Acute stress reduces effortful prosocial behaviour.

Acute stress can change our cognition and emotions, but what specific consequences this has for human prosocial behaviour is unclear. Previous studies have mainly investigated prosociality with financial transfers in economic games and produced conflicting results. Yet a core feature of many types of prosocial behaviour is that they are effortful. We therefore examined how acute stress changes our willingness to exert effort that benefits others. Healthy male participants - half of whom were put under acute stress - made decisions whether to exert physical effort to gain money for themselves or another person. With this design, we could independently assess the effects of acute stress on prosocial, compared to self-benefitting, effortful behaviour. Compared to controls (n = 45), participants in the stress group (n = 46) chose to exert effort more often for self- than for other-benefitting rewards at a low level of effort. Additionally, the adverse effects of stress on prosocial effort were particularly pronounced in more selfish participants. Neuroimaging combined with computational modelling revealed a putative neural mechanism underlying these effects: more stressed participants showed increased activation to subjective value in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and anterior insula when they themselves could benefit from their exerted effort relative to when someone else could. By using an effort-based task that better approximates real-life prosocial behaviour and incorporating trait differences in prosocial tendencies, our study provides important insights into how acute stress affects prosociality and its associated neural mechanisms.

Homeostatic Regulation of Energetic Arousal During Acute Social Isolation: Evidence From the Lab and the Field.

Recent evidence suggests that social contact is a basic need governed by a social homeostatic system. Little is known, however, about how conditions of altered social homeostasis affect human psychology and physiology. Here, we investigated the effects of 8 hr of social isolation on psychological and physiological variables and compared this with 8 hr of food deprivation in a lab experiment (N = 30 adult women). Social isolation led to lowered self-reported energetic arousal and heightened fatigue, comparable with food deprivation. To test whether these findings would extend to a real-life setting, we conducted a preregistered field study during a COVID-19 lockdown (N = 87 adults; 47 women). The drop in energetic arousal after social isolation observed in the lab replicated in the field study for participants who lived alone or reported high sociability, suggesting that lowered energy could be part of a homeostatic response to the lack of social contact.

Perceptions of Stress and Mood Associated With Listening to Music in Daily Life During the COVID-19 Lockdown.

Importance: Music listening is a universal human experience. People of all ages and cultures often use music to reduce stress and improve mood, particularly in times of crisis. However, ecologically valid research examining the real-time association of music listening with stress and mood during the COVID-19 pandemic is scarce. Objective: To explore the associations between listening to music and the perceptions of stress and mood using ecological momentary assessment during the COVID-19 lockdown period. Design, Setting, and Participants: In this cohort study conducted between April 1 and May 8, 2020, adults from the general population residing in Austria and Italy were prompted by an app on their smartphone to report data 5 times per day across 7 consecutive days. Participants provided data on their real-time and real-life experiences in their natural environment while strict lockdown measures were in place. Data analysis was performed from March 2021 to February 2022. Exposures: Data on self-reported music listening were recorded by means of mobile-based assessments. Perceived chronic stress was assessed once at the end of the study. Main Outcomes and Measures: Perceptions of momentary stress and mood were measured using visual analog scales (score range, 0-100, where 0 indicates not at all and 100 indicates very much) by means of mobile app-based assessments. Results: The final sample comprised 711 participants (497 women [69.9%]; median age, 27.0 years [IQR, 24.0-36.0 years]). Participants provided a total of 19 641 data points, including 4677 music listening reports. Music listening was prospectively associated with lower momentary stress levels (ß, -0.92; 95% CI, -1.80 to -0.04; P = .04) and improvements in mood valence (ß, 1.90; 95% CI, 1.17-2.63; P < .001), especially if the music was perceived as happy. Individuals with higher levels of chronic stress reported improved mood valence after music listening (ß, 0.12; 95% CI, 0.02-0.22; P = .02). Conclusions and Relevance: The present findings suggest that music listening may be a means to modulate stress and mood during psychologically demanding periods. Individuals experiencing heightened momentary and/or chronic stress because of the challenges brought about by COVID-19 pandemic-related restrictions might consider music as an easily accessible tool for the management of stress and mood in daily life.

The effects of social interactions on momentary stress and mood during COVID-19 lockdowns.

