PROFILE

Profile of Shelley E. Taylor

he first experiment the feedback was completely discrepant Shelley Taylor conducted as an to reality, study participants rejected it undergraduate at Connecticut out of hand. However, if the feedback was T — College in New London, Con- close say that they were most attracted necticut, turned her on to the thrill that to the second or third person on their comes from collecting and analyzing data. list—they accepted the information and “I was transported,” says the University reevaluated their assessment. of California Los Angeles distinguished After completing her doctorate in 1972, professor of . That re- Taylor moved to search experience led her to graduate (Cambridge, MA) to be part of the de- school at Yale University’s (New Haven, partment of social relations, which was an CT) psychology department and eventu- interdisciplinary collaboration between ally to an illustrious career in research psychology, sociology, and anthropology. psychology, highlighted by her role as one “I liked the broad scope of the depart- of the founders of , health ment and the interdisciplinary focus,” psychology, and social neuroscience. she says. Elected to the Institute of Medicine in Her first student at Harvard was an 2003 and the National Academy of Sci- undergraduate named Susan Fiske, with ences in 2009 and awarded the American whom Taylor has collaborated since that Psychological Association’s Lifetime time. “I’ve had lasting relationships with ” Achievement Award in 2010, Taylor is a number of students, says Taylor. “ well known for her work showing that With Susan, we became close friends, people tend to hold positive illusions of and she always brought something to the research other than what I brought, which themselves and that it can be healthy to ” do so, the mechanisms by which stress af- made collaboration very fruitful. fects health, and the influence that early Shelley E. Taylor. Together, they worked to expand the nascent field of social cognition, which experiences can have on how our bodies examines the ways people think about process stress. other people and the influences on those In her Inaugural Article (1), she reviews in 1964. But at the end of Psychology 101, the instructor invited her and two other thoughts. In fact, in 1984, they coauthored findings from her own laboratory and students to become psychology majors. the Bible of social cognition, Social Cog- those of others to provide an overview of The offer was such a flattering one that nition (3), in which they defined the scope the research linking stress to physical and Taylor decided to take it with the thought and ambition of the field. In 1991, they . “I wanted the PNAS audi- that she would eventually become published a second edition (4), and in ence to see that you can bring biology a clinician. 2007, they completed a sequel titled So- and behavior together to look at a specific That plan changed after a summer as cial Cognition: From Brains to Culture (5). problem,” she says. a volunteer in a Volunteers in Service Much of Taylor’s work at Harvard in- – Hooked on the Thrill of Discovery to America (VISTA) pilot project working volved the issue of salience (6 8): the in a mental hospital. “I was assigned to idea that people believe something is Taylor was born in 1946 in the small vil- a ward of schizophrenic men, mostly more important if it stands out. She and lage of Mt. Kisco, New York. She grew up older and heavily medicated,” recalls her students tested this idea in a series of in nearby Chappaqua, New York, about Taylor. “As a clinical experience, it wasn’t experiments in which they asked study 1 hour north of New York City and near very satisfying. And when I came back, I participants to act out scripted inter- the Connecticut border. Chappaqua was decided I wanted to do research.” actions with other participants. Typically, a wonderful place to grow up as an only After completing her first study on someone in the group was different in child, she says, because her neighborhood women’s roles in society, she was hooked some way—an African-American among was full of children. Her mother taught on research. By the time graduation Caucasians or a Caucasian among Afri- piano, her father taught history, and al- loomed, she had decided to attend grad- can-Americans, for example. The studies though Taylor liked science in school, she uate school to become a research psy- showed that people are more likely to liked to read more and imagined herself chologist. She applied and got accepted think that someone who is more salient is a librarian for much of her childhood. to Yale’s renowned psychology program, controlling the situation, and they are, ’ Her father s experience as a psychiatric where she was attracted to the fledgling therefore, more likely to them, nurse during World War II, which he social attribution work of Dick Nisbett. a finding that, in part, explains why peo- fi spoke of often, led Taylor to take her rst “I was interested in exploring how ple tend to stereotype people who are psychology course in college. people understand the causes of their different from themselves. ’ ” fi — own and others behaviors, says Taylor. He built the rst mental hospital in Eritrea For her dissertation (2), she asked study Moving into literally built it by hand with two friends and Near the end of Taylor’s 7 years at Har- villagers—to treat shell-shocked soldiers. It participants to rank order a list of people was hearing him talk about those experi- in terms of attractiveness. Then, she gave vard, Judy Rodin, who was then on the ences that led me to take a psychology them false feedback about how they re- faculty at Yale, was consulting with course as one of my first courses in college. acted physiologically to pictures of the people they had ranked. The feedback That vague interest in psychology was suggested that they were more attracted This is a Profile of a recently elected member of the Na- the only plan she had when she started at to people lower down on their list than tional Academy of Sciences to accompany the member’s Connecticut College (New London, CT) their rankings indicated. She found that if Inaugural Article on page 8507 in issue 19 of volume 107.

