Disentangling the Effects of Social versus Non-social Stress Exposure on Social Decision-Making in Men: Role of Social Anxiety

• Applicant: Dr. Bernadette von Dawans
• Subject Area: Personality Psychology, Clinical and Medical Psychology, Methodology ; General, Cognitive and Mathematical Psychology
• Term: from 2012 to 2016
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 233237596

Stress is known to have a variety of negative effects on human health, but primarily in its chronic form. Following acute exposure, stress responses resemble an important regulatory mechanism that helps the human organism to adapt to different demanding circumstances, which themselves already reveal the wide range of acute stressors that can be graded according to several aspects. One important classification in stress research is (beside the chronic versus acute form) the social versus the non-social domain. We already know from our recent research that acute social stress leads to prosocial behavior in healthy men (von Dawans, Fischbacher, Kirschbaum, Fehr, & Heinrichs, 2012, Psychological Science). In our current project, we investigate whether patients diagnosed with social anxiety disorder are impaired in this inherent stress-coping approach behavior. However, whether prosocial behavior only occurs following social stress and whether non-social stress might lead to even more negative or aggressive acts, still needs to be proven. In this follow-on project based on project, 192 healthy subjects (age: 18-30) will be assigned to groups of 24 each in a 2 (stress vs. non-stress) by 2 (social vs. non-social) by 2 (high vs. low social anxiety) randomized controlled design. As the stress induction method, we will implement the Cold Pressor Test (CPT; non-social) and the Socially Evaluated Cold Pressor Test (SECPT; social) both in a stressful condition (ice water) or a non-stressful condition (warm water), respectively (Schwabe et al., 2008). To investigate social behavior, we will use a paradigm from behavioral economics that permits the testing of prosocial (trust, trustworthiness, sharing) as well as antisocial (punishment) behaviors and a non-social risk control condition (von Dawans et al., 2012).We hypothesize that social stress increases levels of prosocial behavior in low socially-anxious participants and that it lowers levels of prosocial behavior in conjunction with high social anxiety, moreover, that non-social stress will decrease levels of prosocial behavior and raise levels of antisocial behavior in low and high social anxiety. Insight into the social versus non-social stress effects on behavior in low as well as high socially-anxious participants will broaden our understanding of the psychobiological effects of stress on behavior. Moreover, our results should provide impulses for therapeutic approaches in social anxiety disorder regarding stress management in the social context.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigator: Professor Dr. Markus Heinrichs
• Cooperation Partners: Professor Dr. Urs Fischbacher; Professor Dr. Clemens Kirschbaum; Professor Dr. Oliver Tobias Wolf