Social baseline theory: State of the science and new directions

Cost-benefits analysis of social interactions: Familiarity modulates the estimation of individual contributions to joint action

Every day, we engage in activities that require collaboration and assistance from others. Social interactions with children are distinct because they frequently result in partners contributing different amounts of effort. This study investigates whether children and adults estimate they will have to invest different amounts of effort when engaging in joint tasks compared to doing the same task by themselves. Specifically, if this engagement is with a familiar co-actor. In 4 Experiments, children and adults estimated the weight of objects when they anticipated that they would be lifted alone and when they thought they would have help. Children and adults estimated the weight of three clear baskets carrying different weights (light, medium, and heavy). The estimated weight of objects varied for adults and children depending on whether they thought they would lift alone or together. Children reliably perceived objects as lighter when they expected help from their parents compared to lifting them alone or with the help from adults. Parents, in turn, estimated objects would be heavier when they were helping their child. Overall, results suggest that we analyze the costs and benefits of helping another person and the social bond we have with them before engaging in joint actions.

With a little help from my friends: Social support, hope and climate change engagement

Hope is a future-oriented emotion that attunes people to the possibility of positive change, and thus could potentially catalyse societal engagement with climate change. A recent meta-analysis suggests that the relationship between hope and climate action is most robust when the target of hope is climate engagement (i.e. action hope) rather than climate change more broadly. Yet, this previous meta-analysis also suggests that fostering action hope and climate engagement may be challenging via typical short media messages used in many studies. Here we consider an alternative source of action hope: receiving social support. Two studies tested whether social support motivates climate action via increased action hope. Study 1 (correlational online survey, pre-registered, N = 887) demonstrates that, as predicted, both instrumental and emotional support predict intentions to take civic action and these effects are explained by action hope. Study 2 (field study, Neducators = 84, Ncontacts = 520) mostly replicates and extends these findings in a field setting, demonstrating that social support recipients' action hope is also associated with social support reported by support providers (here, environmental educators) and that this action hope again explains a possible relationship between social support and climate engagement.

Adolescent digital emotion regulation

The maturation of effective emotion regulation (ER) skills is a core achievement of adolescence and youth are now developing their ER habits and skills in a hybrid reality of digital and non-digital experiences. We present a new model of adolescent digital emotion regulation as a conceptual framework to help guide burgeoning research in this area. We distinguish two primary processes: the regulation of emotions that have been elicited within digital contexts (i.e., the regulation of digitally induced emotions), and how youth regulate their emotions through digital means (i.e., digitally regulated emotion). Following the explication of different pathways in the model and consideration of the affordances of digital contexts, we highlight how this framework connects to theory and guides future research.

The effects of parental presence on amygdala and mPFC activation during fear conditioning: An exploratory study

Learning safe versus dangerous cues is crucial for survival. During development, parents can influence fear learning by buffering their children's stress response and increasing exploration of potentially aversive stimuli. Rodent findings suggest that these behavioral effects are mediated through parental presence modulation of the amygdala and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). Here, we investigated whether similar parental modulation of amygdala and mPFC during fear learning occurs in humans. Using a within-subjects design, behavioral (final N = 48, 6-17 years, mean = 11.61, SD = 2.84, 60% females/40% males) and neuroimaging data (final N = 39, 6-17 years, mean = 12.03, SD = 2.98, 59% females/41% males) were acquired during a classical fear conditioning task, which included a CS+ followed by an aversive noise (US; 75% reinforcement rate) and a CS-. Conditioning occurred once in physical contact with the participant's parent and once alone (order counterbalanced). Region of interest analyses examined the unconditioned stress response by BOLD activation to the US (vs. implicit baseline) and learning by activation to the CS+ (vs. CS-). Results showed that during US presentation, parental presence reduced the centromedial amygdala activity, suggesting buffering of the unconditioned stress response. In response to learned stimuli, parental presence reduced mPFC activity to the CS+ (relative to the CS-), although this result did not survive multiple comparisons' correction. These preliminary findings indicate that parents modulate amygdala and mPFC activity during exposure to unconditioned and conditioned fear stimuli, potentially providing insight into the neural mechanisms by which parents act as a social buffer during fear learning. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: This study used a within-participant experimental design to investigate how parental presence (vs. absence) affects youth's neural responses in a classical fear conditioning task. Parental presence reduced the youth's centromedial amygdala activation to the unconditioned stimulus (US), suggesting parental buffering of the neural unconditioned response (UR). Parental presence reduced the youth's mPFC activation to a conditioned threat cue (CS+) compared to a safety cue (CS-), suggesting possible parental modulation of fear learning.

