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Peer victimization predicts heightened inflammatory reactivity to social stress in cognitively vulnerable adolescents.

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND:During adolescence, peer victimization is a potent type of social stressor that can confer enduring risk for poor mental and physical health. Given recent research implicating inflammation in promoting a variety of serious mental and physical health problems, this study examined the role that peer victimization and cognitive vulnerability (i.e. negative cognitive styles and hopelessness) play in shaping adolescents' pro-inflammatory cytokine responses to an acute social stressor. METHODS:Adolescent girls at risk for psychopathology (n = 157; Mage = 14.73 years; SD = 1.38) were exposed to a laboratory-based social stressor before and after which we assessed salivary levels of three key pro-inflammatory cytokines - interleukin-6 (IL-6), interleukin-1? (IL-1?), and tumor necrosis factor-? (TNF-?). RESULTS:As hypothesized, adolescents with greater peer victimization exposure exhibited greater increases in IL-6 and IL1-? in response to the laboratory-based social stressor. Moreover, for all three cytokines individually, as well as for a combined latent factor of inflammation, peer victimization predicted enhanced inflammatory responding most strongly for adolescents with high levels of hopelessness. CONCLUSIONS:The findings reveal a biological pathway by which peer victimization may interact with cognitive vulnerability to influence health in adolescence.

SUBMITTER: Giletta M

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5775048 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Peer victimization predicts heightened inflammatory reactivity to social stress in cognitively vulnerable adolescents.

Giletta Matteo M Slavich George M GM Rudolph Karen D KD Hastings Paul D PD Nock Matthew K MK Prinstein Mitchell J MJ

Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines 20170911 2

<h4>Background</h4>During adolescence, peer victimization is a potent type of social stressor that can confer enduring risk for poor mental and physical health. Given recent research implicating inflammation in promoting a variety of serious mental and physical health problems, this study examined the role that peer victimization and cognitive vulnerability (i.e. negative cognitive styles and hopelessness) play in shaping adolescents' pro-inflammatory cytokine responses to an acute social stress ...[more]

PMID: 28892126

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Project description:Peer victimization (or bullying) is a known risk factor for depression, especially among youth. However, the mechanisms connecting victimization experience to depression symptoms remains unknown. As depression is known to be associated with neural blunting to monetary rewards, aberrant responsiveness to social rewards may be a key deficit connecting socially stressful experiences with later depression. We, therefore, sought to determine whether adolescents' experiences with social stress would be related to their current response to social rewards over less socially relevant monetary rewards. Neural responses to monetary and social rewards were measured using event-related potentials (ERPs) to peer acceptance and rejection feedback (Island Getaway task) and to monetary reward and loss feedback (Doors task) in a sample of 56 late adolescents/emerging young adults followed longitudinally since preschool. In the Island Getaway task, participants voted whether to "keep" or "kick out" each co-player, providing an index of prosocial behavior, and then received feedback about how each player voted for the participant. Analyses tested whether early and recent peer victimization was related to response to rewards (peer acceptance or monetary gains), residualized for response to losses (peer rejection or monetary losses) using the reward positivity (RewP) component. Findings indicated that both experiencing greater early and greater recent peer victimization were significantly associated with participants casting fewer votes to keep other adolescents ("Keep" votes) and that greater early peer victimization was associated with reduced neural response to peer acceptance. Early and recent peer victimization were significantly more associated with neural response to social than monetary rewards. Together, these findings suggest that socially injurious experiences such as peer victimization, especially those occurring early in childhood, relate to two distinct but important findings: that early victimization is associated with later reduced response to peer acceptance, and is associated with later tendency to reject peers. Findings also suggest that there is evidence of specificity to reward processing of different types; thus, future research should expand studies of reward processing beyond monetary rewards to account for the possibility that individual differences may be related to other, more relevant, reward types.

Dataset Information

Peer victimization predicts heightened inflammatory reactivity to social stress in cognitively vulnerable adolescents.

Publications

Peer victimization predicts heightened inflammatory reactivity to social stress in cognitively vulnerable adolescents.

Similar Datasets

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