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EASY-TO-UNDERSTAND SUMMARY: SOCIAL CONNECTIONS & INTERACTIONS
IN THE AFTERMATH OF TRAUMA
Why would trauma impact someone's ability to make social connections?
Why trauma imapcts social connections
Making social connections with others involves noticing, thinking about, and interpreting both our own and other people’s behaviour. As you might imagine, how well we’re able to do these things can have a dramatic impact on how we interact with others. For example, if we don’t understand that someone is looking at the floor because they feel sad, we might think they’re ignoring us, so we avoid interacting with them. If, on the other hand, we realize that their head is hanging because they feel sad, we might be more likely to approach them to offer comfort, creating a social connection.
Research (and perhaps common sense) tells us that our childhood experiences can have a dramatic impact on our social abilities. This is also very true for individuals who’ve experienced trauma. If, for example, we were often mistreated by others as a child, we might expect to be mistreated again, so we try to avoid other people or act defensively. Similarly, if our feelings weren’t valued as children, and if parents didn’t help us learn about our emotions, we become adults who struggle with our emotions and other people’s emotions. Of course, this can affect our relationships as well. These are just a couple examples of how trauma can impact social connections, but the following studies explore other ways childhood trauma may affect our ability to connect socially.
Ability to read body language
How do adult trauma survivors differ in their ability to read body language and identify others' emotions?
Nazarov A, Frewen P, Parlar M, Oremus C, MacQueen G, McKinnon M, Lanius R. (2014). Theory of mind performance in women with posttraumatic stress disorder related to childhood abuse. Acta Psychiatr Scand, 129: 193–201.
As a PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) research team, we understand why having a history of chronic childhood trauma (e.g., abuse and neglect) might impact a person’s interest in interacting with others, but we were also interested in whether any changes in ability to interact socially might occur as well. In this study we used “Theory of Mind” activities to explore differences between adult trauma survivors and those who are trauma-free in their ability to interpret non-verbal social cues (i.e., body language).
Theory of Mind is a term used to describe how people can try to “see through another person’s eyes” to better understand the other person’s emotions, intentions and behaviour. For example, in our study, we showed participants short video clips of people interacting, and based only on body language, they were asked to identify the relationships between the people in the videos (e.g., Which adult is the child’s parent?). Another task required our participants to view photos of people’s eyes and identify which emotion they expressed (e.g., anger, happiness).
Our study found that that childhood trauma survivors responded differently on some of these Theory of Mind tasks, particularly for tasks that involved the interpretation of family interactions. Interestingly, this did not seem to be directly related to the parenting they received as children. People in the trauma group also showed slower (but equally accurate) interpretation of positive and negative emotions conveyed only through the eyes. We believe this slower time might be related to emotional overwhelm or distraction rather than a truly slower identification speed. Dissociative symptoms (e.g., feeling disconnected from the self) were strongly associated with some of these effects as well.
Overall, these results help us begin understanding how chronic childhood trauma seems to have a unique impact on a person’s ability to connect socially with the people around them.
How does childhood trauma & differences in parental care impact one's ability to be empathetic as an adult?
Parlar M, Frewen P, Nazarov A, Oremus C, MacQueen G, Lanius R, & McKinnon MC. (2014). Alterations in empathic responding among women with posttraumatic stress disorder associated with childhood trauma. Brain and Behavior; 4(3): 381–389.
The aim of this study was to investigate how PTSD resulting from chronic childhood trauma might impact one’s ability to be empathetic. We were also interested in whether there might be a relationship between how well our participants bonded with their parent(s)/caregiver(s) as children, and how empathetic they might be as adults. Empathy can be described as being aware of, and sensitive to, another person’s feelings and experiences, and it’s an important factor in effective social interaction.
This was investigated by asking participants to complete questionnaires regarding different aspects of their empathic ability (e.g., rating their own ability to imagine how another person might feel, or whether they have tender feelings for those less fortunate), and the level of parental care and protection they received as a child (e.g., rating levels of parental affection, controlling behaviour, etc.).