www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1015740107 PNAS | November 23, 2010 | vol. 107 | no. 47 | 20153–20155 Downloaded by guest on September 26, 2021 a West Coast cancer foundation and Indeed, many of the women in Taylor’s says Taylor, “and subsequently, we asked Taylor to write a position paper on breast cancer study claimed to have broadened out from there to look at what psychology had to say about man- mastery over their disease even when it the immune system and proinflamatory aging breast cancer. was clear, to Taylor and others, that their cytokines.” prognosis was grim. Even more fascinat- They found that stress affects how the I told her, “Nothing.” But I wrote the posi- ing, says Taylor, was that they were not body responds to stress (12–15). “We’ve tion paper anyway and decided that it was devastated when the cancer returned. “It been able to show things like people who nuts that psychology didn’t have a foothold was the first time I realized that there are optimistic and feel good about in the medical field. There was so much we are positive illusions,” she says. “This is themselves confront stressful situations could speak to, from adjusting to chronic what spawned the positive illusions work, with lower biological responses to stress,” illness to adhering to treatment regimens. which moved beyond how people react to says Taylor. If you multiply that moder- trauma and asked, ‘What about ated response by years and years and Taylor summarized her ideas about how everyday thought?’” multiple stress events, Taylor believes, social psychology could inform medical The idea that positive illusions—being you’ll get less cumulative damage. That’s practice in an influential paper that helped fi unrealistically optimistic, exaggerating an idea that she credits to neuroscientist jumpstart the eld of health psychology your sense of personal control, or exag- Bruce McEwen, who first suggested that (9). In fact, the president of Harvard at gerating your sense of self—could be people can move from compromised the time, Derek Bok, was so taken with adaptive rather than maladaptive was stress regulation to disease through an ’ Taylor s ideas, he provided her seed counterintuitive at the time, says Taylor. accumulation of smaller stressful events. money for a health psychology course. “I Her first paper laying out the concept and This work connecting stress to biology talked to him about what I wanted to do, showing evidence for positive illusions got Taylor thinking about what environ- and he gave me a check for $10,000,” says was the most cited paper in psychology mental factors affect stress regulation. Her Taylor. “It was great to have that kind for a time (11). Since then, Taylor and her UCLA colleague, Rena Repetti, pointed of confidence.” colleagues have shown that positive illu- out that study after study showed that Despite that support, Taylor was passed sions are associated with both mental and certain childhood characteristics related up for tenure, and therefore, in 1979, she physical health outcomes. to certain outcomes. For example, studies accepted a position at the University of Along with the influences that the showed that children growing up in low California Los Angeles (UCLA). “I was breast cancer study had on Taylor’s pro- socioeconomic status (SES) families had excited to be on such a diverse campus fessional life, it also inspired her personal worse health outcomes than children who where psychology is in such close prox- life, leading her to rethink her decision did not, even when controlling for imity to the medical school,” says Taylor, not to have children. “Interviewing those SES. Still others found that an early family who felt at home in Los Angeles. women about the insights that came from environment marked by abuse, conflict, or When she got there, her UCLA col- their disease, so many said that it makes neglect predicts adverse health outcomes. league Bert Raven had just begun to de- you realize that relationships are the From those findings, Repetti, Taylor, velop a training grant in which he wanted most important thing you have and that and Teresa Seeman wrote a paper, which to include health-related issues. He asked children were the most important thing Taylor affectionately calls the “risky Taylor to take over the grant and start they did with their lives,” recalls Taylor. families” paper (16), that lays out the a program in health psychology. “I wasn’t “I went home and talked with my hus- argument that the early family environ- leaving social cognition behind but using band, and we thought about having ment may be the point of origin for it to discover how it affects how people a child.” a poorly regulated stress response. With react to and are vulnerable to health-re- They subsequently had two children: colleagues who could help Taylor exam- lated disorders,” says Taylor. a daughter who has her PhD in health ine stress regulation in the brain, they Based on her work on breast cancer, policy and works on breast cancer issues were able to show that kids from risky Taylor’s first health psychology study ex- and a son