The impact of generative artificial intelligence on socioeconomic inequalities and policy making

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to both exacerbate and ameliorate existing socioeconomic inequalities. In this article, we provide a state-of-the-art interdisciplinary overview of the potential impacts of generative AI on (mis)information and three information-intensive domains: work, education, and healthcare. Our goal is to highlight how generative AI could worsen existing inequalities while illuminating how AI may help mitigate pervasive social problems. In the information domain, generative AI can democratize content creation and access but may dramatically expand the production and proliferation of misinformation. In the workplace, it can boost productivity and create new jobs, but the benefits will likely be distributed unevenly. In education, it offers personalized learning, but may widen the digital divide. In healthcare, it might improve diagnostics and accessibility, but could deepen pre-existing inequalities. In each section, we cover a specific topic, evaluate existing research, identify critical gaps, and recommend research directions, including explicit trade-offs that complicate the derivation of a priori hypotheses. We conclude with a section highlighting the role of policymaking to maximize generative AI's potential to reduce inequalities while mitigating its harmful effects. We discuss strengths and weaknesses of existing policy frameworks in the European Union, the United States, and the United Kingdom, observing that each fails to fully confront the socioeconomic challenges we have identified. We propose several concrete policies that could promote shared prosperity through the advancement of generative AI. This article emphasizes the need for interdisciplinary collaborations to understand and address the complex challenges of generative AI.

Impact of family-centered care in families with children with intellectual disability: A systematic review

BACKGROUND

Family-Centered Care (FCC) is an approach to healthcare planning, delivery and evaluation, based on beneficial partnerships between health professionals, patients and families. FCC may be particularly relevant for families with children with intellectual disability (ID), given their needs of continuum care.

OBJECTIVE

To identify which components of the FCC are practiced and which health outcomes are considered effective in families with children with ID.

METHOD

A systematic review guided by the PRISMA STATEMENT 2020 approach and the STROBE reporting guidelines was performed on specific databases through the EBSCOhost Web platform: MEDLINE with Full Text, CINAHL PLUS with Full Text, Academic Search Complete and Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection. Peer-reviewed articles published in English or Portuguese languages from 2018 to September 2023 were retrieved. Methodological quality was established using the Quality Assessment Tool for Observational, Cohort and Cross-Sectional Studies - NHLBI, NIH.

RESULTS

Ten studies met the eligibility criteria and were synthetized. The results revealed nine components, reflecting the way FCC was developed: shared decision-making; family education; respect for culture; family engagement; recognition of the family's needs, characteristics and interests; specialized care support; social and emotional support; family functionality; and family seen as a unit. The health outcomes demonstrate effective gains in improving children's health through family satisfaction with health services. Also achieved psychological and social benefits, with improved family well-being and quality of life, favoring family empowerment.

CONCLUSIONS

The evidence suggests that FCC components involves an effective partnership between the family and health professionals as the main key in developing care plans, as well as the experience that the family unit brings to the delivery of care. FCC approach include all family members as decision-makers, providing emotional, physical and instrumental levels of support. Health outcomes emerged in three strands; for children with ID, families and health services.

The Longevity Protein Klotho: A Promising Tool to Monitor Lifestyle Improvements

Aging is not a disease; it is a natural evolution of human physiology. Medical advances have extended our life expectancy, but chronic diseases and geriatric syndrome continue to affect the increasingly aging population. Yet modern medicine perpetuates an approach based on treatment rather than prevention and education. In order to help solve this ever-growing problem, a new discipline has emerged: lifestyle medicine. Nutrition, physical activity, stress management, restorative sleep, social connection, and avoidance of risky substances are the pillars on which lifestyle medicine is founded. The aim of this discipline is to increase healthspan and reduce the duration of morbidity by making changes to our lifestyle. In this review, we propose the use of klotho protein as a novel biomarker for lifestyle medicine in order to quantify and monitor the health status of individuals, as no integrative tool currently exists.

