The relationships among genes, psychological traits, and social behavior

In just over ten years, internet-based technologies revolutionized several aspects of daily human life, including social interactions. Social media sites (SNSs), such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, have dramatically changed the way people keep in touch or make new acquaintances. On the flipside, recent research have highlighted the risk for and inappropriate use of SNSs, which might result in personal discomfort or a mental disorder. For this reason, it is important to understand how these issues develop starting from the diverse contexts and individual features. The main aim of the present Ph.D. project is to identify to which extent the interaction between psychological components, like perceived parental warmth, and genetic susceptibility to the familiar environment can describe the social behavior online and offline. The underlying hypothesis is that sensibility to the familiar context will represent a positive factor, if the person recalls a good perception of parental care, leading to confident psychological mechanisms in adulthood, hence to more optimal neural responses to social stressors in real life, and to the appropriate use of social media. To this aim, three studies have been performed: •Study 1. Analysis of the impact of perceived early social experience on the formation of interactional patterns in adult social interaction in two different countries (Italy and Singapore); •Study 2. Investigation on how the interaction between genetic features of oxytocin receptor gene polymorphisms and perceived early social experience affect the neurophysiological responses to cries; •Study 3. Exploration of the link between adult psychological dimensions related to social behavior and metrics of usage on Instagram platform. The experimental activities have been performed in two different laboratories: as for the Italian samples, questionnaires and genetic information were collected at the Affiliative Behavior and PhysiologyLaboratory in Rovereto; with regards to the Singaporean sample, participants completed the questionnaires, then were tested for genetics, Near InfraRed Spectroscopy (NIRS), Electrocardiogram (ECG) at the Social and Affective Neuroscience set in Nanyang Technological University. One of the purposes of the overall project was the construction of a rich database, which aims to include information about genetic polymorphisms proved to be sensitive to social environment (oxytocin receptor gene rs53576, rs2254298, and serotonin rs25531), recalled parental warmth, main dimensions of adult attachment, neural and physiological responses to social distress, like listening to cries, and behavior on two main social media platforms, such are Facebook and Instagram. This complex design gives the project several strengths, such as the possibility to focus on the contribution of diverse factors within a bio-psycho-i social frame, that is claimed to be the more appropriate by scientific community standard, in order to have a wider and deeper understanding of human behavior. Secondly, results generated from studies based on this database would allow filling the present gap about social media usage and psychological mechanisms, providing a further comparison with offline behavior. Lastly, results might be helpful when implemented in clinical work to understand if and how social media can become a useful mean in clinical work. The temporary fragility of this project is related to the genetic sample size, as a broader sampling would be necessary to have a comparable amount of the different variants and generate more reliable explanations. However, this data collection represents a starting point, as it resents of temporal constraints. Future efforts are necessary to enrich the dataset and to find appropriate methodologies to examine in depth the interaction between all the factors