Social support is associated with positive health outcomes, and research has demonstrated that the presence, or even just a reminder, of a social-support figure can reduce psychological and physiological responses to threats. However, the mechanisms underlying this effect are unclear, and no previous work has examined the impact of social support on basic fear learning processes, which have implications for threat responding. This study examined whether social support inhibits the formation of fear associations. After conducting a fear-conditioning procedure in which social-support stimuli were paired with conditional stimuli during fear acquisition, we found that the threat of shock was not associated with conditional stimuli paired with images of social-support figures, but was associated with stimuli paired with images of strangers. These findings indicate that social support prevents the formation of fear associations, reducing the amount of learned fears people acquire as they navigate the world, consequently reducing threat-related stress.

Although the presence of social-support figures (e.g., close friends and family members) is known to increase feelings of safety, reduce threat responses, and improve health, the route by which these effects occur is not well understood. One explanation is that social-support figures are members of a powerful category of safety signals—prepared safety stimuli. Here, we review research demonstrating that social-support figures act as prepared safety stimuli and explore the impact that these unique safety stimuli have on fear-learning processes. According to recent work, the presence of social-support figures both reduces fear acquisition and enhances fear extinction, ultimately decreasing perceptions of threat. These findings shed light on the route by which social support buffers against threat and illustrate the unique properties of prepared safety stimuli and how they might be used to improve mental and physical health outcomes.

Although fear-conditioning research has demonstrated that certain survival-threatening stimuli, namely prepared fear stimuli, are readily associated with fearful events, little research has explored whether a parallel category exists for safety stimuli. We examined whether social-support figures, who have typically benefited survival, can serve as prepared safety stimuli, a category that has not been explored previously. Across three experiments, we uncovered three key findings. First, social-support figures were less readily associated with fear than were strangers or neutral stimuli (in a retardation-of-acquisition test). Second, social-support stimuli inhibited conditional fear responses to other cues (in a summation test), and this inhibition continued even after the support stimulus was removed. Finally, these effects were not simply due to familiarity or reward because both familiar and rewarding stimuli were readily associated with fear, whereas social-support stimuli were not. These findings suggest that social-support figures are one category of prepared safety stimuli that may have long-lasting effects on fear-learning processes.

Although research has made significant advances in identifying treatments for fear-related disorders, these treatments are not entirely effective and relief from symptoms is often short-lived (Craske, 1999; McNally, 2007; Rachman, 1989). The research on which these treatments are based has largely focused on investigating processes by which fears are learned with an eye toward enhancing fear extinction. Less work, however, has examined safety stimuli (which denote the absence of threat) and whether specific types of safety stimuli have beneficial effects on fear extinction. One prevailing view is that safety signals are detrimental to the fear extinction process (Craske et al., 2008; Hermans, Craske, Mineka, & Lovibond, 2006), even though only a handful of studies using simplistic safety signals have tested these effects in humans (Lovibond, Davis, & O'Flaherty, 2000). Although there has been some discussion of the potential benefits of safety behaviors during exposure therapy (Rachman, Radomsky, & Shafran, 2008), protocols for the treatment of fear-related disorders generally warn against the presence of safety signals during therapy, including social-support figures even though their safety role had not been formally tested. However, recent findings suggest that this thinking may be misguided (Hornstein, Fanselow, & Eisenberger, 2016). Here, we examined whether one unique type of safety signal-social-support stimuli-can actually enhance fear extinction and whether these effects remain over time. The most common and effective method of treatment for maladaptive fears is exposure therapy, a procedure based on fear extinction processes. Yet fear extinction procedures in general, and exposure therapies in particular, are not always successful; fear reduction is often only temporary (

Objectives There is a strong association between supportive ties and health. However most research has focused on the health benefits that come from the support one receives while largely ignoring the support giver and how giving may contribute to good health. Moreover, few studies have examined the neural mechanisms associated with support giving or how giving support compares to receiving support. Method The current study assessed the relationships: 1) between self-reported receiving and giving social support and vulnerability for negative psychological outcomes and 2) between receiving and giving social support and neural activity to socially rewarding and stressful tasks. Thirty-six participants (M age=22.36, SD=3.78, 44% female) completed three tasks in the fMRI scanner: (1) a stress task (mental arithmetic under evaluative threat), (2) an affiliative task (viewing images of close others), and (3) a prosocial task. Results Both self-reported receiving and giving social support were associated with reduced vulnerability for negative psychological outcomes. However, across the three neuroimaging tasks, giving, but not receiving support was related to reduced stress-related activity (dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, (r=−.27), left (r=−.28) and right anterior insula (r=−.33), and left (r=−.32) and right amygdala (r=−.32) to a stress task, greater reward-related activity (left (r=.42) and right ventral striatum (VS; r=.41) to an affiliative task, and greater caregiving-related activity (left VS (r=.31), right VS (r=.31), and septal area (r=.39) to a prosocial task. Conclusion These results contribute to an emerging literature suggesting that support giving is an overlooked contributor to how social support can benefit health.