Results suggested certain differences in adult empathy related to childhood trauma. These differences included a reduced ability to take the perspective of another person, and reduced feelings of care and concern for others when learning of their emotional experiences, but increased personal distress in response to learning about another person’s negative experiences. Previous research has linked personal distress (e.g., anxiety, discomfort) to a number of social challenges, so this may help explain some of the social difficulties experienced by people with PTSD.
Interestingly, in our study, the parental care people received as children was more closely linked to their adult perspective-taking abilities than either the severity of their childhood trauma, or the severity of their adult PTSD symptoms. In particular, the care of the father seemed to play a key role in the development of this ability. Overall, this study helps us better understand the impact of childhood trauma on adult empathic abilities, and it emphasizes the need for more focus on the role of fathers in studies on the development of empathy and social abilities.
Trauma & parental care on empathy
How do the brains of people with PTSD respond to eye contact, compared to people without PTSD?
Steuwe C, Daniels JK, Frewen PA, Densmore M, Pannasch S, Beblo T, Reiss J, and Lanius RA. (2014). Effect of direct eye contact in PTSD related to interpersonal trauma: an fMRI study of activation of an innate alarm system. SCAN (2014) 9, 88-97, doi:10.1093/scan/nss105.
Our team understands that, for many people struggling with PTSD related to childhood abuse, interacting with other people can be very scary – to be seen by others may have been dangerous in the past, as it could get you hurt. People’s self-esteem is also impacted by childhood abuse – they often feel bad about themselves, and some worry other people may be able to see their “badness”. It makes sense, then, that people who have experienced childhood abuse might struggle to make eye contact with others. Unfortunately, eye contact is an important part of any social interaction, as it helps us connect with others, and figure out what the other person might be feeling and what their intentions might be.
For this study, we wondered how childhood abuse might change the way the brain reacts to eye contact. For this study, we enrolled women with PTSD, and women without any mental health concerns (our “control” group), and we had them complete a certain task within an fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) brain scanner. This allowed us see how their brains were working during the task.
The specific task was to view a series of computer-generated, 3D, moving characters who appeared on a screen in front of them. These characters were all men, and they either turned their head to make direct eye contact with the participant, or they looked off to the side (as if looking somewhere else). The characters displayed either happy, angry or neutral facial expressions.
With direct eye contact, regardless of the emotion displayed by the character, people in our control group showed increased activity in certain brain areas involved in higher-level brain processing (e.g., reasoning, planning). This increase likely reflected the participants evaluating the situation and the character’s emotions, beliefs, attitude, etc. In a real-life situation, this evaluation would help them respond appropriately.
In comparison, individuals with PTSD did not show increased activity in these same brain areas. Instead, their activity increased in other, lower brain areas involved in our internal alarm system (i.e., a brain system that helps us recognize danger). Brain activity in these areas might trigger someone to hide, fight or flee in response to their “gut” feeling of danger. One such brain area showing increased activation in our PTSD group was the PAG (or periaqueductal grey) – see our research summaries section on this important brain area for more information.
Overall, this study helps us understand the impact of PTSD on brain activity related to one aspect of social interaction – eye gaze. Future work in this area will need to study what these findings mean for the intergenerational transmission of trauma (i.e., the passing down of trauma from one generation to the next).
Eye contact
How does childhood trauma impact the ability to understand the emotions expressed in someone's voice?
Nazarov A, Frewen P, Oremus C, Schellenberg EG, McKinnon MC, Lanius R. (2015). Comprehension of affective prosody in women with posttraumatic stress disorder related to childhood abuse. Acta Psychiatr Scand, 131: 342–349.
This study continues our exploration of how chronic childhood abuse might impact a person’s ability to interact socially as an adult. For this project we were particularly interested in the impact of trauma on people’s ability to understand the emotions expressed in someone’s voice (i.e., “affective prosody”). Since the ability to interpret affective prosody develops throughout childhood and adolescence (i.e., the time when our research participants experienced abuse), we anticipated that their abilities in this area might have been impacted.
