Stephanie Lynn Brown, PhD, MA, BS

In graduate school, I developed a theory of close relationships that re-casted the functional significance of love. The theory proposed that the ‘social bond’ (love) helps us to suppress our self-interest motivation (when necessary) so that we can reliably help others. This prediction was derived from a new perspective of evolutionary biology that I applied to the case of altruism (helping others). Given the inherent risks of helping others such as exploitation and the loss of resources (or even one’s life), social bonds were expected to be difficult to achievement and require, first, evidence of fitness interdependence with potential partners/friends. Fitness interdependence refers to a circumstance that connects the reproductive goals between people, and evidence could include anything from cues for genetic similarity (e.g., family members) to cues for common fate (e.g., sharing working environments) or the potential for a common offspring (i.e., sexual behavior). I referred to these ideas as selective investment theory (Brown & Brown, 2006) and I use this theory to generate predictions for solving problems in health and medicine, economics, over-population, international conflict, and environmental protection. 

I have several colleagues and students that I work with to test these predictions using a combination of experimental techniques, and observational, longitudinal designs in naturally occurring settings to refine theoretical explanations. So far, our studies have shown that helping behavior promotes longevity through neural pathways that are involved in the process of bond formation, and that these pathways appear to modulate the cardiovascular and immune system in ways that are beneficial. Our studies have also demonstrated that these same pathways are implicated in alleviating depression and may be important for understanding the environmental influences of neurotoxins and non-ionizing radiation on neurodegeneration. We are currently exploring the implications of this “altruistic” neural system for creating a more caring, creative, and empathic citizenry by considering whether egalitarian (interdependent) dynamics in the classroom might help our younger children to become more resilient to the harmful effects of social isolation, sleep deprivation, and sense of inadequacy that often accompanies formal educational experiences and leads to problems with emotion-regulation in adulthood. In future research, we hope to delineate the ways that individual differences in attachment security can be accommodated by novel theoretically informed approaches to improving mental health during childhood and adolescence. 

