Social support reduces stress hormone levels in wild chimpanzees across stressful events and everyday affiliations

Abstract

Stress is a major cause of poor health and mortality in humans and other social mammals. Close social bonds buffer stress, however much of the underlying physiological mechanism remains unknown. Here, we test two key hypotheses: bond partner effects occur only during stress (social buffering) or generally throughout daily life (main effects). We assess urinary glucocorticoids (uGC) in wild chimpanzees, with or without their bond partners, after a natural stressor, resting or everyday affiliation. Chimpanzees in the presence of, or interacting with, bond partners rather than others have lowered uGC levels across all three contexts. These results support the main effects hypothesis and indicate that hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical (HPA) axis regulation is mediated by daily engagement with bond partners both within and out of stressful contexts. Regular social support with bond partners could lead to better health through daily ‘micro-management' of the HPA axis, a finding with potential medical implications for humans.

Self-efficacy and alexithymia as moderators between perceived social support and stress among parents of children with learning disabilities

“…Results at the individual level of analysis indicate that perceived social support has a positive effect on stress. The results of the study support other studies that found a positive relationship between social support and stress (WITTIG et al 2016;GIBBONS 2010;STOK et al 2006). Likewise, in a study by STREET and colleagues (1999), individuals with large social networks are more likely to cope effectively with stressors.…”

“…Social support is known to buffer disease-related distress and improve quality of life (ELLIOT 2008). Individuals who perceive high levels of social support feel less stress (WITTIG et al 2016;GIB-BONS 2010;STOK et al 2006). In a study, stress in parents has been shown to vary with social support (DUNN et al 2001).…”

Call type signals caller goal: a new take on ultimate and proximate influences in vocal production

“…The formation and maintenance of social bonds has numerous links to fitness (e.g. offspring survival, longevity, siring of offspring, ability to respond to stressful events, rank acquisition) (Silk, Alberts, & Altmann, 2003;Schülke et al, 2010;Silk et al, 2010;Silk, Seyfarth, & Cheney, 2016;Wittig et al, 2016). Natural selection, then, might be expected to favour specific signals for coordinating distinct behaviours in the social domain as well.…”

Circadian Rhythms of Urinary Cortisol Levels Vary Between Individuals in Wild Male Chimpanzees: A Reaction Norm Approach

“…Chimpanzees are an interesting species to study repeatability of urinary cortisol excretion and urinary cortisol reaction norms as infants are nursed by their mothers for around 4 years and carried and cared for even longer (Boesch and BoeschAchermann, 2000), rendering maternal priming of the HPA axis possible. Factors affecting glucocorticoid levels, such as circadian rhythms (Muller and Lipson, 2003), dominance rank (e.g., Muller and Wrangham, 2004;Anestis, 2005;Anestis et al, 2006;Muehlenbein and Watts, 2010), social dynamics (e.g., Fraser et al, 2008;Emery Thompson et al, 2010;Wittig et al, 2016), and maternal care (Murray et al, 2016) are well-studied in this species. This allows for an informed decision on potential control factors in statistical models and a sound biological interpretation of different patterns.…”