Perceived support and resting respiratory sinus arrhythmia among young adult college students

Abstract

Although social support is related to better health, research is mixed regarding how social support relates to physiological systems including the parasympathetic nervous system. The present study assessed whether perceived parental and friend support were related to resting parasympathetic nervous system activity among young adults, and whether associations differed by stress. Young adults (N = 154; M_age = 20.5, SD = 3.0; 73.4% female) reported their perceived support from their parents and friends. Electrocardiogram data were collected while participants watched a 4-minute nature video to estimate resting respiratory sinus arrhythmia, an indicator of parasympathetic nervous system activity. Linear regression models indicated that young adults with higher perceived parental support tended to have higher respiratory sinus arrhythmia as hypothesized, but findings did not support associations for friend support or for stress-buffering models. Results suggested that aspects parenting may relate to long-term health through perceived support, in line with past evidence of the health benefits of family-based interventions.

Keywords

family friendship heart rate variability parasympathetic nervous system parenting social support stress

Introduction

Having social support is consistently related to better health including lower depression and mortality risk (Li et al., 2014; Shor et al., 2013), potentially by shaping physiological systems (Uchino, 2006). One candidate system is the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS), the branch of the autonomic nervous system that supports energy conservation and restorative processes (“rest-and-digest”), because higher PNS activity is consistently related to better health (Jarczok et al., 2022; Porges, 2007). Support may be particularly consequential for the physiology of young adult college students, who are transitioning to independence and face stressors in varied domains (e.g. social, academic; Conley et al., 2014). Stress and coping frameworks posit that social support may buffer the physiological consequences of stress specifically (Cohen and Wills, 1985), whereas positive psychological theories including Self-Determination Theory posit that close relationships and support directly benefit well-being to promote health, regardless of stressful contexts (Deci and Ryan, 2000). Research is mixed regarding whether social support is related to better PNS activity and can buffer associations between greater stress and lower PNS activity, with few studies among young adults. Attachment Theory further highlights the unique role of parental support (Simpson et al., 2021), although few studies have differentiated the source of social support when examining associations with PNS activity. Therefore, research is needed to test whether perceived social support from parents and friends relates to PNS activity directly versus by buffering stress among young adults.

Social Support and PNS Activity

Higher resting PNS activity is consequential for health and related to better emotional well-being (Jarczok et al., 2022). The neurovisceral integration model posits that greater PNS activity promotes the brain-body connection, including activation of the prefrontal cortex (Thayer and Lane, 2009), and thereby provides bodily resources that support social engagement and emotion regulation (Porges, 2007). For example, individuals with higher cardiac respiratory sinus arrythmia (RSA)—one measure of PNS activity—tend to use emotion regulatory strategies more effectively in daily life (Geisler et al., 2010). Indeed, because RSA often relates to greater emotion regulatory capacity, low RSA has been considered a transdiagnostic marker of psychopathology (Beauchaine, 2015). Individuals with higher resting RSA tend to be protected from the consequences of negative life events and harsh environments (Creavey et al., 2018; Hinnant et al., 2015), potentially because of this enhanced regulatory ability (Porges, 2007). Given the implications of RSA for better health, research would benefit from identifying psychosocial correlates that may underly RSA development.

Social support may be one intervenable target that is related to greater PNS activity at rest. The effects of acutely receiving social support on momentary PNS activity have been mixed (Goodyke et al., 2022), potentially due to differences in aspects of the social support (e.g. engagement, the provider). Longitudinal evidence suggests that increases in maternal warmth across adolescence were related to higher baseline RSA among adolescents (Her et al., 2025). Similarly, increases in relationship support across 10 years corresponded to increases in RSA among older adults (Donoho et al., 2015), although associations between parental and friend support and resting PNS activity in older adults differed by lifestyle factors and age (Bosle et al., 2022).

