Real-time individual benefit from social interactions before and during the lockdown: the crucial role of personality, neurobiology and genes

Abstract

Social integration is a major resilience factor for staying healthy. However, the COVID-19-pandemic led to unprecedented restrictions in social life. The consequences of these social lockdowns on momentary well-being are yet not fully understood. We investigated the affective benefit from social interactions in a longitudinal birth cohort. We used two real-time, real-life ecological momentary assessments once before and once during the initial lockdown of the pandemic (N = 70 participants; n~6800 observations) capturing the protective role of social interactions on well-being. Moreover, we used a multimethod approach to analyze ecological assessment data with individual risk and resilience factors, which are promising moderators in the relationship of social behavior, stress reactivity, and affective states (i.e., amygdala volume, neuroticism, polygenic risk for schizophrenia). Social contacts were linked to higher positive affect both during normal times and during the COVID-19-pandemic (beta coefficient = 0.1035), highlighting the beneficial role of social embedding. Interestingly, this relationship was differentially moderated by individual risk and resilience factors. In detail, participants with a larger left amygdala volume (beta coefficient = −0.0793) and higher neuroticism (beta coefficient = −0.0958) exhibited an affective benefit from more social interactions prior to the pandemic. This pattern changed during the pandemic with participants with smaller amygdala volumes and lower neurotic traits showing an affective gain during the pandemic. Moreover, participants with low genetic risk for schizophrenia showed an affective benefit (beta coefficient = −0.0528) from social interactions irrespective of the time point. Our results highlight the protective role of social integration on momentary well-being. Thereby, we offer new insights into how this relationship is differently affected by a person’s neurobiology, personality, and genes under adverse circumstances.

The importance of high quality real-life social interactions during the COVID-19 pandemic

“…Just recently, the relationship between social interactions and momentary well-being has addressed using ecological momentary assessment (EMA) 17 – 20 . Findings from these studies consistently indicate that physically being in the company strongly predicts higher levels of momentary well-being and positive mood 17 – 19 . However, little is known about how specific characteristics of social interactions (i.e., the social interaction partner, the self-perceived quality of the social interaction) are related to momentary well-being.…”

“…Indeed, the amygdala has been recognized as a key region of the social brain 31 , with its particular involvement in social adaption and its high susceptibility to socioenvironmental influences 32 . Recently, it has been demonstrated that brain volume in the limbic circuit, which was previously linked to social affective benefit and social stress processing 31 , modulates the real-time affective benefit of being in company 19 , suggesting a possible involvement of neural markers on moment-level variables.…”

How do people feel while walking in the city? Using walking-triggered e-diaries to investigate the association of social interaction and environmental greenness during everyday life walking

“…This is not in line with findings from Bernstein et al (2018), who used a study design with 6 semi-random prompts per day over three days upon which participants indicated social interaction and the pleasantness of that interaction, showing more happiness in situations with social interactions. Another study by Monninger et al (2022) linked social interactions to higher positive affect, but instead of asking the participants "live" in the situations, they indicated the number and quality of social contacts in the last 2 h prior to a prompt. It follows that the three approaches produce different findings, which leads to questions about the eligibility of the different assessment methods and the comparison of findings.…”

“…In addition, affective states represent wellbeing in different situations, as they are more sensitive to the respective influences and external factors in the specific situation (Brose et al, 2013). Underlining this, walking in both urban-and natural environments has been shown to be associated with higher positive affect and energy (Kinnafick and Thøgersen-Ntoumani, 2014), and social interactions are associated with higher positive affect, more happiness, and less tiredness in daily life (Bernstein et al, 2018;Monninger et al, 2022).…”

“…In this regard, affective states are often used to describe how individuals feel in different social- and physical environmental contexts, as they have been shown to be an indicator of individuals’ wellbeing ( Tost et al, 2019 ; Bourke et al, 2021 ; Monninger et al, 2022 ). In addition, affective states represent wellbeing in different situations, as they are more sensitive to the respective influences and external factors in the specific situation ( Brose et al, 2013 ).…”