Parent-Child Load Sharing (not on exam)

Waters et al. (2017)

• 69 moms and 12-14 month olds

• Sympathetic Nervous System (Mom) + HR (infant)

• Q&A following Mom’s stressful Speech:
  Positive Evaluation, Negative Evaluation, or None (Control)

Mother and infant physiological reactivity during post-stress
interview

Infant behavioural avoidance during Toy Offer task

Mother-infant correlation of physiological reactivity

Load Sharing in Mother-Daughter Dyads in Adolescence: Design

Participants:
• 66 mother-adolescent dyads
• Adolescents ages 14-16 years
Procedure:
• Lab visit, 2 conditions
• Touch, No Touch
Measures:
• Relationship quality
• Sympathetic arousal (Electrodermal activity)
- Social stress task

Social Baseline at a Distance?

• Digital Emotion Regulation (Wadley et al., 2020)
  • Emotion Support via digital devices?
  • Experience sampling 3x/day for 14 days (N= 164, 18-22
  years)
  • Measures
  – Intensity of recent negative emotion
  – Were you alone or with others?
  – How much emotional support: in-person, digitally
  – How successful?

Colasante, Lin, De France, & Hollenstein, 2020

Temporal Interpersonal Emotion Systems (TIES)
Jess Lougheed

Social Baseline Theory Summary

• Humans evolved to be around other humans

• Social relationships save energy through risk distribution and load sharing

• Mechanisms evolved to function optimally when we are close
  to others:
  • Greater neural responding to threat when alone
  • Greater sympathetic nervous system responses to social threat in adolescent girls

  - Process evident in infancy

• MASSIVE implications for psychology research...
  Social Baseline Theory
  Summary