OBJECTIVE: Social interactions are vital for our well-being, particularly during times of stress. However, previous studies linking social interactions to psychological outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic have largely been retrospective and/or cross-sectional. Thus, we tested four preregistered hypotheses (H1-H4) concerning the real-time effect of social interactions on momentary changes in stress and mood during two COVID-19 lockdowns. DESIGN: We used an ecological momentary assessment approach in 732 participants in spring 2020 (burst 1) and in a subsample of these participants (n = 281) during a further lockdown in autumn/winter 2020 (burst 2). METHODS: Participants reported their stress and mood in a smartphone app five times per day for 7 days and indicated the nature and frequency of their recent social interactions. RESULTS: Social interactions (H1) and their frequency (H2) improved momentary affect (e.g., social interactions increased mood valence: estimate = 2.605, p < .001 for burst 1). This was particularly the case for face-to-face interactions which, compared with other types of interactions, reduced momentary stress (e.g., estimate = -2.285, p < .001 for burst 1) and boosted mood (e.g., estimate = 1.759, p < .001 for burst 1) across both lockdowns, even when controlling for the pleasantness of the interaction and the closeness of the interaction partner (H3). We also show that individual differences in people's responsiveness to different social rewards modulated the impact of social interactions on momentary mood (H4). CONCLUSIONS: This study extends findings from cross-sectional and retrospective studies by highlighting the real-time affective benefits of social interactions during COVID-19 lockdown. The results have important implications for the (self-) management of stress and mood during psychologically demanding periods.

Does stress make us more-or less-prosocial? A systematic review and meta-analysis of the effects of acute stress on prosocial behaviours using economic games.

Prosocial behaviour is fundamental for our social togetherness. Yet, how acute stress, a common everyday occurrence, influences our behaviours towards one another is still unclear. In this systematic review and meta-analysis, we aimed to quantitatively investigate the effect of experimentally induced acute stress on prosocial behaviours in economic games. We also probed possible moderators to explain differences in findings. We included 23 studies, 77 individual effects, and 2197 participants in the meta-analysis and found no overall differences between stress and control groups in prosocial behaviours (SMD=-0.06), or costly punishment (SMD=-0.11). There were no moderating effects of stressor type, participants' gender/sex, or the delay from the stressor to the task. However, the potential recipient of the donated money (person vs. charity) and the complexity of the decision did reveal some differences under stress. The results of this meta-analysis suggest that there is currently no clear answer to the question of whether or not stress increases or decreases prosociality. We highlight important open questions and suggest where the field should go next.

Placebo Analgesia Reduces Costly Prosocial Helping to Lower Another Person's Pain.

Painkiller administration lowers pain empathy, but whether this also reduces prosocial behavior is unknown. In this preregistered study, we investigated whether inducing analgesia through a placebo painkiller reduced effortful helping. When given the opportunity to reduce the pain of another person, individuals experiencing placebo analgesia (n = 45 adults from Austria; 21 male, 24 female) made fewer prosocial choices at the lowest helping level and exerted less physical effort when helping, compared with controls whose pain sensitivity was unaltered (n = 45; 21 male, 24 female). Self-reported empathic unpleasantness positively correlated with prosocial choices across the whole sample. While not replicating group differences in empathy, a mediation analysis revealed that the level of unpleasantness to other people's pain fully mediated the effect of placebo analgesia on prosocial choices. Given the importance of prosociality for social cohesion, these findings have broad potential implications both for individuals under the influence of painkillers and for society at large.

Diurnal dynamics of stress and mood during COVID-19 lockdown: a large multinational ecological momentary assessment study.

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in severe disruption to people's lives as governments imposed national 'lockdowns'. Several large surveys have underlined the detrimental short- and long-term mental health consequences resulting from this disruption, but survey findings are only informative of individuals' retrospectively reported psychological states. Furthermore, knowledge on psychobiological responses to lockdown restrictions is scarce. We used smartphone-based real-time assessments in 731 participants for 7 days and investigated how individuals' self-reported stress and mood fluctuated diurnally during lockdown in spring 2020. We found that age, gender, financial security, depressive symptoms and trait loneliness modulated the diurnal dynamics of participants' momentary stress and mood. For example, younger and less financially secure individuals showed an attenuated decline in stress as the day progressed, and similarly, more lonely individuals showed a diminished increase in calmness throughout the day. Hair collected from a subsample (n = 140) indicated a decrease in cortisol concentrations following lockdown, but these changes were not related to any of the assessed person-related characteristics. Our findings provide novel insights into the psychobiological impact of lockdown and have implications for how, when and which individuals might benefit most from interventions during psychologically demanding periods.

The effects of self-relevance vs. reward value on facial mimicry.

