Citation

Slavich GM. Annu. Rev. Clin. Psychol. 2020; ePub(ePub): ePub.

Affiliation

Cousins Center for Psychoneuroimmunology and Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, University of California, Los Angeles, California 90095-7076, USA; email: gslavich@mednet.ucla.edu.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2020, Annual Reviews)

DOI

10.1146/annurev-clinpsy-032816-045159

PMID

32141764

Abstract

Social Safety Theory hypothesizes that developing and maintaining friendly social bonds is a fundamental organizing principle of human behavior and that threats to social safety are a critical feature of psychological stressors that increase risk for disease. Central to this formulation is the fact that the human brain and immune system are principally designed to keep the body biologically safe, which they do by continually monitoring and responding to social, physical, and microbial threats in the environment. Because situations involving social conflict, isolation, devaluation, rejection, and exclusion historically increased risk for physical injury and infection, anticipatory neural-immune reactivity to social threat was likely highly conserved. This neurocognitive and immunologic ability for humans to symbolically represent and respond to potentially dangerous social situations is ultimately critical for survival. When sustained, however, this multilevel biological threat response can increase individuals' risk for several inflammation-related disease conditions that dominate present-day morbidity and mortality. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, Volume 16 is May 7, 2020. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

Language: en