in political science. Having families do not do a good job of regulat- “ amined the role that women’s thoughts children was the best decision of her life, ing stress responses (17). That was quite and beliefs had on how they adjusted to says Taylor. a thrill, seeing the differences in the brain,” says Taylor. having breast cancer. She recorded hours Understanding Pathways of interviews with 78 women. “During the From the start, says Taylor, it was clear The third phase of Taylor’s career began that genes were implicated. She tested that course of those interviews, several things in 1981 when she received a 10-year ca- idea in a paper on the serotonin trans- became clear to me that seemed to pre- reer development award from the Na- porter gene (5-HTTLPR) (18), which has dict whether someone would adjust more tional Institute of Mental Health to learn two predominant alleles: a short form and favorably to breast cancer,” she says. fi biological assessments and methods. The a long form. Research in other labs in- In particular, women who could nd training allowed her to begin examining dicated that people who are homozygous some for their experience and the influences that behavior and cognition for the short allele may be at higher risk those who felt a sense of mastery over the have on physical health, a field now called for depression. However, Taylor’s re- disease or their reaction to the disease were social neuroscience. “It’s one thing to search suggests that the environment may able to restore their sense of self-esteem. say that you believe people do better mitigate some of the genetic risk. In fact, The paper she wrote documenting her under these various conditions, but it’s Taylor and colleagues found that, com- fi ndings (10) is probably her favorite. It another to show how, and to do that, we pared with people with just one or no fl was in uential not just in the area of needed to understand the pathways,” copies of the short allele, people with two breast cancer but as a way to think about says Taylor. copies of the short allele have signifi- stressful events in general. Additionally, it Biological John Libeskind cantly less risk for depression if they come got the ball rolling on many other areas was helpful to her through much of her from a supportive early environment but of research. For one, it was the first time learning, providing feedback and teach- significantly greater risk for depression if that she recorded, in print, a finding that ing her techniques. “It was so exciting to their early family environment was harsh. she would become famous for: people start to be able to look at the impact They found the same pattern when harbor false illusions about themselves. of stress on stress regulatory systems,” they assessed people’s current living

20154 | www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1015740107 Azar Downloaded by guest on September 26, 2021 environment. A stressful environment hormones such as oxytocin, and it pushes tegrating biological and behavioral fac- confers enhanced risk for depression women to tend to vulnerable others and tors,” she says. She explains how she has among those homozygous for the s allele, reach out to friends during stressful times. gone about that in her Inaugural Article but a supportive environment confers less (1), a review that summarizes the work risk for depression. The research suggests That paper came out of the sense that the her laboratory has done to explain the that there is a robust gene–environment finding that social support is protective of links between early life stress and interaction, says Taylor. Therefore, hav- mental and physical health was underrated. adult health. ing two copies of the short allele may not It’s at least as strong as smoking and lipids in “My Inaugural Article seemed like be a risk factor for depression but instead, predicting health outcomes. I was interested the best vehicle for highlighting the dif- may make people more sensitive to their in the hormones that regulate the social ferent facets of our work,” she says, “and system and the hormonal consequences of environment, and therefore, they are our work on early life stress and health social relationships. more at risk for depression in highly outcomes seemed to make a natural- stressful environments but thrive in nur- ’ package.” “ Since that paper, Taylor s laboratory fi turant, supportive environments. What I has worked to support the model with In the article, Taylor uses ndings from love about the outcome of that study is research. They summarize that work in her lab and those of others to show how that you can flip the risk for depression genetics and a harsh childhood without ” a 2010 article in Psychological Science based on the environmental situation, (20), explaining the theory and providing strong social support can cause the she says. “Seeing that in our data dysregulation of several physiological evidence for the role of oxytocin and was thrilling.” systems, including the body’s stress regu- vasopressin in the tend-and-befriend Although the serotonin transporter lation system. As a result, Taylor