Chemical communication and social cognition: Principles and clinical applications

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Bettina M. Pause
• Subject Area: Biological Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience ; Personality Psychology, Clinical and Medical Psychology, Methodology
• Term: from 2018 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 415213055

The chemical profile of humans delivers various information about permanent and transient physiological and psychological conditions. Here, it is proposed that pronounced social skills ease chemical social perception, hence aiding social interaction. The project is the first approach to show a direct connection between social integration and social chemosensory competencies. This connection is considered to have clinical relevance, and should help to explain socially deficient behavior and experience in individuals suffering from schizophrenia or schizotypy.Two studies will be conducted. The first study will examine healthy individuals with either a large or a small social network (as indicated by the "social network index", SNI). It is expected that participants with a high SNI as compared to participants with a low SNI use social chemosignals as a source of social information more effectively. Dependent variables will include indicators of both attention-related and pre-attentive social perception. Furthermore, performance in chemical social perception will be differentially compared to performance in visual social perception. An auxiliary hypothesis serves to investigate whether individuals with pronounced social skills show an improved perceptual performance for common (non-social) odors as well. Focusing schizophrenia and schizotypy, the second study will demonstrate the clinical relevance of chemical social communication’s impact on social behavior.It is expected that the applied for project will form the basis for substantially reorganizing the individual findings on chemical communication in humans published so far, and for a new theoretical (evolutionary theories) framework of this topic.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants