Seminar: Leveraging the UK Household Longitudinal Study to Explore Social Baseline Theory with Blair Gross and David McAleavey

Abstract: The purpose of this project is to bring together collaborators interested in utilizing the UK's Household Longitudinal Study (Understanding Society) data assets to generate and test theories and extensions of Social Baseline Theory (SBT). SBT is grounded in a resource economy, where organisms maximize resources and minimize costs. SBT states that the natural unit of analysis includes individuals situated within their social environments, which may represent both resources and costs (uncertainty). Further, while all humans are situated socially, there are individual fluctuations in our social baselines, such that social support may be a more reliable indicator for some and represent more cost or uncertainty for others. The Understanding Society biomarker data assets, which include health (e.g., stress hormones, inflammatory markers), genetic, epigenetic, and proteomic data on thousands of participants, holds an untapped potential to test SBT on a large scale with rich biological, social, and economic data.  In this seminar we’ll share with you the work that is emerging from this nascent collaboration.

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Name: Blair Gross

Affiliations: Randolph College | Associate Professor of Psychology | Chair, Department of Psychological Science Head, Division of Social and Behavioral Sciences

Brief Bio: Blair is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Randolph College. Her research interests broadly include embodied cognition, with a special interest in how social baseline theory applies to cognitive, behavioral, and visual processes.

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Name: David McAleavey

Affiliations: Middlesbrough Council, UK (Public Health South Tees) and Public Practice, UK.

Brief Bio: David is a social biologist and public health spatial planning practitioner. His ongoing research focuses on understanding the social and biological pathways through which inequalities are amplified and embedded in the built environment.

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