Social Support in Young Adulthood

College students face many stressors related to academics, social relationships, and personal development (Conley et al., 2014), and young adults who receive more support from parents and friends tend to have better health outcomes (Li et al., 2014). Early family support may enable development of the PNS that positions individuals for better emotion regulation (Alen et al., 2022). Aspects of parenting such as parental warmth are related to greater PNS activity in infancy (Zeegers et al., 2018), adolescence (Diamond and Cribbet, 2013; Graham et al., 2017), and midlife (Alen et al., 2020). Given age differences in previous associations (Bosle et al., 2022), further research is needed in young adult populations.

Although adolescents continue to seek support from family (Guan and Fuligni, 2016), they also becoming increasingly oriented toward peers and sensitive to peer interactions (Dahl, 2004). Friend support may displace the effects of parental support during the college years, when young adults become independent and spend much time on their college campus. College students often benefit more from receiving support from friends relative to parents and from providing emotional support to friends than to parents (Lee and Goldstein, 2016). Higher peer acceptance in adolescence and friendship quality in young adulthood prospectively predict higher resting RSA (Allen et al., 2022). Regarding peer support, individuals in the presence of a supportive friend show higher momentary RSA than those in the presence of an ambivalent friend (Holt-Lunstad et al., 2007). However, objective received support does not necessarily align with individuals’ perceptions of relationship support. Therefore, it remains unclear whether greater friend support is related to higher resting PNS activity in young adults.

It is also possible that social support specifically relates to PNS activity by reducing the deleterious effects of daily feelings of stress. In line with the stress-buffering hypothesis, one study found that supportive parenting buffered against the consequences of stressful life experiences for RSA in young adolescents (Fox et al., 2019). Another study found that associations between parenting and adolescents’ RSA trajectories differed by levels of family stress (Lisitsa et al., 2021). However, this stress-buffering pathway is underexplored with respect to PNS activity, and it remains unclear whether perceived support buffers associations between stress and PNS activity during young adulthood.

Present Study

The present study assessed whether perceived family and friend support cross-sectionally relate to resting PNS activity, as indicated by the biomarker cardiac RSA, among young adult college students. Data were collected in the 2021–2022 academic year, during in-person instruction. Because past studies have indicated that the source of social support can affect individuals’ well-being (Guan and Fuligni, 2016; Lee and Goldstein, 2016; Shor et al., 2013), we aimed to identify whether both parent and friend support relate to resting RSA. We hypothesized that both greater perceived family support and friend support would be related to greater resting RSA, in line with evidence that parenting interventions can alter RSA and that friendship quality is related to resting RSA (Alen et al., 2022; Allen et al., 2022). Because social support has been theorized to improve health by buffering the deleterious impacts of stress (Cohen and Wills, 1985), we additionally hypothesized that associations between greater perceived stress and lower RSA would be buffered by greater perceived parent and friend support.

Method

Participants and procedures

Young adult college students (N = 154; M_age = 20.5, SD = 3.0; 73.4% female; 76.0% heterosexual; 32.0% Asian, 28.8% white, 15.7% Latine, 15.0% multiracial, 8.5% different identities including Black or Middle Eastern) attending a public university in Southern California were recruited between October 2021 and May 2022. Students were from all class years (19.0% first-year, 18.3% second-year, 28.1% third-year, 34.6% fourth-year), and 60.5% reported that their parents had completed a 4-year degree or higher education. This sample size is in line with past studies of acute physiological reactivity (Quintana, 2017) and sufficiently powered for detecting an interaction term (i.e. three predictors: two main effects and one interaction term) with a moderate effect (β = 0.3). During the 1-hour laboratory session, participants provided informed consent and then had electrocardiogram (ECG) administered by placing electrodes on the upper right chest below the clavicle, bottom of the lower right rib, and middle of the lower left rib in a lead II configuration. They completed a brief survey and then watched a 4-minute neutral nature video while having their ECG recorded. They received 1 hour of course credit for compensation. Study procedures were approved by the University of California, Los Angeles Institutional Review Board (#21-001170).

