Investigating the relationship between emotional contagion, emotion regulation and social competence: a developmental and comparative investigation.

理解他人和与他人联系的能力支撑着我们的社会和心理健康；它还使人类拥有独特的技能，包括沟通和合作。其中一个关键的情感过程是情绪感染（EC），它构成了同理心的基础。在成年期，与EC相关的构念与健康的社会功能有关，而健康的社会功能又受到有效情绪调节能力（ER）的影响。然而，目前尚不清楚EC的个体差异如何影响儿童与他人建立和维持健康关系的能力。此外，这些过程之间的相互作用的哪些方面是人类所特有的，使我们物种具有更高层次的社会情感功能，这一点尚不清楚。我的目标是对来自不同社会经济背景的幼儿（3-8岁）进行系统的发展调查，以确定EC、ER和社会能力之间的复杂模式和相互作用，以及这如何影响健康的社会功能。为了理解这些过程的进化基础和它们独特的人类属性，我将通过对黑猩猩的互补比较研究来补充这一点，黑猩猩是我们最亲近的亲戚。为了了解EC在社会功能中的作用，我将结合创新的瞳孔测量实验和社会网络分析，并辅以实验/ ESRC NINE DTP研究生提名表/第3页的15项研究和行为数据来衡量合作和ER。对健康人类社会发展驱动因素的研究将对儿童的社会政策产生关键影响，使我们能够培养儿童培养有意义的关系的环境，并找到更好地支持那些与社会孤立作斗争的人的方法。

The ability to understand and connect with othersunderpins our social and mental wellbeing; it alsoenables uniquely human skills, including incommunication and cooperation. A crucial affectiveprocess involved in this is emotional contagion (EC),which forms the basis of empathy. In adulthood,constructs related to EC are associated with healthysocial functioning, which in turn is influenced by thecapacity for effective emotion regulation (ER). However,it remains unknown how individual variability in EC andER shape children's ability to form and maintain healthyrelationships with others. Furthermore, it is unknownwhat aspects of the interaction between these processesare unique to humans, enabling the higher level socioemotionalfunctioning that defines our species. I aim toconduct a systematic developmental investigation, withyoung children (aged 3-8) from diverse socioeconomicbackgrounds, in order to identify the complex patternsand interaction between EC, ER and social competenceand how this influences healthy social functioning. Tounderstand the evolutionary foundations of theseprocesses and their uniquely human properties, I willaugment this with complementary comparative researchin chimpanzees, our closest living relatives. Tounderstand the role of EC in social functioning, I willcombine innovative pupillometry experiments with SocialNetwork Analysis, complemented with experimental/ ESRC NINE DTP Postgraduate Studentship Nomination Form/ Page 3 of 15studies and behavioural data to measure cooperationand ER. Research into drivers of healthy human socialdevelopment will hold key implications for social policyon childhood, allowing us to cultivate environmentswhere children foster meaningful relationships, and findways to better support those struggling with socialisolation.