On the Benefits of Giving Social Support Inagaki, Tristen K.; Orehek, Edward
Current directions in psychological science : a journal of the American Psychological Society,
04/2017, Volume:
26, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
People who are socially integrated and have strong social ties live happier, longer lives. The link between social connection and well-being is commonly explained in terms of the benefits of ...receiving care and support from others. However, the benefits of giving care and support to others for the support provider are often overlooked. We review emerging findings that suggest when, why, and how giving support to others provides benefits to the self. We identify possible mechanisms by which these benefits arise and outline boundary conditions that influence such benefits. To gain a richer understanding of the association between social ties and well-being, an important future research direction is to not only consider the support receiver but also emphasize the support provider.
Giving social support to others has emerged as an additional route by which social ties influence health. Thus, giving support to others not only influences the health of the individual receiving ...support, but also the health of the individual giving the support. However, the neural mechanisms by which giving support leads to health are only beginning to be explored. In hopes of consolidating and guiding future research on giving support and health, the current review considers why, how, and when giving support is health promoting. Special emphasis is placed on neural regions known to contribute to parental care in animals that both reinforce giving support behavior (ventral striatum and septal area) and reduce stress‐related responding (e.g., amygdala) to facilitate care. Hypothesized links between neural regions involved in giving support and peripheral physiology (sympathetic nervous system, hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis, and related inflammatory responding) are considered as well as the conditions under which giving support should be most beneficial for health. Finally, the implications of the current perspective for understanding how social relationships, more broadly, contribute to health and suggestions for future directions are offered.
Giving social support to others has emerged as an additional route by which social ties influence health. Until recently, whether and how giving support contributes to health has been underexplored. However, more recently, an accumulating body of findings supports the hypothesis that giving support to others does indeed benefit the health of the individual giving under certain circumstances.
Opioids and Social Connection Inagaki, Tristen K.
Current directions in psychological science,
04/2018, Volume:
27, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Social connection, the pleasurable, subjective experience of feeling close to and bonded with other people, is critical for well-being and continued social bonding. Despite the importance of social ...connection for many important outcomes, few researchers have experimentally examined how humans connect with those to whom they feel close. The strongest insights into the biological bases of social connection come from animal research, which shows that social bonds rely on the same neurochemicals that support general motivation. One class of neurochemicals, opioids, has received increased attention in recent years with the rise of pharmacological methods to manipulate opioids in humans. This article reviews emerging findings to show that opioids affect social feelings, behaviors, and perceptions in both positive and negative social experiences and concludes with the implications of such findings. Future work should consider the subjective feelings of social connection felt during interactions with close social contacts in order to further the understanding of social connection.
Social support is a major contributor to the link between social ties and beneficial health outcomes. Research to date has focused on how receiving support from others might be good for us; however, ...we know less about the health effects of giving support to others. Based on prior work in animals showing that stimulating neural circuitry important for caregiving behavior can reduce sympathetic‐related responses to stressors, it is possible that, in humans, giving to others can reduce stressor‐evoked sympathetic nervous system responding, which has implications for health outcomes. To test the effect of giving support on the physiological stress response, participants either wrote a supportive note to a friend (support‐giving condition) or wrote about their route to school/work (control condition) before undergoing a standard laboratory‐based stress task. Physiological responses (heart rate, blood pressure, salivary alpha‐amylase, salivary cortisol), and self‐reported stress were collected throughout the protocol. In line with hypotheses, support giving (vs. control) reduced sympathetic‐related responses (systolic blood pressure and alpha‐amylase) to the stressor. No effects of support giving were found on self‐reported psychological stress or cortisol levels. Results add to existing knowledge of the pathways by which support giving may lead to health benefits and highlight the contribution of giving to others in the broader social support‐health link.
Although it has commonly been assumed that the immune system and the processes that govern social behavior are separate, non-communicating entities, research over the past several decades suggests ...otherwise. Considerable evidence now shows that inflammatory processes and social behavior are actually powerful regulators of one another. This review first summarizes evidence that inflammatory processes regulate social behavior, leading to characteristic changes that may help an individual navigate the social environment during times of sickness. Specifically, this review shows that inflammation: (1) increases threat-related neural sensitivity to negative social experiences (eg, rejection, negative social feedback), presumably to enhance sensitivity to threats to well-being or safety in order to avoid them and (2) enhances reward-related neural sensitivity to positive social experiences (eg, viewing close others and receiving positive social feedback), presumably to increase approach-related motivation towards others who might provide support and care during sickness. Next, this review summarizes evidence showing that social behavior also regulates aspects of inflammatory activity, preparing the body for situations in which wounding and infection may be more likely (social isolation). Here, we review research showing: (1) that exposure to social stressors increases proinflammatory activity, (2) that individuals who are more socially isolated (ie, lonely) show increased proinflammatory activity, and (3) that individuals who are more socially isolated show increased proinflammatory activity in response to an inflammatory challenge or social stressor. The implications of the co-regulation of inflammation and social behavior are discussed.
