Prospection and natural selection
- Authors: Suddendorf, Thomas , Bulley, Adam , Miloyan, Beyon
- Date: 2018
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences Vol. 24, no. (2018), p. 26-31
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- Description: Prospection refers to thinking about the future, a capacity that has become the subject of increasing research in recent years. Here we first distinguish basic prospection, such as associative learning, from more complex prospection commonly observed in humans, such as episodic foresight, the ability to imagine diverse future situations and organize current actions accordingly. We review recent studies on complex prospection in various contexts, such as decision-making, planning, deliberate practice, information gathering, and social coordination. Prospection appears to play many important roles in human survival and reproduction. Foreseeing threats and opportunities before they arise, for instance, drives attempts at avoiding future harm and obtaining future benefits, and recognizing the future utility of a solution turns it into an innovation, motivating refinement and dissemination. Although we do not know about the original contexts in which complex prospection evolved, it is increasingly clear through research on the emergence of these capacities in childhood and on related disorders in various clinical conditions, that limitations in prospection can have profound functional consequences.
Anxiety disorders and all-cause mortality : Systematic review and meta-analysis
- Authors: Miloyan, Beyon , Bulley, Adam , Bandeen-Roche, Karen , Eaton, William , Goncalves-Bradley, Daniela. C.
- Date: 2016
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology Vol. 51, no. 11 (2016), p. 1467-1475
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- Description: PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to perform a systematic review and meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies that examined the relationship between anxiety disorders, or clinically significant anxiety symptoms, at baseline and all-cause mortality at follow-up relative to control participants without clinically significant anxiety. METHODS: PubMed, EMBASE, PsycInfo, and CINAHL were searched through July 2015, along with manual searches of published reviews and forward and backward snowball searches of included studies. Studies were excluded if anxiety was not defined with a standardized instrument, or if participants were followed-up for 1 year or less. The initial search yielded 7901 articles after the removal of duplicates, of which 328 underwent full-text screening. RESULTS: Forty-two estimates from 36 articles were included in the meta-analysis with a total sample of 127,552 participants and over 11,573 deaths. The overall hazard ratio (HR) estimate of mortality in clinically anxious participants relative to controls was 1.09 (95 % CI 1.01-1.16); however, this was reduced after adjusting for publication bias (1.03; 95 % CI 0.95-1.13). There was no evidence of increased mortality risk among anxious participants derived from community samples (0.99; 95 % CI 0.96-1.02) and in studies that adjusted for a diagnosis of depression (1.01; 95 % CI 0.96-1.06). CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest that positive associations in the literature are attributable to studies in smaller samples, comorbid depression (or other psychiatric conditions) among participants, and possible confounding in medical patient samples followed-up for short durations.
Cuing both positive and negative episodic foresight reduces delay discounting but does not affect risk-taking
- Authors: Bulley, Adam , Miloyan, Beyon , Pepper, Gillian , Gullo, Matthew , Henry, Julie , Suddendorf, Thomas
- Date: 2019
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology Vol. 72, no. 8 (2019), p. 1998-2017
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- Description: Humans frequently create mental models of the future, allowing outcomes to be inferred in advance of their occurrence. Recent evidence suggests that imagining positive future events reduces delay discounting (the devaluation of reward with time until its receipt), while imagining negative future events may increase it. Here, using a sample of 297 participants, we experimentally assess the effects of cued episodic simulation of positive and negative future scenarios on decision-making in the context of both delay discounting (monetary choice questionnaire) and risk-taking (balloon-analogue risk task). Participants discounted the future less when cued to imagine positive and negative future scenarios than they did when cued to engage in control neutral imagery. There were no effects of experimental condition on risk-taking. Thus, although these results replicate previous findings suggesting episodic future simulation can reduce delay discounting, they indicate that this effect is not dependent on the valence of the thoughts, and does not generalise to all other forms of impulsive decision-making. We discuss various interpretations of these results, and suggest avenues for further research on the role of prospection in decision-making.
An evolutionary perspective on the co-occurrence of social anxiety disorder and alcohol use disorder
- Authors: Bulley, Adam , Miloyan, Beyon , Brilot, Ben , Gullo, Matthew , Suddendorf, Thomas
- Date: 2016
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of Affective Disorders Vol. 196, no. (2016), p. 62-70
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- Description: Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) commonly co-occurs with, and often precedes, Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD). In this paper, we address the relationship between SAD and AUD by considering how natural selection left socially anxious individuals vulnerable to alcohol use, and by addressing the underlying mechanisms. We review research suggesting that social anxiety has evolved for the regulation of behaviors involved in reducing the likelihood or consequences of threats to social status. The management of potential threats to social standing is important considering that these threats can result in reduced cooperation or ostracism - and therefore to reduced access to coalitional partners, resources or mates. Alcohol exerts effects upon evolutionarily conserved emotion circuits, and can down-regulate or block anxiety (or may be expected to do so). As such, the ingestion of alcohol can artificially signal the absence or successful management of social threats. In turn, alcohol use may be reinforced in socially anxious people because of this reduction in subjective malaise, and because it facilitates social behaviors - particularly in individuals for whom the persistent avoidance of social situations poses its own threat (i.e., difficulty finding mates). Although the frequent co-occurrence of SAD and AUD is associated with poorer treatment outcomes than either condition alone, a richer understanding of the biological and psychosocial drives underlying susceptibility to alcohol use among socially anxious individuals may improve the efficacy of therapeutic interventions aimed at preventing or treating this comorbidity. © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Anxiety: Here and beyond
- Authors: Miloyan, Beyon , Bulley, Adam , Suddendorf, Thomas
- Date: 2018
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Emotion Review Vol. , no. (2018), p.