Facial mimicry is a ubiquitous social behaviour modulated by a range of social cues, including those related to reward value and self-relevance. However, previous research has typically focused on a single moderator at a time, and it remains unknown how moderators interact when studied together. We compared the influence of reward value and self-relevance, by conditioning participants to associate certain faces with winning or losing money for themselves, or, with winning or losing money for another person. After conditioning, participants watched videos of these faces making happy and angry facial expressions whilst we recorded facial electromyographic activity. We found greater smile mimicry (activation of the Zygomaticus Major muscle) in response to happy expressions performed by faces associated with participants' own outcomes vs. faces associated with another person's outcomes. In contrast to previous research, whether a face was associated with winning or losing money did not modulate facial mimicry responses. These results, although preliminary, suggest that when faces are associated with both self-relevance and reward value, self-relevance could supersede the impact of reward value during facial mimicry.

Resilience during uncertainty? Greater social connectedness during COVID-19 lockdown is associated with reduced distress and fatigue.

BACKGROUND: Social connections are crucial for our health and well-being. This is especially true during times of high uncertainty and distress, such as during the COVID-19 lockdown. This period was characterized by unprecedented physical distancing (often communicated as social distancing) measures resulting in significant changes to people's usual social lives. Given the potential effects of this disruption on people's well-being, it is crucial to identify factors which are associated with negative health outcomes, and conversely, those that promote resilience during times of adversity. AIMS: We examined the relationship between individuals' levels of social connectedness during lockdown and self-reported stress, worry, and fatigue. METHOD: Survey data were collected from 981 individuals in a representative sample of Austrian citizens. Data collection occurred during the last week of a six-week nationwide lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The final sample consisted of 902 participants. Participants were asked to complete validated questionnaires to assess levels of social connectedness as well as measures of perceived stress, worry-both general and COVID-19 specific-and symptoms of fatigue during the previous two weeks. RESULTS: Our results demonstrate that greater social connectedness during the lockdown period was associated with lower levels of perceived stress, as well as general and COVID-19-specific worries. Furthermore, we found a negative relationship between fatigue and social connectedness, which was mediated by feelings of stress, general worries, and COVID-19-specific worries-respectively, indicating that individuals with smaller network sizes, who were highly distressed during the pandemic, were also likely to report feeling more fatigued. CONCLUSION: Our findings highlight the important role that social connections play in promoting resilience by buffering against negative physical and mental health outcomes, particularly in times of adversity in times of adversity.

Unobtrusive tracking of interpersonal orienting and distance predicts the subjective quality of social interactions.

Interpersonal coordination of behaviour is essential for smooth social interactions. Measures of interpersonal behaviour, however, often rely on subjective evaluations, invasive measurement techniques or gross measures of motion. Here, we constructed an unobtrusive motion tracking system that enables detailed analysis of behaviour at the individual and interpersonal levels, which we validated using wearable sensors. We evaluate dyadic measures of joint orienting and distancing, synchrony and gaze behaviours to summarize data collected during natural conversation and joint action tasks. Our results demonstrate that patterns of proxemic behaviours, rather than more widely used measures of interpersonal synchrony, best predicted the subjective quality of the interactions. Increased distance between participants predicted lower enjoyment, while increased joint orienting towards each other during cooperation correlated with increased effort reported by the participants. Importantly, the interpersonal distance was most informative of the quality of interaction when task demands and experimental control were minimal. These results suggest that interpersonal measures of behaviour gathered during minimally constrained social interactions are particularly sensitive for the subjective quality of social interactions and may be useful for interaction-based phenotyping for further studies.

Brief Report: Autistic Adults Assign Less Weight to Affective Cues When Judging Others' Ambiguous Emotional States.

Understanding other people's emotional states involves integrating multiple sources of information, such as someone's smile (affective cue) with our knowledge that they have passed an exam (situational cue). We explored whether autistic adults display differences in how they integrate these cues by showing participants videos of students receiving their exams results. Our results suggest autistic adults generally perform as neurotypical participants when identifying and integrating affective and situational cues. It was only in certain unfamiliar and ambiguous social situations that autistic adults assigned less weight to affective cues compared to situational cues when judging other people's emotional states.

Typical use of inverse dynamics in perceiving motion in autistic adults: Exploring computational principles of perception and action.

