Social Safety Theory

Overview

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.

Article Download

1. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology (limited access)
2. PDF Download (free access)

Social Safety Journal Club!

Back by popular demand, the Social Safety Journal Club! Read the article and book an online lab/journal club meeting with Dr. Slavich. Journal clubs are 50 minutes and include a 10-minute overview of Social Safety Theory followed by 40 minutes of Q&A and discussion! Interesting in discussing or pursuing these ideas? To setup a Journal Club time, just email us!

Strategies for Promoting Social Safety & Reducing Social Threat

Do you have an intervention that should be added to the list below? Great! Please send it to us using the lab email address on the Contact Page!

Intervention	Possible mechanism of action	Example reference(s)
Individual
Cognitive behavior therapy	Increase social engagement and reduce social threat–related thoughts and beliefs	Clark & Beck 1999, Hofmann & Otto 2017, Shields et al. 2020
Acceptance and commitment therapy	Develop cognitive flexibility to notice, accept, and embrace past social threats	Hayes et al. 2009
Mindfulness meditation	Bring awareness to the present, which is typically absent of social threat	Creswell et al. 2014
Loving-kindness and compassion meditation	Enhance positive emotional states of kindness and compassion toward others	Hofmann et al. 2011
Forgiveness therapy	Reduce negative thoughts and emotions induced by offenders/aggressors	Akhtar & Barlow 2018, Worthington 2013
Self-distancing	Reduce the negativity of past aversive events by increasing distance/perspective	Kross & Ayduk 2017
Stress mind-set interventions	View social threat as an enhancing rather than debilitating experience	Crum et al. 2017
Acetaminophen administration	Reduce neurobiological signaling that subserves social pain and rejection	DeWall et al. 2010, Slavich et al. 2019
Safety learning	Remodel neural networks underlying anxiety, fear, and threat	Meyer et al. 2019
Family
Nurturant parenting training	Strengthen familial relationships	Miller et al. 2014
Family cohesion training	Promote social caring, interpersonal connection, and family cohesion	King et al. 2019
School
Social belonging interventions	Increase social connection, cohesion, belonging, affiliation, and inclusion; reappraise social cues and adversity	Allen et al. 2016, Borman et al. 2019, Patton et al. 2006
Mere belonging interventions	Enhance social connection and belonging with socially shared goals	Walton & Cohen 2011
Identity safety interventions	Foster sense that one’s identity and values are accepted and welcome	Goyer et al. 2019
Community/society
Reduce bias	Decrease instances of prejudice and discrimination	Eberhardt 2019
Prevent bullying	Reduce experiences of social aggression and exclusion	Williams & Nida 2014
Promote social connection	Decrease loneliness and increase social interaction and belonging	Holt-Lunstad et al. 2017
Build empathy	Promote social connection, caring, and empathy toward others	Zaki 2019

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Akhtar S, Barlow J. 2018. Forgiveness therapy for the promotion of mental well-being: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Trauma Violence Abuse 19:107–22

Allen KA, Vella-Brodrick D, Waters L. 2016. Fostering school belonging in secondary schools using a socio-ecological framework. Educ. Dev. Psychol. 33:97–121

Borman GD, Rozek CS, Pyne J, Hanselman P. 2019. Reappraising academic and social adversity improves middle school students’ academic achievement, behavior, and well-being. PNAS 116:16286–91

Clark DA, Beck AT. 1999. Scientific Foundations of Cognitive Theory of Depression. New York: Wiley

Creswell JD, Pacilio LE, Lindsay EK, Brown KW. 2014. Brief mindfulness meditation training alters psychological and neuroendocrine responses to social evaluative stress. Psychoneuroendocrinology 44:1–12

Crum AJ, Akinola M, Martin A, Fath S. 2017. The role of stress mindset in shaping cognitive, emotional, and physiological responses to challenging and threatening stress. Anxiety Stress Coping 30:379–95

DeWall CN, MacDonald G, Webster GD, Masten CL, Baumeister RF, et al. 2010. Acetaminophen reduces social pain: behavioral and neural evidence. Psychol. Sci. 21:931–37

Eberhardt JL. 2019. Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do. New York: Viking

Goyer JP, Cohen GL, Cook JE, Master A, Apfel N, et al. 2019. Targeted identity safety interventions cause lasting reductions in discipline citations among ethnic-minority boys. J. Personal. Soc. Psychol. 117:229–59

Hayes SC, Strosahl KD, Wilson KG. 2009. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. Washington, DC: Am. Psychol. Assoc.

Hofmann SG, Grossman P, Hinton DE. 2011. Loving-kindness and compassion meditation: potential for psychological interventions. Clin. Psychol. Rev. 31:1126–32

Hofmann SG, Otto MW. 2017. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Social Anxiety Disorder: Evidence-Based and Disorder-Specific Treatment Techniques. New York: Routledge. 2nd ed.

Holt-Lunstad J, Robles TF, Sbarra DA. 2017. Advancing social connection as a public health priority in the United States. Am. Psychol. 72:517–30

King CA, Arango A, Kramer A, Busby D, Czyz E, et al. 2019. Association of the youth-nominated support team intervention for suicidal adolescents with 11- to 14-year mortality outcomes: secondary analysis of a randomized clinical trial. JAMA Psychiatry 76:492–98

Kross E, Ayduk O. 2017. Self-distancing: theory, research, and current directions. Adv. Exp. Soc. Psychol. 55:81–136

Meyer HC, Odriozola P, Cohodes EM, Mandell JD, Li A, et al. 2019. Ventral hippocampus interacts with prelimbic cortex during inhibition of threat response via learned safety in both mice and humans. PNAS 116:26970–79

Miller GE, Brody GH, Yu T, Chen E. 2014. A family-oriented psychosocial intervention reduces inflammation in low-SES African American youth. PNAS 111:11287–92

Patton GC, Bond L, Carlin JB, Thomas L, Butler H, et al. 2006. Promoting social inclusion in schools: a group-randomized trial of effects on student health risk behavior and well-being. Am. J. Public Health 96:1582–87

Shields GS, Spahr CM, Slavich GM. 2020. Psychosocial interventions and immune system function: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. JAMA Psychiatry. In press.

Slavich GM, Shields GS, Deal BD, Gregory A, Toussaint LL. 2019. Alleviating social pain: a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial of forgiveness and acetaminophen. Ann. Behav. Med. 53:1045–54

Walton GM, Cohen GL. 2011. A brief social-belonging intervention improves academic and health outcomes of minority students. Science 331:1447–51

Williams KD, Nida SA. 2014. Ostracism and public policy. Policy Insights Behav. Brain Sci. 1:38–45

Worthington EL Jr. 2013. Forgiveness and Reconciliation: Theory and Application. New York: Routledge