Post-Grant Reports

Title

The Role of Endogenous Opiates and Trait Affiliation in Social Bonding

Document Type

Report

Publication Date

10-7-2019

Disciplines

Biological Psychology | Cognition and Perception | Cognitive Neuroscience | Personality and Social Contexts | Psychology

Abstract

Affiliation, or the tendency to engage in affiliative social bonding, seems crucial to the function of any close friendship or romantic relationship. Trait affiliation (the degree to which individuals differ in their characteristic levels of affiliation), however, has infrequently been investigated in terms of its association with such relationships. In previous work, my colleagues and I have demonstrated how trait affiliation can be theoretically understood and operationalized as a combination of other, commonly measured personality traits, namely the Compassion aspect of Agreeableness and the Enthusiasm aspect of Extraversion. As these traits have well-documented connections with neurochemistry, we strove to find what neurochemical considerations are relevant for trait affiliation. With this current project, we investigated the biological basis of trait affiliation by manipulating endogenous opioids and measuring how the effect of this manipulation on those with varied levels of trait affiliation differed accordingly.

Comments

This research was conducted as part of a Linfield College Faculty Development Grant in 2018-2019, funded by the Office of Academic Affairs.

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