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British Journal of Pain Oct 2022Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT)-based programmes for chronic pain are often conducted in groups, most likely for time and cost efficiencies. However, there has been...
INTRODUCTION
Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT)-based programmes for chronic pain are often conducted in groups, most likely for time and cost efficiencies. However, there has been very little investigation of the role that the group itself, and particularly the processes occurring within the group, may play in individual outcomes. The objective of this study was to explore whether social group processes were relevant to key treatment outcomes of group CBT for chronic pain.
METHOD
Data were collected from 15 groups (N = 118) undertaking a pain management programme in a tertiary setting. Intraclass correlations were computed to determine any clustering of outcomes in groups, and linear mixed modelling analysis explored pre-registered hypotheses of associations between treatment outcomes and the social group processes of Group Identification and Sense of Belonging.
RESULTS
A weak association between early identification with the group and changes in pain-related disability was shown. In addition, an enhanced global Sense of Belonging was associated with increased pain self-efficacy.
CONCLUSION
These associations, in a programme that had not been designed to address group processes, suggest that their relevance is worth further investigation, particularly in group programmes that do focus on the social consequences of chronic pain. Future studies should investigate whether manipulation of social group processes within a CBT-based pain programme enhances pain-related outcomes and improves the overall well-being of people with chronic pain.
PubMed: 36389006
DOI: 10.1177/20494637221098941 -
Scientific Reports Jun 2023Mothers can influence offspring phenotype through egg-mediated maternal effects, which can be influenced by cues mothers obtain from their environment during offspring...
Mothers can influence offspring phenotype through egg-mediated maternal effects, which can be influenced by cues mothers obtain from their environment during offspring production. Developing embryos use these components but have mechanisms to alter maternal signals. Here we aimed to understand the role of mothers and embryos in how maternal effects might shape offspring social phenotype. In the cooperatively breeding fish Neolamprologus pulcher different social phenotypes develop in large and small social groups differing in predation risk and social complexity. We manipulated the maternal social environment of N. pulcher females during egg laying by allocating them either to a small or a large social group. We compared egg mass and clutch size and the concentration of corticosteroid metabolites between social environments, and between fertilized and unfertilized eggs to investigate how embryos deal with maternal signalling. Mothers in small groups produced larger clutches but neither laid smaller eggs nor bestowed eggs differently with corticosteroids. Fertilized eggs scored lower on a principal component representing three corticosteroid metabolites, namely 11-deoxycortisol, cortisone, and 11-deoxycorticosterone. We did not detect egg-mediated maternal effects induced by the maternal social environment. We discuss that divergent social phenotypes induced by different group sizes may be triggered by own offspring experience.
Topics: Female; Animals; Cichlids; Maternal Inheritance; Eggs; Oviposition; Ovum
PubMed: 37328515
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-35550-5 -
Nature Ecology & Evolution Jul 2022Human gut microbial dynamics are highly individualized, making it challenging to link microbiota to health and to design universal microbiome therapies. This...
Human gut microbial dynamics are highly individualized, making it challenging to link microbiota to health and to design universal microbiome therapies. This individuality is typically attributed to variation in host genetics, diets, environments and medications but it could also emerge from fundamental ecological forces that shape microbiota more generally. Here, we leverage extensive gut microbial time series from wild baboons-hosts who experience little interindividual dietary and environmental heterogeneity-to test whether gut microbial dynamics are synchronized across hosts or largely idiosyncratic. Despite their shared lifestyles, baboon microbiota were only weakly synchronized. The strongest synchrony occurred among baboons living in the same social group, probably because group members range over the same habitat and simultaneously encounter the same sources of food and water. However, this synchrony was modest compared to each host's personalized dynamics. In support, host-specific factors, especially host identity, explained, on average, more than three times the deviance in longitudinal dynamics compared to factors shared with social group members and ten times the deviance of factors shared across the host population. These results contribute to mounting evidence that highly idiosyncratic gut microbiomes are not an artefact of modern human environments and that synchronizing forces in the gut microbiome (for example, shared environments, diets and microbial dispersal) are not strong enough to overwhelm key drivers of microbiome personalization, such as host genetics, priority effects, horizontal gene transfer and functional redundancy.