To investigate this, we asked two groups of female participants - those diagnosed with PTSD, and those with no mental health diagnosis - to complete two tasks. The first was to listen to a series of short audio clips of a woman speaking in Hebrew (a language none of our participants understood). These speech clips conveyed one of four emotions through cues in her voice (e.g., tone, pace, pitch, etc.). The emotions conveyed were happiness, sadness, fear, or anger, and participants were asked to quickly decide which emotion they heard in the woman’s voice, despite not understanding the language.
In a second task, participants listened to two different Hebrew sentences, and they were asked to quickly decide whether the emotion conveyed in the two sentences was the same or different. Again, this could only be done by picking up the emotion in the speaker’s voice.
Results showed that, for the first task, women diagnosed with PTSD were slower to identify happiness, sadness, and fear, but they were not slower to identify anger. This may point to the importance of being able to quickly identify anger as a child in an abusive home – it may have helped our participants predict danger and try to stay safe. Interestingly, within the PTSD group, as trauma severity increased, the speed at which they identified any emotions became slower.
Similarly, for the second task, women with more severe trauma histories, and women who reported more dissociative symptoms (e.g., feeling disconnected from one’s body or surroundings) were less accurate in determining whether the two audio clips conveyed the same or different emotion. These findings suggest that greater trauma leads to greater difficulty identifying emotions.
Overall, it seems that chronic childhood trauma is associated with some long-term changes in the ability to “read” emotion in another person’s voice, which is a big part of non-verbal communication and social interaction. These results help us understand how chronic childhood abuse might impact interpersonal skills. Of particular interest, these results also help us understand how an adult’s childhood trauma history might impact their own parenting skills. For example, if a parent struggles to understand their child’s emotions, it would be quite difficult to act in a sensitive, supportive way. This may contribute to the transmission of trauma between generations.
Emotions in voice
How does childhood trauma affect how people handle morally complicated social situations?
Nazarov A, Walaszczyk V, Frewen P, Oremus C, Lanius R, McKinnon MC (2016). Moral reasoning in women with post-traumatic stress disorder related to childhood abuse. European Journal of Psychotraumatology. 2016 Nov 8;7:31028. Doi: 10.3402/ejpt.v7.31028. PMID: 27837580
This study continues our investigation into the impact of chronic childhood abuse on social skills in adulthood. Knowing how important social support is in the PTSD recovery process, any impairment in social skills would be important for us to understand. In this study, we were particularly interested in how moral reasoning (i.e., moral decision-making) might be affected. Understanding that moral reasoning skills develop throughout childhood and adolescence through practice, witnessing parent examples, and with maturity, we anticipated that experiencing chronic childhood trauma might contribute to changes in moral reasoning as an adult.
To investigate this, we compared the performance of two groups – one composed of women diagnosed with PTSD (from chronic childhood trauma), and the other composed of women with no mental health diagnoses. All of our participants were presented with a series of complicated moral situations or dilemmas with no clear “right” or “wrong” answers - a simplified example might be, “Would you sacrifice the safety of one person to save many?” For each scenario, participants were asked whether the action suggested would be moral (e.g., Is it morally okay to sacrifice one person for the benefit of many?), and why or why not, and then whether they would be willing to perform the action themselves, and why or why not.
Results showed that women in our PTSD group were less likely to approve acting “for the greater good” when the action required them to physically harm someone else. These women reported that the high levels of guilt and shame that would have resulted from the action would have been too much to bear. Further, within the PTSD group, women already experiencing higher levels of guilt and shame in their daily lives (a common symptom of childhood trauma) were more likely to report that the idea of further guilt and shame would have prevented them from taking such actions.
Secondly, we found that women with PTSD were less likely to morally approve of, or perform, an action that ignored their own personal well-being for the benefit of others (i.e., altruism). Empathy and the ability to take on the perspective of others are abilities necessary for altruism, and our previous research shows that these abilities are impacted by chronic childhood abuse. We suggest that the constant states of stress, anxiety and fear that these women experienced as children (which often continues into adulthood) required them to focus on themselves in order to survive. This would interfere with the ability to act altruistically. This study helps us further understand the impact of chronic childhood trauma on social functioning, which could help guide more effective treatment.
Browse other easy-to-understand
research summaries
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