Inflammatory and environmental contributions to social information processing

ABSTRACT

It appears that social information processing is negatively affected by inflammation, but extant research is primarily experimental and comes from laboratory-based manipulations of inflammatory states. We aimed to examine interactions between inflammation, stressful life events, and positive memories of childhood relations with parents in relation to social information processing in 201 adults. We hypothesized that increased inflammation and stressful life events would be associated with greater hostile social information processing, but that positive memories of childhood relations with parents would moderate both relations. Results indicated that high IL-6 levels and stressful life events were significantly associated with direct and hostile social information processing. Positive memories of childhood relations with parents attenuated the link between stressful life events and social information processing. Findings suggest that both immune function and environmental stressors are related to social information processing and that positive memories of childhood relations exert some buffering effect.

KEYWORDS:

• Inflammation
• social cognition
• attachment
• stress
• adversity
• IL-6
• hostile

Disclosure statement

The authors declare no conflicts of interest or financial disclosures.

Data availability statement

Data are available from the corresponding author via email ([email protected]).

Additional information

Funding

Funding for biological specimen analyses was provided by the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs to the Psychobiological Research Consortium of Sam Houston State University;Sam Houston State University;