Social Baseline Theory: The Role of Social Proximity in Emotion and Economy of Action

Social proximity and interaction attenuate cardiovascular arousal, facilitate the development of nonanxious temperament, inhibit the release of stress hormones, reduce threat-related neural activation, and generally promote health and longevity. Conversely, social subordination, rejection and isolation are powerful sources of stress and compromised health. Drawing on the biological principle of economy of action, perception ⁄ action links, and the brain’s propensity to act as a Bayesian predictor, Social Baseline Theory (SBT) proposes that the primary ecology to which human beings are adapted is one that is rich with other humans. Moreover, SBT suggests that the presence of other people helps individuals to conserve important and often metabolically costly somatic and neural resources through the social regulation of emotion. To survive, grow, and reproduce, all organisms must take in more energy than they expend, a principle of biological systems called economy of action 1 (cf. Proffitt, 2006). We think this principle underlies the many benefits humans derive from the social networks they inhabit—that adaptations promoting social interaction and proximity have arisen partly as a function of the energy benefits social relationships confer to individuals. This perspective underlies a framework for understanding how humans utilize social resources that we call Social Baseline Theory (SBT). Below, we describe the sense in which SBT refers to social proximity as a ‘baseline’ condition, ground our perspective in the principle of economy of action, and review evidence that social relationships serve the energy saving functions that we claim. Afterward, we explore similarities and differences between SBT and Attachment Theory, and highlight the importance of emotion as a source of information about current and predicted resources. Although we review a large and diverse literature in support of SBT, we emphasize that some of the specific ideas discussed below are speculative and remain to be tested.