲模型。该模型假设，有同理心的人提供高质量的支持，从而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。我们将选择几对亲密的朋友，并通过移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（我们也开发了个体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）来检查每对中一个成员的移情。然后，朋友对将完成每日日记报告他们的压力和社会支持的模式。最后，我们将收集样本的昼夜唾液皮质醇-一个典型的神经内分泌措施的压力反应和报告的持续威胁和损失（子域的负价系统RDoC域），从另一个成员的朋友对。我们预测，在支持提供者的共情的神经和行为标记将预测支持受助人的减少内分泌反应的压力，以及减少主观持续的威胁和损失，这种关系将介导的支持高共情个人提供的质量。这些数据将为心理健康的社会基础提供多种新颖的见解，并为旨在广泛改善心理健康的转化工作铺平道路。