Measures

Perceived parental and friend support

Participants completed the parental support subscale of the Inventory of Parent and Peer Attachment (Armsden and Greenberg, 1987), for which they rated nine items regarding how close and supported they felt by their parents over the past month using a 5-point scale (1 = Almost Never, 5 = Almost Always; e.g. “I trusted my parents,” “I could count on my parents when I needed to talk.”). They completed the same items about their friends. Items showed high inter-item reliability (α = 0.96 for parents, α = 0.92 for friends), and a mean was taken across items.

Respiratory sinus arrhythmia

We collected ECG data continuously using a BIOPAC physiological recording system. Data were converted to inter-beat intervals and double-edited for artifacts and biological improbable values by three research assistants, who were certified CardioEdit Reliable (Brain-Body Center, 2007) and showed excellent agreement (r = 0.97, p < 0.001). RSA was estimated from the software CardioBatch across high frequencies (0.12–0.40 Hz) using the Porges–Bohrer Method (Porges, 2007). An average was calculated across all 30-second epochs.

Perceived Stress Scale

Participants completed the 10-item Perceived Stress Scale (Cohen et al., 1983), for which they rated how often they felt stressed (e.g. “How often have you found that you could not cope with all the things that you had to do”) over the past month using a 5-point scale (1 = Never, 5 = Very Often). Items showed good inter-item reliability (α = 0.84). A mean was calculated after reverse-coding four negatively-worded items.

Covariates

Models were repeated adjusting for demographic factors, given health disparities in cardiovascular and PNS activity (Faulkner et al., 2003; Rosati et al., 2021). Participants reported gender and sexual orientation using short-response questions and reported race using a checklist. One participant did not report race, leaving 153 participants in analyses adjusted for covariates.

Results

Descriptive statistics and correlations are presented in Table 1. The outcome variable, RSA, was normally distributed (skewness = −0.25). Likewise, residuals were normally distributed (skewness = −0.22) and heteroskedastic. Participants reported generally high levels of perceived support, and a t-test indicated that participants perceived higher levels of friend support than parental support (t[153] = 5.87, p < 0.001, Cohen’s D = 0.65). Perceived parental support and friend support were not significantly correlated. Parental support was weakly positively correlated with resting RSA, whereas friend support was not. Perceived stress was not correlated with parent support, friend support, or resting RSA.

Table 1.

Correlations and descriptive statistics for study variables.

Variables	M	SD	Range	1.	2.	3.	4.
1. RSA	6.54	1.20	3.58–8.58	—
2. Parental support	3.45	1.18	1–5	0.18*	—
3. Friend support	4.10	0.75	1.1–5	0.06	0.02	—
4. Perceived stress	2.98	0.62	1.4-4.5	−0.09	−0.23**	−0.19*	—

RSA: respiratory sinus arrhythmia.

p < 0.05. **p < 0.01.

Linear regression models then tested whether perceived parental support and friend support (mean-centered) simultaneously were associated with RSA. Results indicated that higher parental support was still associated with higher RSA (B = 0.17, SE = 0.08, p = 0.040, 95% CI [0.01, 0.33], β = 0.17), whereas friend support was not (B = 0.05, SE = 0.13, p = 0.672, 95% CI [−0.20, 0.31], β = 0.03). Models were repeating adjusting for sex (dummy-coded as 0 = non-female, 1 = female), sexual orientation (dummy-coded as 0 = non-heterosexual, 1 = heterosexual), and race (dummy-coded with Asian [the majority group]), which did not alter results (Figure 1 and Table 2).

Figure 1.

Scatterplot depicting respiratory sinus arrythmia as a function of parental support (above) and friend support (below).

Table 2.

Resting RSA as a function of parental support, friend support, and stress testing main effects and stress-buffering effects (Model 2 and Model 3).

