Abstract

There is clear evidence that social support is related to pervasive and powerful benefits on health outcomes and longevity, and that these effects may partially be due to social support's ability to attenuate the body's biological stress responses. Furthermore, the presence of social support has been associated with an attenuated pain experience in a variety of circumstances. What remain relatively elusive, however, are the biological and neural mechanisms underlying social support's beneficial effects. Thus the present research, consisting of three studies, was designed to clarify and reveal some of these mechanisms.

Study 1 investigated relationships between social support in everyday life and cortisol reactivity to a laboratory stressor, with a focus on gender differences in these relationships. Hypothesized gender differences were indeed found in the relationships between cortisol responses and different sources and types of social support. A particularly notable finding from Study 1 was that women in committed, romantic relationships did not evidence a significant increase in cortisol in response to the laboratory stressor, whereas single men and women and men in relationships showed the typical cortisol stress response. Another interesting finding was that for men, but not women, greater self-reported use of emotional and instrumental support in times of stress in everyday life was significantly related to decreased cortisol responses to the laboratory stressor. Study 2 was, in part, a behavioral pilot study for Study 3, which utilized fMRI methodology to examine how social support might affect neural activity associated with the affective (as opposed to the sensory) component of pain. Study 2 found that handholding with one's partner attenuated women's experiences of pain unpleasantness compared to holding the hand of someone they did not know, or to holding an object. Interestingly, a similar effect was found using photographs, suggesting that simply viewing pictures of loved ones may prime associated mental representations of being loved and/or supported, which may in turn be sufficient to attenuate pain experience. Study 3 examined potential neural mechanisms underlying the pain-attenuating effect of viewing photographs of one's partner. The results of Study 3 provide evidence that, rather than causing a decrease in sensitivity to pain, social support's ability to attenuate the affective experience of pain may be related to increased activation of neural regions involved in emotion regulation during the experience of pain, or during its anticipation. The results of these three studies contribute to a better understanding of how social relationships can protect individuals from the negative physical and emotional consequences of negative life events, including periods of stress and circumstances involving acute pain.