To outsiders, the Virginia Affective Neuroscience Laboratory’s hand-holding study may seem like little more than a convenient means of landing a date, but Psychology Research Associate Lane Beckes said the research provides unprecedented insight into how relationships can regulate emotion and stress.
“Relationships can help us manage daily [stress] and anxieties by directly influencing our responses to and perceptions of negative events,” Beckes said in an email.
The researchers hope to gather data about the potential of social contact to mitigate stressful responses to negative stimuli. Ultimately, they hope to draw conclusions about the neural mechanisms that regulate emotions, Project Coordinator Casey Brown said.
Researchers place participants in an MRI machine and evaluate changes in images of the participants’ brains as they are exposed to visual stimuli that correspond to positive or negative physical stimuli.
“In varying order, the participants see a red X which means they have a chance of being shocked, and a blue O which means they are safe,” Beckes said. “We then have each participant undergo the same procedure once while alone, once with a stranger holding his or her hand and once with a friend or romantic partner holding his or her hand.”
Researchers detect the brain’s electrical signaling to assess the neural timing associated with these processes using a method called electroencephalography, which allows researchers to understand “when certain neural events are happening, and [allows them] to see how fast handholding changes the neural response to a threat,” Beckes said.
The inspiration for this research came from Assoc. Psychology Prof. Jim Coan, who arrived at the University with a research background in relationship-mediated regulation of emotions from his post-doctoral work at the University of Wisconsin.
“His original study showed the threat-reducing benefits of handholding in married women,” Beckes said. “Since he came to Virginia, his lab has conducted several experiments along these lines … exploring these effects in friends, lesbian and gay couples, distressed married couples, and heterosexual romantic couples.”
Beckes also said his research in the field is part of a desire to explore and understand one of the most fundamental aspects of human existence.
“The people we are born to, the network of relationships which support us in childhood and adolescence, and the quality of our adult partnerships and friendships have a huge impact on the quality and length of our lives,” Beckes said. “I want to understand how this critical aspect of human life is supported by and influences our minds and bodies in the most fundamental biological ways.”
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