Topics: Animals; Bacteria; Diet; Gastrointestinal Microbiome; Humans; Microbiota; Papio
PubMed: 35654895
DOI: 10.1038/s41559-022-01773-4 -
Biological Psychiatry May 2024Social memory, the ability to recognize and remember individuals within a social group, is crucial for social interactions and relationships. Deficits in social memory... (Review)
Review
Social memory, the ability to recognize and remember individuals within a social group, is crucial for social interactions and relationships. Deficits in social memory have been linked to several neuropsychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders. The hippocampus, especially the circuit that links dorsal CA2 and ventral CA1 neurons, is considered a neural substrate for social memory formation. Recent studies have provided compelling evidence of extrahippocampal contributions to social memory. The septal nuclei, including the medial and lateral septum, make up a basal forebrain region that shares bidirectional neuronal connections with the hippocampus and has recently been identified as critical for social memory. The focus of our review is the neural circuit mechanisms that underlie social memory, with a special emphasis on the septum. We also discuss the social memory dysfunction associated with neuropsychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders.
PubMed: 38718881
DOI: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2024.04.018 -
PloS One 2023Individual variation in complex social behavioral traits, like primate grooming, can be influenced by the characteristics of the individual and those of its social...
Individual variation in complex social behavioral traits, like primate grooming, can be influenced by the characteristics of the individual and those of its social group. To better grasp this complexity, social network analysis can be used to quantify direct and indirect grooming relationships. However, multi-group social network studies remain rare, despite their importance to disentangle individual from group-level trait effects on grooming strategies. We applied social network analysis to grooming data of 22 groups of zoo-housed bonobos and investigated the impact of three individual (sex, age, and rearing-history) and two group-level traits (group size and sex ratio) on five social network measures (out-strength, in-strength, disparity, affinity, and eigenvector centrality). Our results showed age-effects on all investigated measures: for females, all measures except for affinity showed quadratic relationships with age, while in males, the effects of age were more variable depending on the network measure. Bonobos with atypical rearing histories showed lower out-strength and eigenvector centrality, while in-strength was only impacted by rearing history in males. Group size showed a negative association with disparity and eigenvector centrality, while sex ratio did not influence any of the investigated measures. Standardization for group size did not impact the effects of sex and age, indicating the robustness of these findings. Our study provides comprehensive insights into the complexity of grooming behavior in zoo-housed bonobos, and underlines the importance of multi-group analyses for the generalizability of social network analysis results for species as a whole.
Topics: Animals; Female; Male; Social Behavior; Grooming; Pan paniscus; Sex Ratio
PubMed: 37099520
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0284361 -
Proceedings of the National Academy of... May 2022To guide social interaction, people often rely on expectations about the traits of other people, based on markers of social group membership (i.e., stereotypes)....
To guide social interaction, people often rely on expectations about the traits of other people, based on markers of social group membership (i.e., stereotypes). Although the influence of stereotypes on social behavior is widespread, key questions remain about how traits inferred from social-group membership are instantiated in the brain and incorporated into neural computations that guide social behavior. Here, we show that the human lateral orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) represents the content of stereotypes about members of different social groups in the service of social decision-making. During functional MRI scanning, participants decided how to distribute resources across themselves and members of a variety of social groups in a modified Dictator Game. Behaviorally, we replicated our recent finding that inferences about others' traits, captured by a two-dimensional framework of stereotype content (warmth and competence), had dissociable effects on participants' monetary-allocation choices: recipients' warmth increased participants’ aversion to advantageous inequity (i.e., earning more than recipients), and recipients’ competence increased participants’ aversion to disadvantageous inequity (i.e., earning less than recipients). Neurally, representational similarity analysis revealed that others' traits in the two-dimensional space were represented in the temporoparietal junction and superior temporal sulcus, two regions associated with mentalizing, and in the lateral OFC, known to represent inferred features of a decision context outside the social domain. Critically, only the latter predicted individual choices, suggesting that the effect of stereotypes on behavior is mediated by inference-based decision-making processes in the OFC.
Topics: Brain; Brain Mapping; Decision Making; Humans; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Prefrontal Cortex; Social Behavior; Social Cognition; Stereotyping
PubMed: 35605117
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2116944119 -
Proceedings of the National Academy of... Jul 2020Individual differences in learning can influence how animals respond to and communicate about their environment, which may nonlinearly shape how a social group...
