Lecture 22 - Person x Situation Interactions Flashcards
HOW DO PERSONS AND SITUATIONS INTERACT?
- Same environment/situation can elicit different responses in different people (e.g., because of differences in construal, emotion regulation
style, etc.)
e. g. CAPS
2. People select themselves into different situations
e. g. certain attachment styles are often found together
3. People create situations
e. g. self-fulfilling prophecies
STRESS-DIATHESIS MODELS
Dominant model for psychiatric and behavior genetics § “genetic vulnerability” models
Certain genetic variants—when combined with, e.g., early childhood trauma or stressful life events—make people more vulnerable to
mood, personality or psychiatric disorders
Gene X environment interaction
Nature X nurture interaction
e.g., Serotonin transporter gene
5-HTTLPR AND STRESSFUL LIFE EVENTS
Serotonin receptor as diathesis
Polymorphism influences
reuptake of serotonin
Short allele has lower
transcription efficiency
Sig Life Event (employment, housing,
$, relationships)
5-HTTLPR not associated
with # of SLE (no
mediation/selection)
Affects ability to cope
Still under debate but a famous example
DIFFERENTIAL SENSITIVITY
Susceptible individuals not just more vulnerable to adversity
Rather, they are more “developmentally plastic,” or “malleable,” and thus more sensitive to all experiences—negative and positive
Is like D/S but for good as well as bad
BIOLOGICAL SENSITIVITY TO CONTEXT
Kind of the same as Diff Sensitivity
Heightened stress reactivity is indicative of biological sensitivity to context (BSC)
BSC + Adversity > negative health effects
BSC + Support > positive health effects
From evolutionary perspective, it’s unlikely there is one best strategy for survival—rather strategy depends on features of specific environment
A successful strategy in one environment may be terrible in another
Biological reactivity prepares organism to respond to threat
Reactivity not “unitarily pathogenic”
Also, protective effects show why phenotype sustained
Susceptible* individuals not just more vulnerable to adversity
Rather, they are more “developmentally plastic,” or “malleable,” and thus more sensitive to all experiences—negative and positive
Also, “Biological Sensitivity to Context
Dandelions & Orchids
Orchids can become more beautiful but they need the right environment
BIOLOGICAL SENSITIVITY TO CONTEXT
Why has there been no evidence?
We do not look for it
In the Short vs long allele and SLE study, the s/s allele ptpt experienced less happiness at the high SLE condition BUT they also experienced way more in high nurture conditions
The l/l allele was not affected by high/low SLE or high nurture
If you look for it, you find the evidence
BSC X ENVIRONMENT (STRESS) EFFECTS ON
HEALTH
Kids, cardiovascular reactivity and immune fx
Measured cardiovascular reactivity and immune fx in 3-5 year old children
Looked at how that interacted with SLEs in terms of predicting resp illnesses (number of illnesses in 3 month periods)
The highly reactive kids had more than the low reactive kids at high SLE but ALSO lower rates at low SLE
BSC X ENVIRONMENT (STRESS) EFFECTS ON
HEALTH
Monkey rehousing
In a place where they were building a new enclosure for monkeys
Monkeys had to live in cramped, stressful conditions for a while
Some were low and some were high reactivity
you see evidence for BSC model as the highs were worse at high stress but better at low
DRD4 X PARENTING INTERVENTION
Diff Susceptibility
DRD4 “risk allele” associated with motivation and reward mechanisms, and ADHD*
Kids (1-3 year old) with “externalizing” behaviors (whine, scream, throw objects, tantrums, willful refusal)
2,408 kids –top 25% (157 families)
Intervention to promote positive parenting and sensitive discipline:
watch videos to spot cues or respond differently to cues
Intervention worked: 16% reduction in externalizing scores in treatment group (vs. 10% in control)
BUT, ANY EVIDENCE FOR SENSITIVITY HYPOTHESIS?