Variable	Main effect						Stress-buffering effect
	Unadjusted (R² = 0.03)			Adjusted (R² = 0.06)			Unadjusted (R² = 0.03)			Adjusted (R² = 0.07)
	B	SE	β	B	SE	β	B	SE	β	B	SE	β
Intercept	6.51***	0.10	—	6.38***	0.21	—	6.54***	0.10	—	6.28***	0.20	—
Parental support	0.17*	0.08	0.17	0.19*	0.09	0.19	0.18*	0.09	0.17	0.20*	0.09	0.19
Friend support	0.05	0.13	0.03	0.10	0.13	0.07	0.02	0.14	0.01	0.08	0.14	0.05
Stress	—	—	—	—	—	—	−0.09	0.16	−0.05	−0.08	0.17	−0.04
Parental support × stress	—	—	—	—	—	—	0.04	0.13	0.03	0.07	0.14	0.04
Friend support × stress	—	—	—	—	—	—	0.20	0.20	0.08	0.14	0.21	0.06
Female	—	—	—	0.32	0.23	0.12	—	—	—	0.30	0.23	0.11
Heterosexual	—	—	—	0.10	0.24	0.04	—	—	—	0.14	0.25	0.05
Race
Biracial	—	—	—	0.32	0.30	0.10	—	—	—	0.33	0.31	0.10
Different identities	—	—	—	0.61	0.38	0.14	—	—	—	0.58	0.39	0.14
Latine	—	—	—	0.07	0.30	0.02	—	—	—	0.09	0.31	0.03
White	—	—	—	0.12	0.25	0.05	—	—	—	0.13	0.25	0.05

Note: Parental support, friend support, and perceived stress were centered at the sample mean. Female (0 = non-female, 1 = female) and Heterosexual (0 = non-heterosexual, 1 = heterosexual) were dummy-coded. Race was dummy-coded with Asian (the majority group) as the reference group.

p < 0.001. *p < 0.05. ***p < 0.001.

Finally, to test whether associations between perceived social support and RSA emerged in stressful contexts, models tested Perceived Support (centered) × Perceived Stress (centered) interactions. These interactions were nonsignificant for both parental and friend support in unadjusted and adjusted models (Table 2). Associations did not change when testing parental support and friend support in separate models (Supplemental Table S1).

Discussion

Because associations between perceived social support and PNS activity have been mixed across studies (Goodyke et al., 2022) and differ by age and lifestyle factors (Bosle et al., 2022), we examined how both perceived parental support and friend support cross-sectionally relate to RSA as a measure of PNS activity among young adult college students. As hypothesized, young adults who perceived greater parental support had greater resting cardiac RSA, although associations did not emerge between perceived friend support and RSA. However, there was no evidence for stress-buffering pathways, possibly due to measuring perceived stress rather than specific domains such as emotional stress that could be addressed by perceived support. Taken together, findings suggested that perceived support may be directly associated with greater PNS activity.

Our findings align with past evidence relating parenting interventions to greater RSA in children and relating parental warmth in childhood to greater RSA in midlife (Alen et al., 2020; Bosle et al., 2022; Lee and Goldstein, 2016; Li et al., 2014). Whereas Self-Determination Theory posits that social relationships broadly can benefit well-being, Attachment Theory suggests that parent-child relationships provide foundational resources for exploration that benefit long-term well-being (Simpson et al., 2021). This perceived support could confer benefits during college, when individuals explore a novel environment and establish independence. Indeed, some college students report increased support from their parents during this time (Guan and Fuligni, 2016). However, observed associations were cross-sectional and thus preclude assessment of causality.

Associations did not emerge for perceived friend support, in contrast with evidence relating close friendship quality to RSA (Allen et al., 2022). However, this finding is in line with evidence that stronger family ties are related to lower mortality and inflammation, with no associations for friendship ties (Shor et al., 2013; Uchino et al., 2015). Associations for friend support may depend on the number, quality, and stability of friendships. Because college students often move away from their home communities, friend support may fluctuate more year-to-year than parental support. Given changes in friendship during college, friend support earlier in childhood or from specific peer groups (e.g. childhood friends) may also better relate to RSA. Results may have differed because participants also had overall higher and less variable support from friends than parents, potentially because they can choose their friendships. Although they had resumed in-person instruction, parental support may be particularly tied to PNS activity following periods of sustained time together such as the safer-at-home order.