The third shift: Addressing emotion work in couple therapy

Research on the gendered division of household work in western political economies often neglects its emotional dimensions. This conceptual paper draws on concepts of emotion work and feminist care ethics to explore gendered and intersecting divisions of emotions and emotional work in couple relationships and their implications for couple therapy. Although emotion work has been studied in workplace settings, less attention has been paid to inequalities in the privatized realm of interpersonal relationships, including romantic and filial ones. Women and feminine partners' culturally presumed expertise in emotions typically positions them as carrying primary responsibility for managing emotions in intimate relationships. Couple therapy is an important site of interaction that can both support and, potentially, disrupt the invisibility and gendering of emotion work in intimate relationships, thus shedding light on recurring patterns of women's subordination and exploitation. We conclude by advancing suggestions for addressing gendered and intersectional dimensions of emotion work in therapy practice.

A Study of Brain Function Characteristics of Service Members at High Risk for Accidents in the Military

Military accidents are often associated with stress and depressive psychological conditions among soldiers, and they often fail to adapt to military life. Therefore, this study analyzes whether there are differences in EEG and pulse wave indices between general soldiers and three groups of soldiers who have not adapted to military life and are at risk of accidents. Data collection was carried out using a questionnaire and a device that can measure EEG and pulse waves, and data analysis was performed using SPSS. The results showed that the concentration level and brain activity indices were higher in the general soldiers and the soldiers in the first stage of accident risk. The body stress index was higher for each stage of accident risk, and the physical vitality index was higher for general soldiers. Therefore, it can be seen that soldiers who have not adapted to military life and are at risk of accidents have somewhat lower concentration and brain activity than general soldiers, and have symptoms of stress and lethargy. The results of this study will contribute to reducing human accidents through EEG and pulse wave measurements not only in the military but also in occupations with a high risk of accidents such as construction.

How to Improve Others' Emotions: Reappraise and be Responsive

People often try to improve others' emotions. However, it is unclear which interpersonal emotion regulation strategies are most effective and why. In 121 candid dyadic conversations between undergraduate students via video conferencing, target participants recounted a stressful event to regulator participants. Three strategies used by regulators during these conversations to change targets' emotions were obtained from the regulator after the conversation: extrinsic reappraisal, extrinsic suppression, and extrinsic acceptance. Perceived regulator responsiveness was obtained from targets to examine the social consequences of extrinsic emotion regulation and its mediating role in successful extrinsic emotion regulation. We found that regulators' extrinsic reappraisal use was associated with improved target emotions measured across two distinct classes of outcomes: targets' emotions during the conversation and targets' perception that the regulator improved their emotions. Regulators' extrinsic suppression and acceptance, in contrast, were not related with improved target emotions or perceptions of improvement. Instead, all extrinsic regulatory strategies were associated with improved targets' emotions when mediated by targets' perceptions of regulator responsiveness. Finally, observer-ratings of regulators' extrinsic reappraisal and suppression use were found to be consistent with regulators' self-ratings and follow the same pattern of results on the outcome measures. These findings provide insight into why the social regulation of emotions can succeed or fail and hold implications for interventions aimed at guiding people toward more successfully improving others' emotions.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s42761-023-00183-4.

Emotion regulation mediates the relationship between social frailty and stress, anxiety, and depression

Social frailty refers to an inability to meet basic social needs and has been identified as a threat to physical and mental health. Although social frailty has been linked with many adverse health and well-being outcomes, potential mediators of the relationship between social frailty and well-being remain poorly understood. Emotion regulation refers to the capacity to alter the experience of emotions to behave in accordance with a desired goal. The present study was designed to provide the first direct test of whether emotion regulation mediates the relationships between social frailty and important well-being outcomes (stress, anxiety, and depression). A total of 790 participants completed validated measures of social frailty, stress, anxiety, depression, and emotion regulation. In line with our preregistered hypotheses, higher social frailty predicted increased stress, anxiety, and depression, and each of these relationships were partially mediated by emotion regulation capacity. These data provide novel evidence that emotion regulation abilities may serve as a protective factor against the negative consequences of social frailty.

Therapeutic touch and therapeutic alliance in pediatric care and neonatology: An active inference framework

Therapeutic affective touch has been recognized as essential for survival, nurturing supportive interpersonal interactions, accelerating recovery-including reducing hospitalisations, and promoting overall health and building robust therapeutic alliances. Through the lens of active inference, we present an integrative model, combining therapeutic touch and communication, to achieve biobehavioural synchrony. This model speaks to how the brain develops a generative model required for recovery, developing successful therapeutic alliances, and regulating allostasis within paediatric manual therapy. We apply active inference to explain the neurophysiological and behavioural mechanisms that underwrite the development and maintenance of synchronous relationships through touch. This paper foregrounds the crucial role of therapeutic touch in developing a solid therapeutic alliance, the clinical effectiveness of paediatric care, and triadic synchrony between health care practitioner, caregiver, and infant in a variety of clinical situations. We start by providing a brief overview of the significance and clinical role of touch in the development of social interactions in infants; facilitating a positive therapeutic alliance and restoring homeostasis through touch to allow a more efficient process of allostatic regulation. Moreover, we explain the role of CT tactile afferents in achieving positive clinical outcomes and updating prior beliefs. We then discuss how touch is implemented in treatment sessions to promote cooperative interactions in the clinic and facilitate theory of mind. This underwrites biobehavioural synchrony, epistemic trust, empathy, and the resolution of uncertainty. The ensuing framework is underpinned by a critical application of the active inference framework to the fields of pediatrics and neonatology.

