Modernizing Relationship Therapy through Social Thermoregulation Theory: Evidence, Hypotheses, and Explorations

HYPOTHESIS AND THEORY published: 01 May 2017 doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00635 Modernizing Relationship Therapy through Social Thermoregulation Theory: Evidence, Hypotheses, and Explorations Hans IJzerman 1*, Emma C. E. Heine 2 , Saskia K. Nagel 3 and Tila M. Pronk 4 1 Department of Psychology, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA, 2 Department of Clinical Psychology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 3 Department of Philosophy, University of Twente, Enschede, Netherlands, 4 Department of Social and Organisational Psychology, Tilburg University, Tilburg, Netherlands Edited by: Andrew Kemp, Swansea University, UK Reviewed by: Justine Megan Gatt, University of New South Wales, Australia Wataru Sato, Kyoto University, Japan *Correspondence: Hans IJzerman Specialty section: This article was submitted to Emotion Science, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology Received: 11 July 2016 Accepted: 10 April 2017 Published: 01 May 2017 Citation: IJzerman H, Heine ECE, Nagel SK and Pronk TM (2017) Modernizing Relationship Therapy through Social Thermoregulation Theory: Evidence, Hypotheses, and Explorations. Front. Psychol. 8:635. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00635 In the present article the authors propose to modernize relationship therapy by integrating novel sensor and actuator technologies that can help optimize people’s thermoregulation, especially as they pertain to social contexts. Specifically, they propose to integrate Social Thermoregulation Theory (IJzerman et al., 2015a; IJzerman and Hogerzeil, 2017) into Emotionally Focused Therapy by first doing exploratory research during couples’ therapy, followed by Randomized Clinical Trials (RCTs). The authors thus suggest crafting a Social Thermoregulation Therapy (STT) as enhancement to existing relationship therapies. The authors outline what is known and not known in terms of social thermoregulatory mechanisms, what kind of data collection and analyses are necessary to better understand social thermoregulatory mechanisms to craft interventions, and stress the need to conduct RCTs prior to implementation. They further warn against too hastily applying these theoretical perspectives. The article concludes by outlining why STT is the way forward in improving relationship functioning. Keywords: social thermoregulation, attachment, relationship therapy, emotion regulation, wearables, sensor technology, actuators INTRODUCTION One of the strongest predictors of one’s physical health, mental health, and happiness is the quality of one’s close relationships. Having high quality relationships predicts factors that we understand as life chances, including a longer life, greater creativity, and higher self-esteem (House et al., 1988; Argyle, 1992; Holt-Lunstad et al., 2010). However, to date, our understanding of why high quality social relationships lead to a more fulfilled and healthy life is relatively limited. The present paper serves to provide further direction to understanding some prominent underlying mechanisms through social thermoregulation theory. In addition, we will outline how near-future interventions can be crafted by doing research with novel technologies during relationship therapy. Thus far, the evidence linking relationships and life chances focused at “higher order” levels: marital couples that regulate each other’s emotions successfully have fewer marital problems, have better health, and are more satisfied with their relationship than couples who do not successfully co-regulate (Gottman and Levenson, 1992). But our position is broader: first, disturbances in health closely relate to dysregulated body temperature (Benzinger, 1969). Second, temperature regulation has been a major driving force for sociality in homeothermic (= warm-blooded) animals Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org 1 May 2017 | Volume 8 | Article 635 IJzerman et al. Social Thermoregulation Therapy that) contributes to emotional and physiological stability for both partners in a close relationship” (p. 203), which thus incorporates lower level (autonomic) regulation with more conscious forms. Butler and Randall’s (2013) perspective supplements the early views imparted by Gottman and Levenson (1992) with a type of social emotion regulation that is less “in the head” and more distributed and dynamic, relying on an “affective attunement” between close partners (e.g., romantic partners or caregiver and infant). The general aim of such affective attunement is to achieve an allostatic balance in the relationship through distributing risks of environmental threats, leading to an offloading of energetic demands created by such threats (e.g., Beckes and Coan, 2011; Fitzsimons et al., 2015). The field of behavioral ecology has illustrated this idea of load sharing with conspecifics. Ostriches, for example, increase the rate of eating when they are in the presence of other ostriches, which can look out for predators (Bertram, 1980; Krebs and Davies, 1993). Homeothermic animals, like rodents, huddle up to other animals when cold to offload the energetic demands of warming up (Ebensperger, 2001). Thus, beyond distributing threat, one of the constant and very demanding threats to allostatic balance is the near-constant change in environmental temperature. For most animals their ilk help downregulate the environmental challenge that fluctuations of temperature pose on them. (Ebensperger, 2001). For humans, the aggregate evidence is similarly in favor of an evolved reliance of social warmth on physical warmth (IJzerman et al., 2015a). Finally, the literature is in favor of the idea of co-regulation, a lower level dynamic that can help down-regulate emotional states socially (Butler and Randall, 2013). The present article brings together these three concepts and asks the question if thermoregulation is crucial for physiological co-regulation in close relationships, and, consequently, proceeds to ask whether therapists can help improve physiological coregulation in couples. Altogether, we propose to rely on novel technologies that can aid in developing Social Thermoregulation Therapy (STT) to help optimize people’s social lives. In this article, we first provide what we see as one of the main functions of relationships: relationships help distribute the burdens of the environment and help to co-regulate. Then, we provide the available evidence on social thermoregulation theory, integrate co-regulation with social thermoregulation theory, after which we discuss potential interventions to improve co-thermoregulation. Most prominently, we point to modern sensor and actuator technology as tools to help develop and then implement STT. We clarify what we know and don’t know, followed by some of the risks we perceive in moving forward with such novel therapies. We anticipate that this approach will dramatically reduce the gap between researchers (theory) and therapists (application). Our position paper is much needed, (...truncated)