Our results did not support the stress-buffering hypothesis, as perceived support did not moderate associations between stress and RSA. Feeling supported may enable young adults to feel secure in day-to-day life (Beckes and Sbarra, 2022). Perceived support may motivate individuals to communicate and spend time with their family, which can affect PNS activity (Wiśniewska et al., 2025). It is possible that stress may modify associations between social support and other aspects of health including mental health. Stress was also measured subjectively and retrospectively over the past month, and associations may emerge using objective metrics, domains of stress (e.g. academic vs interpersonal), or a daily protocol to better characterize stress frequency.

Given that higher RSA is related to better health and emotion regulation (Jarczok et al., 2022), it is possible that maintaining positive family relationships during young adulthood may benefit health. Counseling services on college campuses can recommend parent-focused interventions and encourage students to leverage familial resources and multiple sources of support. However, many individuals lack parental support due to sociopolitical factors (e.g. parents disapproving of students’ identities; limited communication due to deportation). Longitudinal research is needed to assess mechanisms between social support and health, as well as to understand how differences in resting PNS activity may position underrepresented students for poorer health and to identify compensatory means of promoting RSA.

Findings must be interpreted in context of limitations regarding the sample and study design. Participants were primarily female college students, limiting generalizability to male students and young adults who pursue full-time employment. Participants did not report whether they commuted, and commuting students who live with their parents may perceive greater parental support or benefit to a greater extent from parental support. Relatedly, associations may differ for campuses with a lower proportion of in-state students. Participants also rated past-month support once using subjective reports rather than discrete actions, other individuals’ reports, or multiple time-points, all of which could improve measurement reliability. Most importantly, the study was cross-sectional, precluding conclusions regarding causality. For example, it is possible that higher resting RSA can promote children’s own behavioral warmth and thereby elicit support from parents (Diamond and Cribbet, 2013).

Conclusions

Young adults who perceived higher parental support tended to have higher resting RSA. Results did not support stress-buffering associations, suggesting that feeling supported may directly benefit PNS activity rather than weaken the consequences of stressful experiences. Findings may have implications for how social support relates to physical health, given that PNS activity has been related to greater emotion regulatory capacity and better health (Porges, 2007). Associations did not emerge for perceived friend support, potentially due to changing peer networks and individuals’ ability to select supportive friends. Results highlight the role of continued parental support and strong family bonds for PNS activity in young adulthood.

Supplemental Material

sj-docx-1-hpq-10.1177_13591053261430998 – Supplemental material for Perceived support and resting respiratory sinus arrhythmia among young adult college students

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-hpq-10.1177_13591053261430998 for Perceived support and resting respiratory sinus arrhythmia among young adult college students by Danny Rahal in Journal of Health Psychology

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the participants for their time, Christine Xu for reviewing the manuscript, Violet Kwan and Zahara Cuevas-Kovanis for cleaning and editing the data, and Maura Eckard, Alyusuf Elnaggar, Brittany Maxwell, Armaan Singh, and Rainey Speer for collecting the data.

ORCID iD

Danny Rahal

Ethical considerations

The study was approved by the University of California, Los Angeles (IRB #21-001170).

Consent to participate

All participants provided informed consent.

Consent for publication

Consent for publication is not applicable to this review article as no identifiable participant data are included.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Data availability statement

The data and materials necessary to reproduce the analyses presented here are publicly accessible at . The analyses presented here were not preregistered.

