ArticleHealth psychology review2023
Social Safety Theory: Conceptual foundation, underlying mechanisms, and future directions.
Article in Health psychology review, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 76 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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Who cites it
76 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 114 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
- Self-Criticism as a Mechanism of Change in Compassion-Based Interventions: A Meta-Analytic Structural Equation Modelling Approach and Systematic Review.Clinical psychology & psychotherapyPooled it
- Comprehensive Mitigation of Peripheral and Central Stress Responses by Nx4: Insights From EEG and Heart Rate Variability in Post-Stress Resting State.Human psychopharmacology · 2025Trial
- 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
- Adolescent social media use and psychiatric outcomes: a longitudinal mediation analysis via interpersonal distrust, sleep, and self-image.Social psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology · 2026Article
- Understanding fibromyalgia beyond pain: emotional imbalance and the case for compassionate care.RMD open · 2026Review
- Obesity-related RNA mJournal of neural transmission (Vienna, Austria : 1996) · 2026Article
- Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) moderate the association between traffic exposure and circulating inflammatory biomarkers.Brain, behavior, & immunity - health · 2026Article
- Chronic stress and cancer progression through neuro‑endocrine‑immune networks (Review).Oncology reports · 2026Review
- Psychological distress and trust in healthcare: individual perceptions and national contexts - a multilevel analysis.BMC health services research · 2026Article
- Mechanisms Linking Bonding and Bridging Social Capital and Self-Rated Health Among U.S. Refugees: A Structural Equation Modeling Approach.Journal of racial and ethnic health disparities · 2026Article
- Development and validation of the lifetime sense of safety scale in Kenyan adults.Communications medicine · 2026Article
- Advancing women's mental health: Recommendations from a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine workshop.PNAS nexus · 2026Article
- Family background and peer victimization are associated with generalized trust from adolescence to adulthood.Communications psychology · 2026Article
- Stress is inevitable; recovery is conditional: bioenergetic limits of resilience in aging and disease.Biogerontology · 2026Review
- From Molecules to Meaning: Integrating Neuropeptides, Sociostasis, and Hormesis in the Brain-Heart Axis.Current issues in molecular biology · 2026Review
- Mixed evidence for stress effects on cortisol-testosterone coupling in Syrian refugee and Jordanian non-refugee adolescents.Psychoneuroendocrinology · 2026Article
- Longitudinal associations between dating app use, sexual racism, and mental health among Black and Latinx gay and bisexual men: The protective roles of general social support and identity-specific community connection.Cultural diversity & ethnic minority psychology · 2026Article
- A network analysis of lifetime stressor exposure, mental health, well-being, and immune cell mobilisation to acute stressors in young adults.Brain, behavior, & immunity - health · 2026Article
16 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Classic theories of stress and health are largely based on assumptions regarding how different psychosocial stressors influence biological processes that, in turn, affect human health and behavior. Although theoretically rich, this work has yielded little consensus and led to numerous conceptual, measurement, and reproducibility issues. Social Safety Theory aims to address these issues by using the primary goal and regulatory logic of the human brain and immune system as the basis for specifying the social-environmental situations to which these systems should respond most strongly to maximize reproductive success and survival. This analysis gave rise to the integrated, multi-level formulation described herein, which transforms thinking about stress biology and provides a biologically based, evolutionary account for how and why experiences of social safety and social threat are strongly related to health, well-being, aging, and longevity. In doing so, the theory advances a testable framework for investigating the biopsychosocial roots of health disparities as well as how health-relevant biopsychosocial processes crystalize over time and how perceptions of the social environment interact with childhood microbial environment, birth cohort, culture, air pollution, genetics, sleep, diet, personality, and self-harm to affect health. The theory also highlights several interventions for reducing social threat 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.