ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2020
The mere physical presence of another person reduces human autonomic responses to aversive sounds.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed, 26 citations in OpenAlex.
- Interpersonal Synchronization of Autonomic Physiology via Mere Visual Contact.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2026Article
- Neurocomputational mechanisms of social presence effects on instrumental learning.Communications biology · 2025Article
- Review
- Article
- The skin conductance response indicating pain relief is independent of self or social influence on pain.Psychophysiology · 2022Article
- Shared Reality Can Reduce Stressor Reactivity.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
- Social buffering of human fear is shaped by gender, social concern, and the presence of real vs virtual agents.Translational psychiatry · 2021Article
- Effects of social and emotional context on neural activation and synchrony during movie viewing.Human brain mapping · 2021Article
- Fear in groups: Increasing group size reduces perceptions of danger.Emotion (Washington, D.C.) · 2021Article
- Pain expectation and avoidance in the social context: an electrophysiological study.The journal of physiological sciences : JPS · 2021Article
- The Loss of the Shared Space: Process Issues in Telepsychotherapy.Indian journal of psychological medicine · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Social animals show reduced physiological responses to aversive events if a conspecific is physically present. Although humans are innately social, it is unclear whether the mere physical presence of another person is sufficient to reduce human autonomic responses to aversive events. In our study, participants experienced aversive and neutral sounds alone (alone treatment) or with an unknown person that was physically present without providing active support. The present person was a member of the participants' ethnical group (ingroup treatment) or a different ethnical group (outgroup treatment), inspired by studies that have found an impact of similarity on social modulation effects. We measured skin conductance responses (SCRs) and collected subjective similarity and affect ratings. The mere presence of an ingroup or outgroup person significantly reduced SCRs to the aversive sounds compared with the alone condition, in particular in participants with high situational anxiety. Moreover, the effect was stronger if participants perceived the ingroup or outgroup person as dissimilar to themselves. Our results indicate that the mere presence of another person was sufficient to diminish autonomic responses to aversive events in humans, and thus verify the translational validity of basic social modulation effects across different species.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.