Supplemental material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

References

Alen

Shields

Nemer

, et al. (2022) A systematic review and meta-analysis of the association between parenting and child autonomic nervous system activity. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 139: 104734. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2022.104734

Alen

Sloan

Seeman

, et al. (2020) Childhood parental warmth and heart rate variability in midlife: Implications for health. Personal Relationships 27(3): 506–525. https://doi.org/10.1111/pere.12329

Allen

Loeb

Davis

, et al. (2022) Getting under the skin: Long-term links of adolescent peer relationship difficulties to adult vagal tone. Journal of Behavioral Medicine 45(5): 690–701. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10865-022-00334-1

Armsden

Greenberg

(1987) The Inventory of parent and Peer Attachment: Individual differences and their relationship to psychological well-being in adolescence. Journal of Youth and Adolescence 16(5): 427–454. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02202939

Beauchaine

(2015) Respiratory sinus arrhythmia: A transdiagnostic biomarker of emotion dysregulation and psychopathology. Current Opinion in Psychology 3: 43–47.

Beckes

Sbarra

(2022) Social baseline theory: State of the science and new directions. Current Opinion in Psychology 43: 36–41. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2021.06.004

Bosle

Brenner

Fischer

, et al. (2022) The association between supportive social ties and autonomic nervous system function—Differences between family ties and friendship ties in a cohort of older adults. European Journal of Ageing 19(2): 263–276. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10433-021-00638-2

Brain-Body Center (2007) CardioEdit/CardioBatch [computer software]. Chicago: University of Illinois.

Cohen

Kamarck

Mermelstein

(1983) A global measure of perceived stress. Journal of Health and Social Behavior 24(4): 385–396. https://doi.org/10.2307/2136404

10.

Cohen

Wills

(1985) Stress, social support, and the buffering hypothesis. Psychological Bulletin 98(2): 310–357. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.98.2.310

11.

Conley

Kirsch

Dickson

, et al. (2014) Negotiating the transition to college: Developmental trajectories and gender differences in psychological functioning, cognitive-affective strategies, and social well-being. Emerging Adulthood 2(3): 195–210. https://doi.org/10.1177/2167696814521808

12.

Creavey

Gatzke-Kopp

Fosco

(2018) Differential effects of family stress exposure and harsh parental discipline on child social competence. Journal of Child and Family Studies 27(2): 483–493. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-017-0913-3

13.

Dahl

(2004) Adolescent brain development: A period of vulnerabilities and opportunities. Keynote address. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1021(1): 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1196/annals.1308.001

14.

Deci

Ryan

(2000) The “what” and “why” of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of behavior. Psychological Inquiry 11(4): 227–268. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327965pli1104_01

15.

Diamond

Cribbet

(2013) Links between adolescent sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system functioning and interpersonal behavior over time. International Journal of Psychophysiology 88(3): 339–348. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2012.08.008

16.

Donoho

Seeman

Sloan

, et al. (2015) Marital status, marital quality, and heart rate variability in the MIDUS cohort. Journal of Family Psychology 29(2): 290–295. https://doi.org/10.1037/fam0000068

17.

Faulkner

Hathaway

Tolley

(2003) Cardiovascular autonomic function in healthy adolescents. Heart & Lung: The Journal of Cardiopulmonary and Acute Care 32(1): 10–22. https://doi.org/10.1067/mhl.2003.6

18.

Fox

Aldrich

Ahles

, et al. (2019) Stress and parenting predict changes in adolescent respiratory sinus arrhythmia. Developmental Psychobiology 61(8): 1214–1224. https://doi.org/10.1002/dev.21863

19.

Geisler

FCM

Vennewald

Kubiak

, et al. (2010) The impact of heart rate variability on subjective well-being is mediated by emotion regulation. Personality and Individual Differences 49(7): 723–728. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2010.06.015

20.

Goodyke

Hershberger

Bronas

, et al. (2022) Perceived social support and heart rate variability: An integrative review. Western Journal of Nursing Research 44(11): 1057–1067. https://doi.org/10.1177/01939459211028908

21.

Graham

Scott

Weems

(2017) Parenting behaviors, parent heart rate variability, and their associations with adolescent heart rate variability. Journal of Youth and Adolescence 46(5): 1089–1103. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-016-0616-x

22.