Many of people's closest bonds grow out of socially warm exchanges and the warm feelings associated with being socially connected. Indeed, the neurobiological mechanisms underlying thermoregulation ...may be shared by those that regulate social warmth, the experience of feeling connected to other people. To test this possibility, we placed participants in a functional MRI scanner and asked them to (a) read socially warm and neutral messages from friends and family and (b) hold warm and neutral-temperature objects (a warm pack and a ball, respectively). Findings showed an overlap between physical and social warmth: Participants felt warmer after reading the positive (compared with neutral) messages and more connected after holding the warm pack (compared with the ball). In addition, neural activity during social warmth overlapped with neural activity during physical warmth in the ventral striatum and middle insula, but neural activity did not overlap during another pleasant task (soft touch). Together, these results suggest that a common neural mechanism underlies physical and social warmth.
Background Although inflammatory activity is known to play a role in depression, no work has examined whether experimentally induced systemic inflammation alters neural activity that is associated ...with anhedonia, a key diagnostic symptom of depression. To investigate this, we examined the effect of an experimental inflammatory challenge on the neural correlates of anhedonia—namely, reduced ventral striatum (VS) activity to reward cues. We also examined whether this altered neural activity related to inflammatory-induced increases in depressed mood. Methods Participants ( n = 39) were randomly assigned to receive either placebo or low-dose endotoxin, which increases proinflammatory cytokine levels in a safe manner. Cytokine levels were repeatedly assessed through hourly blood draws; self-reported and observer-rated depressed mood were assessed regularly as well. Two hours after drug administration, neural activity was recorded as participants completed a task in which they anticipated monetary rewards. Results Results demonstrated that subjects exposed to endotoxin, compared with placebo, showed greater increases in self-reported and observer-rated depressed mood over time, as well as significant reductions in VS activity to monetary reward cues. Moreover, the relationship between exposure to inflammatory challenge and increases in observer-rated depressed mood was mediated by between-group differences in VS activity to anticipated reward. Conclusions The data reported here show, for the first time, that inflammation alters reward-related neural responding in humans and that these reward-related neural responses mediate the effects of inflammation on depressed mood. As such, these findings have implications for understanding risk of depression in persons with underlying inflammation.
Although it has long been hypothesized that attachment figures provide individuals with a sense of safety and security, the neural mechanisms underlying attachment-induced safety have not been ...explored. Here, we investigated whether an attachment figure acts as a safety signal by exploring whether viewing an attachment figure during a threatening experience (physical pain) led to increased activity in a neural region associated with safety signaling, the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC), and corresponding reductions in pain. Female participants in long-term romantic relationships were scanned as they received painful stimuli while viewing pictures of their partner and control images (stranger, object). Consistent with the idea that the attachment figure may signal safety, results revealed that viewing partner pictures while receiving painful stimulation led to reductions in self-reported pain ratings, reductions in pain-related neural activity (dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, anterior insula), and increased activity in the VMPFC. Moreover, greater VMPFC activity in response to partner pictures was associated with longer relationship lengths and greater perceived partner support, further highlighting a role for the VMPFC in responding to the safety value of the partner. Last, greater VMPFC activity while viewing partner pictures was associated with reduced pain ratings and reduced pain-related neural activity. An implication of these findings is that, in the same way that stimuli that historically have threatened survival (e.g., snakes, spiders) are considered to be prepared fear stimuli, attachment figures, who have historically benefited survival, may serve as prepared safety stimuli, reducing threat- or distress-related responding in their presence.
Abstract Although research has established links between feelings of social isolation and inflammation, the direction of these effects is unclear. Based on the role that proinflammatory cytokines ...play in initiating “sickness behavior,” which includes symptoms such as social withdrawal, it is possible that inflammatory processes heighten feelings of ‘social disconnection.’ Here, we examined whether exposure to an inflammatory challenge increased self-reported feelings of social disconnection. In addition, because both inflammatory processes and feelings of social disconnection contribute to depressive symptoms, we also explored whether increases in feelings of social disconnection played a role in the link between inflammation and depressed mood. Participants were randomly assigned to either receive endotoxin, an inflammatory challenge, or placebo. Proinflammatory cytokines (IL-6, TNF-α) were collected at baseline and then hourly for 6 h. Participants completed self-reports of sickness symptoms (“fatigue”), social disconnection (“I feel disconnected from others”), and depressed mood (“unhappy”) hourly. Results revealed that endotoxin led to significant increases (from baseline) in IL-6 and TNF-α levels as well as feelings of social disconnection and depressed mood. Moreover, controlling for increases in social disconnection eliminated the relationship between exposure to inflammatory challenge and depressed mood. This study demonstrates that inflammation can have social psychological consequences, which may play a role in cytokine-related depressive symptoms.
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