Homeostasis as Affective-Motivational State: A Threat and Defense Perspective

Abstract

There is much to like about the target article by Sedikides as, among other things the author illuminates the important psychological construct of personal identity. He suggests that the construction and protection of a desired identity is an essential component of the human body’s harm protection system which serves to promote psychological homeostasis and supports the immune system of the body. Importantly, Sedikides sees psychological and biological immunity as two components in a coordinated and adaptive system that helps humans to adapt best to their environment. In doing so, he does not just use the immune system as a metaphor but emphasizes the actual influence of psychological states on biological processes. In addition, his article presents meaningful content with regard to the processes of identity construction, maintenance and protection. Although the field of social psychology is rich in research on defensive processes, Sedikides illustrates the creation and adaptation of narratives and thereby advances our understanding of how such narratives may increase homeostasis and thus support immunity. The idea that a psychological immune system is coordinated with the biological immune system to protect humans from harm is compelling. However, questions remain pertaining to how this coordination process works? For the author the idea of psychological homeostasis is fundamental and can be described as a regulatory process by which individuals strive to feel good and therefore try to modulate their affect within an acceptable range. Similar to the regulation of body temperature or blood sugar, the human body’s self-regulation can experience ups and downs and varies on a continuum from accurate to biased self-views. However, without these temporal biases or deviations, which manifest in self-protection and self-enhancement processes, the body would not be able to regain psychological homeostasis which is important for each individual to function well. Indeed, without homeostasis biological adaptation would be impeded and biological fitness would be reduced. Therefore, the body not only needs various well-functioning biological systems but also a psychological maintenance system. Identity processes which are connected with the human ability for conscious reflection, abstract representation and linguistic communication are an essential part of this psychological maintenance system. Humans build on their capacity for differentiation, continuity, and agency (which they share to a certain extent with animals) as well as on specific human capabilities for meta-beliefs (i.e., self-views as well as global and specific narratives about individual characteristic, attitudes, abilities, and beliefs). Especially conscious reflection, abstraction, and projection help people to protect themselves from harm, to adapt to their environment and to effectively control the environment. However, personal identity not only comes with benefits but also with costs in the sense of emotional pain caused by the disruption of selfviews brought on by self-doubt and insecurity. Nevertheless, by adapting thoughts and beliefs about the self and those around them, people can create an interpretive space that allows them to construe their experiences and thereby regulate their emotions within a certain range. Sedikides proposes that people try to regulate affect while maximizing environmental control—however, to regain homeostasis he suggests that people sometimes have to compromise environmental control to regain well-being. As researchers coming from the field that examines how people defend against existential threat, we have focused on how the process of maintaining psychological homeostasis resembles a general process from threat to defense. First, we consider how discrepant self-views are similar and different to the definition of existential threat, suggesting that a systematic differentiation between situational conflict and existential concerns would be useful. Then, we turn to the process of psychological homeostasis (i.e., emotion regulation) and compare it with the affective-motivational process of anxiety reduction and approach reactivation. Following on from this, we reflect on identity protection strategies based on narratives, suggesting that a distinction between direct resolution and palliative defenses is important to better understand how adaptive processes help to maintain psychological immunity. In the final section, we discuss the interplay between personal and social identity mechanisms, suggesting that the concept of psychological immunity should be extended to a social immune system.