Social reappraisal of emotions is linked with the social presence effect in the default mode network

Introduction

Social reappraisal, during which one person deliberately tries to regulate another's emotions, is a powerful cognitive form of social emotion regulation, crucial for both daily life and psychotherapy. The neural underpinnings of social reappraisal include activity in the default mode network (DMN), but it is unclear how social processes influence the DMN and thereby social reappraisal functioning. We tested whether the mere presence of a supportive social regulator had an effect on the DMN during rest, and whether this effect in the DMN was linked with social reappraisal-related neural activations and effectiveness during negative emotions.

Methods

A two-part fMRI experiment was performed, with a psychotherapist as the social regulator, involving two resting state (social, non-social) and two task-related (social reappraisal, social no-reappraisal) conditions.

Results

The psychotherapist's presence enhanced intrinsic functional connectivity of the dorsal anterior cingulate (dACC) within the anterior medial DMN, with the effect positively related to participants' trust in psychotherapists. Secondly, the social presence-induced change in the dACC was related with (a) the social reappraisal-related activation in the bilateral dorsomedial/dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the right temporoparietal junction and (b) social reappraisal success, with the latter relationship moderated by trust in psychotherapists.

Conclusion

Results demonstrate that a psychotherapist's supportive presence can change anterior medial DMN's intrinsic connectivity even in the absence of stimuli and that this DMN change during rest is linked with social reappraisal functioning during negative emotions. Data suggest that trust-dependent social presence effects on DMN states are relevant for social reappraisal-an idea important for daily-life and psychotherapy-related emotion regulation.

Therapeutic Alliance as Active Inference: The Role of Therapeutic Touch and Biobehavioural Synchrony in Musculoskeletal Care

Touch is recognised as crucial for survival, fostering cooperative communication, accelerating recovery, reducing hospital stays, and promoting overall wellness and the therapeutic alliance. In this hypothesis and theory paper, we present an entwined model that combines touch for alignment and active inference to explain how the brain develops "priors" necessary for the health care provider to engage with the patient effectively. We appeal to active inference to explain the empirically integrative neurophysiological and behavioural mechanisms that underwrite synchronous relationships through touch. Specifically, we offer a formal framework for understanding - and explaining - the role of therapeutic touch and hands-on care in developing a therapeutic alliance and synchrony between health care providers and their patients in musculoskeletal care. We first review the crucial importance of therapeutic touch and its clinical role in facilitating the formation of a solid therapeutic alliance and in regulating allostasis. We then consider how touch is used clinically - to promote cooperative communication, demonstrate empathy, overcome uncertainty, and infer the mental states of others - through the lens of active inference. We conclude that touch plays a crucial role in achieving successful clinical outcomes and adapting previous priors to create intertwined beliefs. The ensuing framework may help healthcare providers in the field of musculoskeletal care to use hands-on care to strengthen the therapeutic alliance, minimise prediction errors (a.k.a., free energy), and thereby promote recovery from physical and psychological impairments.

Feeling grateful to be optimistic: The influence of recalling special moments on feelings of gratitude and optimism during the COVID-19 pandemic

In one experiment, we tested the influence of bringing to mind the memory of a special moment versus an ordinary moment from high school on gratitude and the relationship between gratitude and optimism. Participants were first asked to report how the current pandemic has affected their lives. After, participants were randomly assigned to either recalling a special moment from their high school years or recalling an ordinary event from the same life period. Participants then completed a battery of questionnaires assessing gratitude, optimism and some demographics. Results showed a positive influence of bringing to mind the memory of a special moment on gratitude. Gratitude was then positively related to optimism. Hence, the positive relationship between recalling a special event and optimism was mediated by gratitude. Our results showed that brief interventions might help individuals see a brighter future under the current difficult conditions of prolonged lockdowns.