Completed Research Support

• Postdoctoral Fellowship, NIMH Training Grant, University of Michigan, 1999-2001
• Psychosocial Factors in Mental Health and Illness, University of Michigan
  Paul Beeson, Kenneth Langa (PI), 2003
• Physician Faculty Scholars in Aging Research Program
  Long-term Outcomes of Caring for a Disabled Spouse
  The major goal of this project was to better identify and understand the long-term health and economic outcomes, both positive and negative, of providing informal care to a disabled spouse. Award period: 3 years. 
  Role: Co-investigator
• K01 MH065423-01                 
  Brown (PI), 08/01/03-01/31/07 
  NIH/NIMH
  Social support and depression among dialysis patients
  NIMH Research Scientist Career Development Award, research proposed to clarify the role of social support in promoting health and well-being in a dialysis setting.
  Role: Principal Investigator
• Rackham Interdisciplinary Workshop
  Heaphy (PI), 2004
  CAPCA Center, Institute for Social Research
  Positive Organizational Studies Program, Business School
  Office of the Vice President of Research
  University of Michigan
• Mapping the Physiological Pathways Underlying Positive Social Connections
  Role: Faculty Supervisor
  Center for Advancing Research and Solutions for Society   
  Brown/Crocker (co-Project Directors),   2007-2008
  University of Michigan
• Developing Alternatives to Self-Interest (DASI)
  This project was intended to begin interdisciplinary discussion of the paradigmatic issues surrounding the social and behavioral sciences. Our approach considered human motivation as involving caregiving and other-focused goals in addition to self-interested ones. This discussion group resulted in a contract with Oxford University Press awarded to S. Brown, R. Brown, and L. Penner to create an edited volume on this topic.
• 0719629
  Brown (PI), 9/01/07-08/31/08(NCTX 8/31/09)
  NSF/BCS
  Physiological Effects of Helping Behavior 
  This funding supports research on the physiological effects of helping behavior.
  Role: Principal Investigator
• BCS 0820609
  Brown (PI), 2/01/09 – 01/31/12
  NSF
  Physiological Effects of Helping Others
  This funding supports testing of a neuroaffective model of the stress-regulating properties of helping behavior.
  Role:  Principal Investigator
• Notre Dame
  Brown (PI), 12/1/10 – 11/30/2011
  John Templeton Foundation
  Neural Circuitry Underlying Altruistic Behavior
  This funding supports using neuroimaging to test a neuroaffective model of the stress-regulating properties of helping behavior, with comparisons between helping close ones and parental responses to infant cues.
  Role: Principal Investigator
• ARRA Supplement to AG30177
  D. Smith (PI), 09/01/2009-04/30/2011
  NIH
  Measuring Health-Related Quality of Life in Older Adults with Chronic Illness
  This funding supports adding hormone measurements (cortisol, progesterone, and DHEA) to a longitudinal EMA study of older adults with chronic pain. We are examining diurnal patterns in these hormones that are indicative of more or less adaptive ways of regulating stress (e.g., a "challenge" vs "threat" pattern). Role: co-Investigator
• R0I HL085420-03
  Heisler (PI), 8/01/06-04/30/10
  NIH/NHLBI
  Mobilizing Peer Support for Effective Congestive Heart Failure
  This study aims to evaluate the cost-effectiveness and impact of a peer support intervention designed for congestive hear failure (CHF) patients on health-related quality of life, survival, rates of hospital readmission, self-management behaviors, use of medications, perceived social support, depressive symptoms, and satisfaction with care. 
  Role: Co-Investigator
• VA Health Services R&D
  Valenstein (PI), 4/01/09 – 3/13/13
  Ann Arbor, MI
  Improving Depression Management through Peer Support
  The primary goal is to evaluate the effectiveness of a (randomly assigned) peer support intervention for relieving depressive symptoms among VA patients who have been hospitalized for depression.
  Role: Co-Investigator
• Center for Survey Research
  Brown/Levy (Co-PIs), 2010-2011
  Survey Research Center
  Stony Brook University
  The Health Benefits of Helping Ingroup and Outgroup Members
  A survey study was conducted with a random sample of older adults on long island to track helping behavior. Results indicated greater helping of outgroup members was associated with worsened health symptoms.
• R56 AG049795-01A1
  Brown (PI), 8/15/16-7/31/18
  NIH
  Psychological Effects of Helping Behavior in Older Adults
  This project examines the role of active help and social relationships on neural, hormonal, and immunological responses of women 65 years of age or older.
• R01 AG057853
  Brown (PI), 08/01/2018-08/01/2023
  NIH
  Active Help, Immune Function, and Health Outcomes in Alzheimer’s Caregivers
  This longitudinal study tracks caregiving behaviors, relationship quality, quality of life, and immune biomarkers in a sample of AD caregivers.

Pending Research Support

• Jeffrey Rothschild Foundation
  Brown (PI), 2/01/2025 – 12/01/2030
  Creative Work Space
  This project seeks to bring together scholars and performance artists for the purpose of generating projects that will help to bring about cultivating more caring and empathic societal change for the purpose of nurturing competence and value systems that support creating sustainable personal, social, and professional environments that prioritize caring for one another, with the goal to protect and cultivate ecosystems that support the longevity of our social and physical environment.  

