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Social Baseline Theory: the social regulation of risk and effort
Open accessAbstract
We describe Social Baseline Theory (SBT), a perspective that integrates the study of social relationships with principles of attachment, behavioral ecology, cognitive neuroscience, and perception science. SBT suggests the human brain expects access to social relationships that mitigate risk and diminish the level of effort needed to meet a variety of goals. This is accomplished in part by incorporating relational partners into neural representations of the self. By contrast, decreased access to relational partners increases cognitive and physiological effort. Relationship disruptions entail re-defining the self as independent, which implies greater risk, increased effort, and diminished well being. The ungrafting of the self and other may mediate recovery from relationship loss.
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“This theory, which has bases on behavioral ecology and cognitive neuroscience, suggests that the human brain expects access to social relationships that mitigate risk and diminish the level of effort needed to meet a variety of goals (7).”
From Physiological attunement and flourishing: understanding the influence of relationships on health (2025) · cites this paper as [7]
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“…also supports the notion of social connection as being adaptive—we use more metabolic resources when coping with threat alone than when we are in the presence of others (Coan & Sbarra 2015, Coan et al. 2006), and social pain shares neural mechanisms with physical pain (Eisenberger 2012).”
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Metadata
- Authors
- Coan, J. A., & Sbarra, D. A.
- Affiliations
- University of Virginia (US)
- University of Arizona (US)
- Corresponding author
- Coan, James A
- Venue
- Current Opinion in Psychology
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2015-02
- Volume
- 1
- Pages
- 87-91
- ISSN
- 2352-250X (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC4375548
- OpenAlex
- W2022429540
- Cited by
- 313
- References
- 52
- Citations by year
- 2026: 43 · 2025: 26 · 2024: 28 · 2023: 32 · 2022: 32 · 2021: 38 · 2020: 29 · 2019: 27 · 2018: 23 · 2017: 22 · 2016: 4 · 2015: 8
- FWCI
- 2.96
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Current Opinion in Psychology (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- Funders
- National Institute of Mental Health (R01MH080725)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Attachment and Relationship Dynamics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Death Anxiety and Social Exclusion
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Endocrine and Autonomic Systems › Neuroendocrine regulation and behavior
- Keywords
- interpersonal relationships, risk, effort, attachment, behavioral ecology, cognitive neuroscience, perception, self-representation, relationship disruption, self and other, relationship loss, recovery
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