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- Description: The future harbours the potential for myriad threats to the fitness of organisms, and many species prepare accordingly based on indicators of hazards. Here, we distinguish between defensive responses on the basis of sensed cues and those based on autocues generated by mental simulations of the future in humans. Whereas sensed threat cues usually induce specific responses with reference to particular features of the environment or generalized responses to protect against diffuse threats, autocues generated by mental simulations of the future enable strategic preparation for hazards that may not require an immediate response. The overlap of these mechanisms makes defence effective and versatile, yet can manifest as contemporary anxiety disorders in humans.
The association of Social Anxiety Disorder, Alcohol Use Disorder and reproduction: Results from four nationally representative samples of adults in the USA
- Authors: Miloyan, Beyon , Bulley, Adam , Brilot, Ben , Suddendorf, Thomas
- Date: 2017
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: PLoS ONE Vol. 12, no. 11 (2017), p.
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- Description: Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) and Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD) are highly prevalent and frequently co-occur. The results of population studies suggest that SAD tends to precede AUD, and the results of laboratory studies suggest that alcohol use facilitates social behaviors in socially anxious individuals. Therefore, we posited that, in a modern context, a tendency to consume alcohol may be positively selected for among socially anxious individuals by its effect on the likelihood of finding a partner and reproducing. We tested the hypothesis that a higher proportion of individuals with a lifetime diagnosis of SAD and AUD reproduce (i.e., have at least one child) relative to individuals with SAD absent AUD in an individual participant meta-analysis based on over 65,000 adults derived from four nationally representative cross-sectional samples. We then cross-validated these findings against the results of a 10-year follow up of one of these surveys. Lifetime history of SAD was not associated with reproduction whereas lifetime history of AUD was positively associated with reproduction. There was no statistically detectable difference in the proportion of individuals with a lifetime history of SAD with or without AUD who reproduced. There was considerable heterogeneity in all of the analyses involving SAD, suggesting that there are likely to be other pertinent variables relating to SAD and reproduction that should be delineated.
Episodic foresight and anxiety : Proximate and ultimate perspectives
- Authors: Miloyan, Beyon , Bulley, Adam , Suddendorf, Thomas
- Date: 2016
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: British Journal of Clinical Psychology Vol. 55, no. 1 (2016), p. 4-22
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- Description: Objective In this paper, we examine the relationship between episodic foresight and anxiety from an evolutionary perspective, proposing that together they confer an advantage for modifying present moment decision-making and behaviour in the light of potential future threats to fitness. Methods We review the body of literature on the role of episodic foresight in anxiety, from both proximate and ultimate perspectives. Results We propose that anxious feelings associated with episodic simulation of possible threat-related future events serve to imbue these simulations with motivational currency. Episodic and semantic details of a future threat may be insufficient for motivating its avoidance, but anxiety associated with a simulation can provoke adaptive threat management. As such, we detail how anxiety triggered by a self-generated, threat-related future simulation prepares the individual to manage that threat (in terms of its likelihood and/or consequences) over greater temporal distances than observed in other animals. We then outline how anxiety subtypes may represent specific mechanisms for predicting and managing particular classes of fitness threats. Conclusions This approach offers an inroad for understanding the nature of characteristic future thinking patterns in anxiety disorders and serves to illustrate the adaptive function of the mechanism from which clinical anxiety deviates. © 2015 The British Psychological Society.
Social Phobia symptoms across the adult lifespan
- Authors: Miloyan, Beyon , Bulley, Adam , Pachana, Nancy , Byrne, Gerard
- Date: 2014
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of Affective Disorders Vol. 168, no. (2014), p. 86-90
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- Description: Background This study investigated symptom patterns that might distinguish between individuals with and without a diagnosis of Social Phobia (SP) across the adult lifespan. Methods A sample of 5411 self-reported social worriers was derived from Wave 1 (2001 and 2002) of the U.S. National Epidemiological Survey of Alcohol and Related Conditions (NESARC). Participants were stratified into four age groups (18-29 years, 30-44 years, 45-64 years, 65-96 years), and further divided into two diagnostic groups (self-reported social worriers with and without a SP diagnosis). Results Binary logistic regression analyses revealed that a core set of symptoms was associated with SP across the adult lifespan. There were also successive reductions in the number of symptoms associated with SP in each age group, such that older adults endorsed numerically fewer SP symptoms. Limitations Though our sample size is smaller than ideal for the nature of our analyses, the NESARC represents one of the largest existing clinical datasets we know of. Conclusions Despite age-related reductions in symptom frequency, a core set of SP symptoms consistently distinguished between diagnostic groups, irrespective of age.