Individual differences in learning can influence how animals respond to and communicate about their environment, which may nonlinearly shape how a social group accomplishes a collective task. There are few empirical examples of how differences in collective dynamics emerge from variation among individuals in cognition. Here, we use a naturally variable and heritable learning behavior called latent inhibition (LI) to show that interactions among individuals that differ in this cognitive ability drive collective foraging behavior in honey bee colonies. We artificially selected two distinct phenotypes: high-LI bees that ignore previously familiar stimuli in favor of novel ones and low-LI bees that learn familiar and novel stimuli equally well. We then provided colonies differentially composed of different ratios of these phenotypes with a choice between familiar and novel feeders. Colonies of predominantly high-LI individuals preferred to visit familiar food locations, while low-LI colonies visited novel and familiar food locations equally. Interestingly, in colonies of mixed learning phenotypes, the low-LI individuals showed a preference to visiting familiar feeders, which contrasts with their behavior when in a uniform low-LI group. We show that the shift in feeder preference of low-LI bees is driven by foragers of the high-LI phenotype dancing more intensely and attracting more followers. Our results reveal that cognitive abilities of individuals and their social interactions, which we argue relate to differences in attention, drive emergent collective outcomes.
Topics: Analysis of Variance; Animals; Bees; Behavior, Animal; Learning; Models, Theoretical; Phenotype
PubMed: 32669435
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1920554117 -
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal... Apr 2023The position an individual holds in a social network is dependent on both its direct and indirect social interactions. Because social network position is dependent on...
The position an individual holds in a social network is dependent on both its direct and indirect social interactions. Because social network position is dependent on the actions and interactions of conspecifics, it is likely that the genotypic composition of individuals within a social group impacts individuals' network positions. However, we know very little about whether social network positions have a genetic basis, and even less about how the genotypic makeup of a social group impacts network positions and structure. With ample evidence indicating that network positions influence various fitness metrics, studying how direct and indirect genetic effects shape network positions is crucial for furthering our understanding of how the social environment can respond to selection and evolve. Using replicate genotypes of fruit flies, we created social groups that varied in their genotypic makeup. Social groups were videoed, and networks were generated using motion-tracking software. We found that both an individual's own genotype and the genotypes of conspecifics in its social group affect its position within a social network. These findings provide an early example of how indirect genetic effects and social network theory can be linked, and shed new light on how quantitative genetic variation shapes the structure of social groups. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue 'Collective behaviour through time'.
Topics: Animals; Drosophila melanogaster; Social Behavior; Genotype; Drosophila; Social Networking
PubMed: 36802774
DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2022.0075 -
Population Research and Policy Review Oct 2021Lifestyles are a long-theorized aspect of social inequalities that root individual behaviors in social group differences. Although the health lifestyle construct is an...
Lifestyles are a long-theorized aspect of social inequalities that root individual behaviors in social group differences. Although the health lifestyle construct is an important advance for understanding social inequalities and health behaviors, research has not theorized or investigated the longitudinal development of health lifestyles from infancy through the transition to school. This study documented children's longitudinal health lifestyle pathways, articulated and tested a theoretical framework of health lifestyle development in early life, and assessed associations with kindergarten cognition, socioemotional behavior, and health. Latent class analyses identified health lifestyle pathways using the US Early Childhood Longitudinal Study - Birth Cohort (ECLS-B; N≈6,550). Children's health lifestyle pathways were complex, combining healthier and unhealthier behaviors and changing with age. Social background prior to birth was associated with health lifestyle pathways, as were parents' resources, health behaviors, and non-health-focused parenting. Developing health lifestyle pathways were related to kindergarten cognition, behavior, and health net of social background and other parent influences. Thus, family context is important for the development of complex health lifestyle pathways across early childhood, which have implications for school preparedness and thus for social inequalities and well-being throughout life. Developing health lifestyles both reflect and reproduce social inequalities across generations.
PubMed: 34720278
DOI: 10.1007/s11113-020-09615-6 -
Nursing Open May 2023To assess differences in social group memberships and burnout levels by work tenure among new nurses and identify factors associated with their subjective well-being.
AIM
To assess differences in social group memberships and burnout levels by work tenure among new nurses and identify factors associated with their subjective well-being.
DESIGN
A cross-sectional study.
METHODS
Participants were 356 registered nurses who had fewer than 3 years of work tenure. Data were collected from February-March 2021. Participants' social identity, burnout, and subjective well-being were assessed using validated questionnaires. STROBE checklist was applied.
RESULTS
Multiple group membership was positively associated with life satisfaction and positive affect and negatively with burnout. Burnout influenced new nurses' negative effect in their life transition period. To improve new nurses' subjective well-being, it is essential to focus on their social group membership, encourage participation in group activities, and improve access to sociopsychological resources that can help them take their first steps as professional staff and develop as healthy members of society, which will foster sustainable healthcare systems.
Topics: Humans; Cross-Sectional Studies; Social Group; Job Satisfaction; Burnout, Professional; Nurses
PubMed: 36575584
DOI: 10.1002/nop2.1581