shows, response. system is the most interesting to Taylor, the body responds less flexibly to stress “The media and a number of re- her lab has examined gene–environment and that may lead to many health-related searchers have regarded oxytocin as interactions with many other genes, in- outcomes, including metabolic disorders a cuddly hormone,” says Taylor. “But it cluding those for dopamine, oxytocin, and ’ and heart disease. the μ-opioid receptor. doesn t map onto psychological states The article also allowed her to highlight that well. It goes up when our most im- the collaborative nature of her work. More Tend-and-Befriend: Building Models portant relationships are threatened as than the actual findings from her research, ’ fi ’ Throughout her career, Taylor has well as when we re socially satis ed. It s Taylor is most proud of the students that enjoyed pulling together the strands of clear that oxytocin is implicated in posi- she has trained over the years who have — her research into broad theories that she tive and negative relationships I think gone on to have stellar careers of their can then test in her lab. One theoretical because it stimulates us to seek social own. She is uncomfortable being singled paper that made a big splash was a 2000 contact, good or bad.” out for recognition, because science is paper in , describing The tend-and-befriend model is an ex- a collaboration. “Even the competition is what Taylor calls the “tend-and-befriend” ample of what Taylor believes is her big- part of the collaboration, because other model (19). The model contends that, gest contribution to psychological science: labs force you to do things you wouldn’t although stress certainly triggers the well- the integration of biological parameters do otherwise,” she says. “Individual sci- accepted fight or flight response, it can with psychological ones. “I hope that one entists matter little; what matters is what also activate a more social response, of my most lasting contributions will be we pass along to the next generation.” particularly in women. This tend-and- that both the behavioral and biological befriend response is underpinned by sciences recognize the importance of in- —Beth Azar, Freelance Science Writer

1. Taylor SE (2010) Mechanisms linking early life stress to 9. Taylor SE (1978) A developing role for social psychol- 15. Creswell JD, et al. (2005) Affirmation of personal val- adult health outcomes. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 107: ogy in medicine and medical practice. Pers Soc Psychol ues buffers neuroendocrine and psychological stress 8507–8512. Bull 4:515–523. responses. Psychol Sci 16:846–851. 2. Taylor SE (1975) On inferring one’s attitudes from 10. Taylor SE (1983) Adjustment to threatening events: 16. Repetti RL, Taylor SE, Seeman TE (2002) Risky families: one’s behavior: Some delimiting conditions. J Pers Soc A theory of cognitive adaptation. Am Psychol 38: Family social environments and the mental and phys- Psychol 31:126–131. 1161–1173. ical health of offspring. Psychol Bull 128:330–366. 3. Fiske ST, Taylor SE (1984) Social Cognition (Random 11. Taylor SE, Brown JD (1988) Illusion and well-being: A 17. Taylor SE, Eisenberger NI, Saxbe D, Lehman BJ, House, New York). social psychological perspective on mental health. Lieberman MD (2006) Neural responses to emotional 4. Fiske ST, Taylor SE (1991) Social Cognition (McGraw- Psychol Bull 103:193–210. stimuli are associated with childhood family stress. Biol Hill, New York), 2nd Ed. 12. Taylor SE, Kemeny ME, Reed GM, Bower JE, Psychiatry 60:296–301. 5. Fiske ST, Taylor SE (2008) Social Cognition: From Brains Gruenewald TL (2000) Psychological resources, positive 18. Taylor SE, et al. (2006) Early family environment, cur- to Culture (McGraw-Hill, New York). illusions, and health. Am Psychol 55:99–109. rent adversity, the serotonin transporter promoter 6. Taylor SE, Fiske ST (1975) Point of view and percep- 13. Taylor SE, Lerner JS, Sherman DK, Sage RM, McDowell NK polymorphism, and depressive symptomatology. Biol tions of causality. J Pers Soc Psychol 32:439–445. (2003) Are self-enhancing cognitions associated with Psychiatry 60:671–676. 7. Taylor SE, Fiske ST, Etcoff N, Ruderman A (1978) healthy or unhealthy biological profiles? J Pers Soc 19. Taylor SE, et al. (2000) Biobehavioral responses to The categorical and contextual bases of person Psychol 85:605–615. stress in females: Tend-and-befriend, not fight-or- memory and stereotyping. J Pers Soc Psychol 36: 14. Reed GM, Kemeny ME, Taylor SE, Visscher BR (1999) flight. Psychol Rev 107:411–429. 778–793. Negative HIV-specific expectancies and AIDS-related 20. Taylor SE, Saphire-Bernstein S, Seeman TE (2010) Are 8. Taylor SE, Crocker J, Fiske ST, Sprinzen M, Winkler J bereavement as predictors of symptom onset in plasma oxytocin in women and plasma vasopressin in (1979) The generalizability of salience effects. J Pers asymptomatic HIV-positive gay men. Health Psychol men biomarkers of distressed pair-bond relationships? Soc Psychol 37:357–368. 18:354–363. Psychol Sci 21:3–7.

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