• Evolutionary theory of “active help”. Evolutionary theorists and developmental psychologists had traditionally presumed that the social bonds and attachments we form with others evolved to help individuals to obtain resources, rewards, support, and protection from others—facilitating survival and reproduction. I challenged this idea as part of my comprehensive exam in graduate school to argue the opposite: Social bonds suppress self-interest when necessary, so that individuals are motivated to help others. Thus, I advanced the hypothesis that the function of close relationships is to motivate altruistic behavior. If this is true, then the logic of evolutionary biology can also be used to stipulate conditions that MUST be met prior to the formation of a bond, or high-quality close relationship, especially conditions that are resistant to exploitation. I articulated these conditions formally as part of selective investment theory.
• Brown, S. L., Brown, R. M., & Penner, L. (Eds). (2012). Beyond Self-interest: Perspectives from Evolutionary Biology, Neuroscience, and the Social Sciences. Oxford University Press.
• Brown RM, Brown SL. Towards Uniting the Behavioral Sciences with a Gene-Centered Approach to Altruism. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 30, 19-20.
• Brown SL, Brown RM. (2006). Selective Investment Theory: Recasting the Functional Significance of Close Relationships. Psychological Inquiry (Target Article), 17:1-29.
• Brown RM, Brown SL. (2006). SIT Stands and Delivers: A Reply to the Commentaries. Psychological Inquiry, 17, 60-74.
• Clarifying contradictory effects in the “social support” literature and demonstrating mortality benefits of “helping behavior”. Perhaps one of the most robust demonstrations of social influences on physical health is the finding that social isolation increases mortality risk. And the magnitude of this association is comparable to the effect sizes of smoking, drinking, and exercise. These mortality effects launched the “social support” literature in which researchers assumed that the health benefits of social relationships was due to their supportive quality. A seminal paper, published by James House and his colleages in Science in 1988, encouraged researchers to subject their “social support” hypothesis to empirical verification. Follow-up tests of the (receiving) social support hypothesis produced contradictory findings, especially so with respect to physical health. As of 2001, Professor House wrote an article entitled: “Social isolation kills, but how and why?” Because selective investment theory identified a new evolutionary function of close relationships, I used this functional account to hypothesize that the health benefits of social contact may be due to the provision of social support to others, as opposed to the receipt of social support from others. I found evidence for this hypothesis in a prospective study of mortality which has been replicated by myself and other independent investigations.
• Poulin, MJ, Brown, SL, Dillard, A, and Smith, DM. (2013) Giving to others and the association between stress and mortality. American Journal of Public Health, 103, 1649-55.
• Heisler, M., Choi, H., Piette, J., Rosland, A., Langa, K. & Brown, SL. (2013). Adults with Cardiovascular Disease who Help Others: A Prospective Study of Health Outcomes. Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 36, 199–211.
• Brown SL, House JS, Brown RM, Smith DM.  Coping with Spousal Loss: Potential Buffering Effects of Self-Reported Helping Behavior. (2008). Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34, 849-861.
• Brown SL, Nesse R, Vinokur AD, Smith DM. (2003). Providing Support may be More Beneficial than Receiving It: Results from a Prospective Study of Mortality. Psychological Science, 14, 320-327.
• Discovering mortality benefits of active help among caregivers. Our demonstrations that there were health benefits associated with helping others required reconciliation with the caregiving literature which had previously equated the activity of informal caregiving as one of the most stressful times in a person’s life. Phrases such as “caregiver burden” and “caregiver burnout” have become part of the vernacular and there are institutional initiatives aimed at relieving caregivers of their caregiving duties. These initiatives cite one study that demonstrated that mortality risk is associated with being a strained caregiver, and hundreds of studies that link being a caregiver to negative psychological outcomes. Amidst these studies were also rare examples of beneficial psychological outcomes among caregivers, yet this work received and continues to receive very limited attention. Together this work made me assume that there must be a limit to the beneficial health effects associated with helping behavior. However, when we examined this possibility in a prospective study of mortality risk, we discovered that by defining “caregiving” as hours spent helping another person, mortality risk decreased among caregivers relative to non-caregivers. A closer examination of the caregiving literature revealed that caregiving was rarely operationalized as helping behavior. Instead, it was operationalized as being married to someone who was dying or disabled. After publishing our paper showing decreased mortality with increased hours spent caregiving, independent replications of this finding have been demonstrated across 4 subsequent population-based studies and the single (and original landmark paper by Shulz and Beach) used to establish the morality risk of caregiving has been called into question by Roth, Fredman, & Haley.     