Guan

Fuligni

(2016) Changes in parent, sibling, and peer support during the transition to young adulthood. Journal of Research on Adolescence 26(2): 286–299. https://doi.org/10.1111/jora.12191

23.

Her

Ugarte

Weissman

, et al. (2025) Warm parenting throughout adolescence predicts basal parasympathetic activity among Mexican-origin youths. Developmental Psychobiology 67(1): e70012. https://doi.org/10.1002/dev.70012

24.

Hinnant

Erath

El-Sheikh

(2015) Harsh parenting, parasympathetic activity, and development of delinquency and substance use. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 124(1): 137–151. https://doi.org/10.1037/abn0000026

25.

Holt-Lunstad

Uchino

Smith

, et al. (2007) On the importance of relationship quality: The impact of ambivalence in friendships on cardiovascular functioning. Annals of Behavioral Medicine 33(3): 278–290. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02879910

26.

Jarczok

Weimer

Braun

, et al. (2022) Heart rate variability in the prediction of mortality: A systematic review and meta-analysis of healthy and patient populations. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 143: 104907. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2022.104907

27.

Lee

CYS

Goldstein

(2016) Loneliness, stress, and social support in young adulthood: Does the source of support matter? Journal of Youth and Adolescence 45(3): 568–580. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-015-0395-9

28.

Lisitsa

Bolden

Johnson

, et al. (2021) Impact of stress and parenting on respiratory sinus arrythmia trajectories in early adolescence. Developmental Psychobiology 63(6): e22165. https://doi.org/10.1002/dev.22165

29.

Albert

Dwelle

(2014) Parental and peer support as predictors of depression and self-esteem among college students. Journal of College Student Development 55(2): 120–138.

30.

Porges

(2007) The polyvagal perspective. Biological Psychology 74(2): 116–143. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsycho.2006.06.009

31.

Quintana

(2017) Statistical considerations for reporting and planning heart rate variability case-control studies. Psychophysiology 54(3): 344–349.

32.

Rosati

Williams

Juster

, et al. (2021) The Cardiovascular Conundrum in Ethnic and Sexual Minorities: A Potential Biomarker of Constant Coping With Discrimination. Frontiers in Neuroscience Epub ahead of print 19 May 2021. DOI: 10.3389/fnins.2021.619171

33.

Shor

Roelfs

Yogev

(2013) The strength of family ties: A meta-analysis and meta-regression of self-reported social support and mortality. Social Networks 35(4): 626–638. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socnet.2013.08.004

34.

Simpson

Rholes

Eller

(eds) (2021) Major principles of attachment theory: Overview, hypotheses, and research ideas. In: Van Lange

PAM

Higgins

Kruglanski

(eds) Social Psychology: Handbook of Basic Principles, 3rd edn. New York, NY: The Guilford Press, pp.222–239.

35.

Thayer

Lane

(2009) Claude bernard and the heart–brain connection: Further elaboration of a model of neurovisceral integration. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 33(2): 81–88. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2008.08.004

36.

Uchino

(2006) Social Support and Health: A review of physiological processes potentially underlying links to disease outcomes. Journal of Behavioral Medicine 29(4): 377–387. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10865-006-9056-5

37.

Uchino

Ruiz

Smith

, et al. (2015) The strength of family ties: Perceptions of network relationship quality and levels of C-reactive proteins in the North Texas Heart Study. Annals of Behavioral Medicine 49(5): 776–781. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12160-015-9699-y

38.

Wiśniewska

Piejka

Wolak

, et al. (2025) Loneliness - Not for the faint of heart? Effects of transient loneliness induction on neural and parasympathetic responses to affective stimuli. Social Neuroscience. 20: 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1080/17470919.2025.2498384

39.

Zeegers

MAJ

de Vente

Nikolić

, et al. (2018) Mothers’ and fathers’ mind-mindedness influences physiological emotion regulation of infants across the first year of life. Developmental Science 21(6): e12689. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12689