There is increasing evidence for motor difficulties in many people with autism spectrum condition (ASC). These difficulties could be linked to differences in the use of internal models which represent relations between motions and forces/efforts. The use of these internal models may be dependent on the cerebellum which has been shown to be abnormal in autism. Several studies have examined internal computations of forward dynamics (motion from force information) in autism, but few have tested the inverse dynamics computation, that is, the determination of force-related information from motion information. Here, we examined this ability in autistic adults by measuring two perceptual biases which depend on the inverse computation. First, we asked participants whether they experienced a feeling of resistance when moving a delayed cursor, which corresponds to the inertial force of the cursor implied by its motion-both typical and ASC participants reported similar feelings of resistance. Second, participants completed a psychophysical task in which they judged the velocity of a moving hand with or without a visual cue implying inertial force. Both typical and ASC participants perceived the hand moving with the inertial cue to be slower than the hand without it. In both cases, the magnitude of the effects did not differ between the two groups. Our results suggest that the neural systems engaged in the inverse dynamics computation are preserved in ASC, at least in the observed conditions. Autism Res 2018, 11: 1062-1075. © 2018 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc. LAY SUMMARY: We tested the ability to estimate force information from motion information, which arises from a specific "inverse dynamics" computation. Autistic adults and a matched control group reported feeling a resistive sensation when moving a delayed cursor and also judged a moving hand to be slower when it was pulling a load. These findings both suggest that the ability to estimate force information from motion information is intact in autism.

Moving higher and higher: imitators' movements are sensitive to observed trajectories regardless of action rationality.

Humans sometimes perform actions which, at least superficially, appear suboptimal to the goal they are trying to achieve. Despite being able to identify these irrational actions from an early age, humans display a curious tendency to copy them. The current study recorded participants' movements during an established imitation task and manipulated the rationality of the observed action in two ways. Participants observed videos of a model point to a series of targets with either a low, high or 'superhigh' trajectory either in the presence or absence of obstacles between her targets. The participants' task was to watch which targets the model pointed to and then point to the same targets on the table in front of them. There were no obstacles between the participants' targets. Firstly, we found that the peak height of participants' movements between their targets was sensitive to the height of the model's movements, even in the 'superhigh' condition where the model's action was rated as irrational. Secondly, participants showed obstacle priming-the peak height of participants' movements was higher after having observed the model move over obstacles to reach her targets, compared to when there were no obstacles between her targets. This suggests that participants code the environment of co-actors into their own motor programs, even when this compromises the efficiency of their own movements. We discuss the implications of our findings in terms of theories of imitation and obstacle priming.

How can the study of action kinematics inform our understanding of human social interaction?

The kinematics of human actions are influenced by the social context in which they are performed. Motion-capture technology has allowed researchers to build up a detailed and complex picture of how action kinematics vary across different social contexts. Here we review three task domains-point-to-point imitation tasks, motor interference tasks and reach-to-grasp tasks-to critically evaluate how these tasks can inform our understanding of social interactions. First, we consider how actions within these task domains are performed in a non-social context, before highlighting how a plethora of social cues can perturb the baseline kinematics. We show that there is considerable overlap in the findings from these different tasks domains but also highlight the inconsistencies in the literature and the possible reasons for this. Specifically, we draw attention to the pitfalls of dealing with rich, kinematic data. As a way to avoid these pitfalls, we call for greater standardisation and clarity in the reporting of kinematic measures and suggest the field would benefit from a move towards more naturalistic tasks.

STORMy Interactions: Gaze and the Modulation of Mimicry in Adults on the Autism Spectrum.

Mimicry involves unconsciously imitating the actions of others and is a powerful and ubiquitous behavior in social interactions. There has been a long debate over whether mimicry is abnormal in people with autism spectrum conditions (ASC) and what the causes of any differences might be. Wang and Hamilton's (2012) social top-down response modulation (STORM) model proposed that people with ASC can and do mimic but, unlike neurotypical participants, fail to modulate their mimicry according to the social context. This study used an established mimicry paradigm to test this hypothesis. In neurotypical participants, direct gaze specifically enhanced congruent hand actions as previously found; in the ASC sample, direct gaze led to faster reaction times in both congruent and incongruent movements. This result shows that mimicry is intact in ASC, but is not socially modulated by gaze, as predicted by STORM.

Reduced Mimicry to Virtual Reality Avatars in Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Mimicry involves unconsciously copying the actions of others. Increasing evidence suggests that autistic people can copy the goal of an observed action but show differences in their mimicry. We investigated mimicry in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) within a two-dimensional virtual reality environment. Participants played an imitation game with a socially engaged avatar and socially disengaged avatar. Despite being told only to copy the goal of the observed action, autistic participants and matched neurotypical participants mimicked the kinematics of the avatars' movements. However, autistic participants mimicked less. Social engagement did not modulate mimicry in either group. The results demonstrate the feasibility of using virtual reality to induce mimicry and suggest mimicry differences in ASD may also occur when interacting with avatars.