The relational body: sharing body representations with significant others

从根本上说，人类是群居动物。我们与他人形成亲密的关系，典型的生活在由兄弟姐妹、浪漫伴侣和我们的婴儿组成的小而亲密的社会团体中。社会心理学家已经表明，我们处理来自家人和亲密伴侣的社交信息的方式与处理陌生人和熟人的方式非常不同。例如，当我们的亲密伴侣痛苦时，我们表现出更多的同理心，母亲增强了对自己婴儿哭声的察觉，我们对兄弟姐妹表现出更强的利他主义和信任。进化心理学家认为，这些不同的社会行为具有重要的生物学功能，如长期的配对关系、育儿和维持亲属关系。在进化史上，这些过程是生存和繁殖的中心。他们认为，我们现在的许多社交行为仍然服务于这些功能关系，通常是在隐含的水平上。因此，进化心理学对这些特殊的社会过程为什么存在提供了解释，呼吁它们具有特定的生物学功能。然而，还没有人解释我们是如何通过这种特殊的方式处理来自亲密家人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对社会信号的理解中起着核心作用。有证据表明，当我们观察他人的身体体验时，比如触摸、疼痛、情感和运动，我们会“分享”这些体验。例如，当我们看到有人被触摸时，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。这种共享他人的身体状态，也被称为“身体重叠”，可能是许多重要的社交过程的基础，如移情、情感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陌生的其他人作为社交刺激，因此我们对身体在社交过程中的作用的理解仅限于我们如何与陌生人互动。这忽略了其他重要的人，比如家人和伴侣。我们表现自己身体的方式与自己身体的不同，能否解释我们对伴侣的同理心增强，我们从兄弟姐妹的脸上看到的更多的可信度，或者母亲读懂婴儿情绪和需求的特殊能力？如果我们改变身体上的重叠，这会影响我们与亲密他人的关系质量吗？这个项目将调查身体重叠对社会认知在生物学上重要的社会关系中的作用，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交处理。我们还将试验性地增加个体之间的身体重叠，并观察它如何改变感知的关系质量。我们的研究结果可能会有许多不同的应用。我们的研究可能影响的一个领域是健康和幸福。亲密关系对身心健康的益处以及家庭破裂的不利影响都有很好的记载。我们的研究将调查在这些关系中增加身体重叠对提高关系质量的影响，这使得我们的研究与关系治疗和其他家庭干预非常相关。我们还预见了在包括工作场所在内的其他领域的一些应用，借此，我们对亲密成人关系的研究可以扩大，以增加我们对身体在建立和维持工作同事之间的功能性和生产性关系方面的作用的理解。

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.