Control group:
risk allele < protective allele (STRESS-DIATHESIS)
Intervention group (KEY TEST OF HYPOTHESIS):
IF Risk allele < protective allele, THEN Stress-Diathesis
BUT, IF risk allele > protective allele, THEN DIFFERENTIAL
SUSCEPTIBILITY Hypothesis
Kids with “risk allele” showed 27% reduction in externalizing vs. 12
% of those with “protective allele” (7 repeat allele is “risk”
So the kids with the “risk” allele benefitted more from the intervention
OTHER EVIDENCE FOR DIFFERENTIAL
SUSCEPTIBILITY/BSC
G/G genotype of OXTR rs53576
Low SES African Americans
G/G genotype of OXTR rs53576 polymorphism associated with positive outcomes—
e.g., dispositional and behavioral empathy, trust, etc.
But same polymorphism was found to interact with environment in sample of lower SES African American women (Bradley, et al 2011)
if childhood environment warm and stable, then pos affect and resilient coping
if unstable/not warm, then less positive affect/resilient coping (iit is not a social coping gene, rather a social sensitivity gene)
A/A did not show such sensitivity to context
Also, for those with early life maltreatment, G/G (but not A/A) associated with higher depressive symptomatology in adulthood (McQuaid et al 2013)
”breach of trust may be more deleterious for those who are more prosocial and attuned to social cues
Diff Sucs
OPRM1 & FELT-SECURITY IN ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIPS
As we saw in the last lecture, those with G/G vs A/G or A/A were more sensitive to quarrelsome behaviour But at low levels of quarrelsome behavior, they were much more secure
G/D conforms to Diff Susc model
Is just more sensitive to behaviour
VANTAGE SENSITIVITY
Variation in response to exclusively positive experiences as a function of individual endogenous characteristics
The “lucky” ones
cf. Differential sensitivity
NOT more susceptible to the negative effects of contextual adversity (b/c of
individual attributes that confer sensitivity)
IQ - good education = disproportionally beneficial. Bad education = protective. Benefits a lot from good, no real detriment to bad and might confer resistance
In some cases, what makes you excel in a good environment might make you resistant in a negative one
cf. Resilience
§ Vantage sensitivity is individual benefiting—more than others—from positive
environments, NOT “protective” factors that preventing an individual from
succumbing to or being harmed by some adversity
ENDOGENOUS SUSCEPTIBILITY FACTORS
A. Behavioral factors (e.g., infant temperament / high sensory processing
sensitivity)
B. Physiological factors (e.g., cortisol stress reactivity, RSA)
C. Genetic factors (esp. SERT & DRD4)
These could provide evidence for the models
Vantage sensitivity evidence
EVIDENCE: TEMPERAMENT & SENSITIVITY
Children with difficult temperaments at 6 and 12 mos who had high-quality parenting had more social and academic skills at 11 years, whereas children with less difficult temperaments did not benefit from positive parenting (Pluess & Belsky,
2010)
Girls rated as highly reactive at 6 mos manifested more prosocial behavior at 6.5 yrs.
-if fathers were highly involved in care during the early years, whereas nonreactive
girls showed no such benefit from father involvement
-Brief parenting intervention for attachment security: Intervention succeeded in
promoting security, but only for infants identified as highly irritable
-High-sensory processing sensitivity: School-based resilience promoting program administered to 11-year-old girls in deprived area of London; program led to reduction in depression at 12-month follow up but only for upper 30% (less sensitive girls did not benifit)
Vantage sensitivity
EVIDENCE: PHYSIOLOGICAL FACTORS
Family adversity and prosocial behavior:
Children with high cortisol reactivity were more prosocial when family adversity was especially low (enhanced capacity to benefit from a more supportive environment),
but no association for low cort reactive kids
Also, children with high RSA reactivity showed the highest school engagement of all
children not exposed to high family adversity (who thus experienced a more
supportive rearing milieu)
Home environment & childhood aggression:
-For children with high RSA activity, high environmental quality was associated with
less aggression at 54 months, whereas children characterized by low RSA activity did not benefit from high quality environments at all (“vantage resistant - they did not do worse, just did not benifit”)
