Profile
Project Title:
Can identification with all humanity promote social connectedness and improve well-being?
Project Summary:
Social connections are a vital aspect of human life. Relationships with other people, such as friendships, family, and colleagues, are important sources of belonging and support. Research has found that multiple social connections contribute to mental and physical health and well-being. Unfortunately, many people feel dissatisfied with the quality and quantity of their social connections, contributing to an epidemic of loneliness that affects up to 47% of UK adults. Drawing from the literature on social identity, health and well-being, I propose that identifying with humanity may be a novel way to promote social connection, and improve well-being, amongst lonely individuals. This PhD will focus on developing ways to activate human identity, by looking at a video of Earth from space, thereby simulating an overview effect experience, and investigate whether identification with humanity can benefit individuals. The first stage of this PhD is to examine previous methods of researching human identification and to investigate the potential reasons why it is thus far difficult to reliably induce human identity through a meta-analysis. The second stage is an experimental study of activating the overview effect using a VR or a laptop screen, and investigating its psychological (awe, pro-environmentalism, human identification) and neurophysiological (inter-brain synchronization) mechanisms. The culmination of this PhD will be to investigate the psychological and neurophysiological mechanisms through which human identification can promote an aspect of well-being (self-esteem) in lonely people and examining how this compares to traditional social connection pathways
Supervisors: