Social support & persuasion

Finding the buzz in the brain

The default mode network is one of the first hits I got when looking for mPFC and PFC activation, after seeing they were highly correlated (here).

Why is social support protecting?

The Relationship Between Social Support and Processes: A Review With Emphasis on Underlying Mechanisms and Implications for Health (1996)

Some positive effects of social support on cardiovascular, endocrine, and immune systems.

  • Health-related behaviors and these associations
  • Stress-buffering
  • Familial sources of support may be important
  • Emotional support is at least one dimension of social support

Previous research

  • Socially isolated individuals get sick and die more often

Social isolation lower Ab responses?

Loneliness, Social Network Size, and Immune Response to Influenza Vaccination in College Freshmen (2005)

  • Daily digital diaries for 2 weeks (starting 2 days prevaccination)
    • "Ecological momentary assessments"
  • Salivary cortisol for 5 days prevaccination
  • 3.5 months of biweekly postvaccination questionairres
  • Ab levels measured at vaccination, 1 month after, and 4 months after

Immune and endocrine, stigmatization and pride

Perceived Stigmatization, Ingroup Pride, and Immune and Endocrine Activity: Evidence From a Community Sample of Black and Latina Women (2013)

Collective self-esteem scale

Neural Responses

From Neural Responses to Population Behavior: Neural Focus Group Predicts Population-Level Media Effects (2012)

(they love the word orthogonal, presumably meaning unrelated) -- in a study orthogonal to the present one.

  • Correlating call volume to 1-800-QUIT-NOW to neural activation in their ROI depending on ads presented

  • Overall neural activity across all ads "predicted" (correlated with) smoking reduction after watching, beyond self-reports

  • 31 participants, heavy smokers who really wanted to quit

    • Wide age, ethnicity, socioeconomic diversity

  • Mean neural activity in MPFC ROI rated C > B > A, while experts and participants put C last.

  • C > B > A was also more frequent individually than by chance (33%)

  • B > A > C was most frequent in self-reports

  • The neural ordering was confirmed by the % increase in call volume