• Brown, SL., Smith, D. M., Schulz, R. Kabeto, M., Ubel, P., Yee, J., Kim, C. & Langa, K. (2009). Caregiving and Decreased Mortality in a National Sample of Older Adults, Psychological Science, 20, 488-494.
• Brown, R. M., & Brown, SL. (2014). Informal Caregiving: A Reappraisal of Effects on Caregivers. Social Issues and Policy Review, 8, 74-102.
• Poulin, M., Brown, SL., Ubel, P., Smith, DM., Jankovik, A., & Langa, K. (2010). Does a helping hand mean a heavy heart? Helping behavior and well-being among spouse caregivers. Psychology and Aging, 25, 108-117
• Schulz R, Herbert R, Dew A, Brown, SL, Scheier M, et al. (2007). Perceived Patient Suffering and Caregiver Compassion: New Opportunities for Research, Practice, and Policy. The Gerontologist, 47, 4-13.
• Mechanisms connecting helping behavior to improved health and wellbeing. The repeated demonstration that there are physical health benefits associated with helping others, including longevity, begs for a better understanding of the physiological mechanisms that connect helping behavior to better physical health. Otherwise, it may be impossible to use what we know about helping behavior to leverage the value of social connections generally, and helping behavior, in particular, to improving physical health and wellbeing. Moreover, a better understanding of the healthy physiological processes that respond to social behavior promises to help us gain a better understanding of declining health and disease. I chose to address this problem by integrating my evolutionary work on altruism—selective investment theory—with animal models of parenting motivation because these models bridge helping behavior (even among non-parents) and physiology. One of our first explorations of the hormonal correlates of helping behavior revealed that progesterone is part of the neuroendocrine basis of love, social closeness, and the willingness to sacrifice.
• Brown, SL, & Brown, RM. (2015). Connecting prosocial behavior to improved physical health: Implications of the neurobiology of parenting. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 55, 1-17.
• Ho, S, Konrath, S, Brown, SL, & Swain, J. (2014). Empathy and stress related neural responses in maternal decision-making. Frontiers in Neuroscience, published: 12 June 2014 doi: 10.3389/fnins.2014.00152
• Munro, M., Brown, SL, Pournajafi-Nazarloo, H., Carter, C. S., Lopez, W., & Seng, J. (2013). In search of an adult attachment stress provocation to measure effect on the oxytocin system: A pilot validation study. Journal of the American Psychiatric Nurses Association, 19, 180-191. 
• Brown, SL, Fredrickson, B. L., Wirth, M., Poulin, M., Meirer, E., Heaphy, E., Cohen, M., & Schultheiss, O., (2009). Closeness increases salivary progesterone in humans. Hormones and Behavior, 56, 108-111.
• Testing the new “caregiving system” model to refine studies of the mechanisms underlying health effects of “providing social support”, “volunteering”, and “caregiving.”  Our “caregiving system” model was the guiding framework for predicting, and for interpreting patterns of results that show contextual effects (moderators and mediators) of the links between helping behavior and health and well-being. Together these studies support our model, demonstrating that links between helping behavior and physical health involve stress-regulation, other-focused motivation, and a close relationship between the helper and recipient. Our meta-analysis of volunteering is the first to estimate the effect size of the magnitude of the volunteering—mortality relationship, and our “caregiving system” model is used to explain why and under which conditions we might expect volunteering to be associated with health benefits.
• Poulin, MJ, Brown, SL, Dillard, A, and Smith, DM. (2013) Giving to others and the association between stress and mortality. American Journal of Public Health, 103, 1649-55.
• Okun, MA., Yeung, EW., & Brown, SL. (2013). Volunteering by Older Adults and Risk of Mortality: A Meta-Analysis. Health Psychology, 28, 564-577
• Konrath, S., Fuhrel-Forbis, A., Lou, A., & Brown, SL. (2012). Motives for volunteering are associated with mortality risk in older adults. Health Psychology, 31, 87-96
• Poulin, M., Brown, SL., Ubel, P., Smith, DM., Jankovik, A., & Langa, K. (2010). Does a helping hand mean a heavy heart? Helping behavior and well-being among spouse caregivers. Psychology and Aging, 25, 108-117.
• Applying new “caregiving system” model to Peace and Social Problems
• Brown, S. L., Brown, R. M., Cavallino, D., Monterroza, V. C., Qianjing, Li., & Huang, Y. (2024). Creating Shared Goals and Experiences as a Pathway to Peace, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 47:e5. doi: 10.1017/S0140525X23002467
• Brown, S. L., Brown, R. M., & Cavallino, D. (in press). Does Altruism Exist? Implications of Selective Investment Theory for Solving Social Problems. Current Directions in Psychological Science

• 2005 - Positive Psychology Summer Institute Fellowship
• 2004 - James Madison University Visiting Scholar Award
• 1992-1998 - Graduate Assistant Regents Scholarship, Arizona State University
• 1992 - Honorable Mention, Graduate Fellowship, National Science Foundation

I have been a member of APS, HBES, and SPSP