ReviewCurrent opinion in psychology2022
Social Safety Theory: Understanding social stress, disease risk, resilience, and behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.
Review in Current opinion in psychology, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 58 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
58 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 80 citations in OpenAlex.
- Grief-Related Chest Pain: A Review, Conceptual Analysis, and Integrative Model.Psychophysiology · 2026Pooled it
- A systematic review of associations between emotion regulation characteristics and inflammation.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2023Pooled it
- Stress and cardiovascular disease: Testing a vigilance pathway in two contemporary theories.Health psychology : official journal of the Division of Health Psychology, American Psychological Association · 2026Article
- Risk and Protective Effects of Need for Approval on Self-Injury in Adolescent Girls.Child psychiatry and human development · 2026Article
- Love and compassion: key ingredients in the treatment of obesity.International journal of obesity (2005) · 2026Review
- The role of social safety schemas in the persistence of mental health difficulties during adolescence.The British journal of clinical psychology · 2026Article
- Entangled Bonds: Dyadic Dependence and Co-Regulation in Western Urban Human-Dog Relationships.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2026Review
- Sensory Deprivation and the Brain: Neurobiological Mechanisms, Psychological Effects, and Clinical Implications.Brain sciences · 2026Review
- The WONE Index as a Multidimensional Assessment of Stress Resilience: A Development and Validation Study.Journal of medical Internet research · 2026Article
- Development and validation of the BASE-66 inventory for comprehensive academic stress measurement.PloS one · 2026Article
- Lifetime Stressor Exposure Profiles and Trait Risk for Substance Use in Young Adults.Substance use & misuse · 2026Article
- Relationship Between Fatigue, Perceived Social Support and Symptomatology of Long-COVID Patients in Spain.Scandinavian journal of caring sciences · 2025Observational
- Daily patterns of loneliness and binge eating and food addiction using ecological momentary assessment.Journal of behavioral medicine · 2025Article
- Proinflammatory gene expression is associated with prospective risk for adolescent suicidal thoughts and behaviors over twelve months.Development and psychopathology · 2025Article
- Positive social relations, loneliness, and immune system gene regulation.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2025Article
- Childhood Maternal Warmth, Social Safety Schemas, and Adolescent Mental and Physical Health.JAMA psychiatry · 2025Article
- Adverse childhood experiences, inflammation, and depression: evidence of sex- and stressor specific effects in a nationally representative longitudinal sample of U.S. adolescents.Psychological medicine · 2025Article
- Maternal childhood adversity accelerates epigenetic aging of children.Health psychology : official journal of the Division of Health Psychology, American Psychological Association · 2025Article
- Protocol for project MHISS: Mental Health and Immunodynamics of Social Stress.Brain, behavior, & immunity - health · 2025Article
- Social Safety and Health Outcomes in Emerging Adults: Interactions of Adverse Childhood Experiences and Discrimination.Journal of community psychology · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Many of life's most impactful experiences involve either social safety (e.g., acceptance, affiliation, belonging, inclusion) or social threat (e.g., conflict, isolation, rejection, exclusion). According to Social Safety Theory, these experiences greatly impact human health and behavior because a fundamental goal of the brain and immune system is to keep the body biologically safe. To achieve this crucial goal, social threats likely gained the ability to activate anticipatory neural-immune responses that would have historically benefited reproduction and survival; the presence of social safety, in turn, likely dampened these responses. Viewing positive and negative social experiences through this lens affords a biologically based evolutionary account for why certain stressors are particularly impactful. It also provides an integrated, multi-level framework for investigating the biopsychosocial roots of psychopathology, health disparities, aging, longevity, and interpersonal cognition and behavior. Ultimately, this work has the potential to inform new strategies for reducing disease risk and promoting resilience.
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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.