Social Baseline Theory

We know that better social relationships predict quality of health. We have always included social support as a factor that impacts prognosis of a physical and psychological dysfunction.

But we have not really known why.

If you are a helping professional then it might be crucial to let the conclusions of the Social Baseline Theory (SBT) inform your work.

Some Background

Neuroscience considers a person’s ‘baseline’ state to be when that individual is on their own and without the introduction of external stimuli. ‘Baseline’ is the starting point from which the brain's activity, and subsequently it's resulting perceptions and emotions, originate. But this assumption maybe erroneous.

James Coan and Lane Beckes studied the effect of having people close to you when times are tough, when either there's a very difficult task or you're in pain. So, they began to experiment with having people estimate say the difficulty of climbing a mountain when they were by themselves or to assign a number to their pain when there was a threat of an electric shock. They found that people estimated the mountain to be less steep and the pain felt to be less painful when they had another person (a stranger) just be present with them or holding their hand. When the person was a trusted other the estimation of difficulty and pain both reduced further.

They predicted that this was because when somebody shows up, the prefrontal cortex is firing more strongly and regulating the amygdala in a way combining our prefrontal resources.

Their predictions were proven completely wrong! The brain scans revealed that when two people who are trustworthy come together, the prefrontal cortex fires less and the amygdala of both persons quiet simply because our whole system, expects to be embedded in a nest of warm relationships. Our baseline assumption is, this is how we're going to live in the world.

This suggests that perhaps our baseline is not when we are alone but instead when we are supported by positive social connections.

Implications

The brain takes information about social relationships and transforms them into better health and well being by making decisions about how our body will allocate, budget and utilize its resources, even its metabolic resources based on what we know about our social relationships.

The brain does not treat your body as if it is the only one dealing with or coping with the trauma. It assesses what part of the regulation can be outsourced. If you can reach out to someone for co-regulation why pay the metabolic price of accessing the pre-frontal cortex?

The brain construes social resources as bioenergetic resources, much like oxygen or glucose encoding others as part of the self.

?Which also means that when we are isolated and lonely our body is being taxed into paying a higher metabolic price on a daily basis. Often clients will share that they are so lonely that they switch on the television and fall asleep to the sound of other human beings. This is our way of feeling less alone and reducing vigilance and the metabolic price of being alone.

Clients who are for example more dismissive in their attachment patterns and are precociously self-reliant have learned very early on to not rely on their relational resources. They are wired to paying a higher metabolic price.

The very process of therapy is designed to provide a relational resource that helps clients internalize the security of the therapeutic relationship. In group therapy the energetic resources are multiple.

The implications of what we consider to be baseline has the possibility of changing how we see the nature of healing and community. It can change the way we see the world, ourselves and each other.

As someone embedded in a collectivist culture this seems to make intuitive sense. It seems to me that we are always seeking the most nourishing relationships we can imagine (and in therapy we are trying to help change this baseline too!). Our embodied and relational brains are co-organizing, always responsive to those who are with us. Our autonomic nervous system prefers to be in social engagement and is strongly influenced to move in that direction in the presence of someone who offers safety.

In the presence of someone we feel is trustworthy, our amygdalae calm without either person doing anything. The energies of play and care rooted in our social-emotional midbrain awaken automatically as we heal.

Leaving you with an excerpt of from one of Coan's papers that summarizes key findings.

?SBT suggests (1) that the human brain assumes proximity to social relationships characterized by shared goals, interdependence, and trust; and (2) that the human brain construes social relationships as bioenergetic resources, encoding others as part of the self.

This allows humans to, in effect, outsource everything from probabilistic risk to threat vigilance, emotional responding, and a host of other demanding neural and behavioral activities. Thus, proximity to social resources regulates our propensity for engaging in neural and behavioral work, with implications for how we think, act, and feel. When social resources are available, we are expanded, larger, more capable of meeting environmental demands. When social resources are absent, unreliable, or lost, our sense of self is diminished, along with both our objective and subjective efficacy.

SBT suggests the human brain expects access to social relationships that mitigate risk and diminish the level of effort needed to meet a variety of goals. This is accomplished in part by incorporating relational partners into neural representations of the self. By contrast, decreased access to relational partners increases cognitive and physiological effort.

So, relationship disruptions or breakups entail re-defining the self as independent, which implies greater risk, increased effort, and diminished well-being. The ungrafting of the self and other may mediate recovery from relationship loss.

?(Coan JA, Sbarra DA. Social Baseline Theory: The Social Regulation of Risk and Effort. Curr Opin Psychol. 2015 Feb; 1:87-91.)

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