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Biological determinants of status-seeking behavior

What causes someone to lead or decide, instead, to give up? In this area of SPNIL’s research, we examine the biology that drives people to succeed. In particular, we focus on testosterone’s causal effects on behaviors that lead individuals to be dominant or hold high status within a group. A particular emphasis of this research aims to determine the individual differences and social contextual factors that modulate the impact of a biological factor like testosterone on status-seeking behavior. For example, higher testosterone levels may lead to behaviors that do not garner status for individuals who are prone to feeling threatened within a social hierarchy (e.g., due to trait dominance) or under conditions of hierarchy instability. In the near future, SPNIL will begin to explore immune functioning (e.g., cytokine concentrations) as a possible influence on status-relevant behaviors.

Social disparities in stress and health

Extensive work has delineated the strong and continued existence of a status-based health gradient: Individuals with higher objective and perceived social status have lower incidence of disease, better recovery, and lower mortality compared to individuals with lower status. SPNIL examines the intersectional biological and social determinants of the health gradient in our societal hierarchies. Ongoing work focuses on stress, sex hormones, and inflammation as risk and resilience factors for health outcomes. In NIA-funded research (R21 AG066140-01), we are currently examining these factors in the context of risk for mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s Disease related dementia in older adults. An area of future interest will be to further examine endotoxemia – the transfer of microbes from the gut to the blood stream – as a factor that heightens inflammatory responses and may represent underly an array of physical and mental health outcomes.

Other notable features of SPNIL

SPNIL is diverse in its methodological approach, using both rigorous experimental methods in the laboratory and intensive repeated measure designs in ecological settings. Most work in SPNIL involves ‘wet’ biology (i.e., hormones, inflammation, or other parameters measured in the wet lab), but we also have a strong foundation in psychophysiological methods, focused particularly on autonomic functioning indexed by cardiovascular psychophysiology. Finally, given the focus on sex hormones, inflammation, and health, SPNIL research is also informed by developmental frameworks focused on aging.