Social Cognition, Emotional Intelligence and Anxiety in GS
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Relating Social Cognition, Emotional Intelligence and Anxiety to Adverse Health Outcomes and Genomics in Generation Scotland
IRAS ID
207171
Contact name
Kristin Nicodemus
Contact email
Duration of Study in the UK
2 years, 6 months, 1 days
Research summary
We seek to understand social cognition, emotional intelligence and anxiety in individuals from the Generation Scotland (GS) cohort study. We will ask participants who have agreed to be contacted again to participate in a set of questionnaires and tasks online. The set of tasks will be set up as 2 modules, and participants can complete them at different times. We will combine these new data with data previously collected by Generation Scotland to examine differences in genetics, cognition, personality, and lifestyle risk factors in the measures of social cognition, emotional intelligence and anxiety. Anxiety is one of the most common causes of mental ill health, yet research on anxiety lags behind that of other disorders such as depression, leaving a critical unmet need. Social factors play a role in the development and maintenance of several adverse health outcomes, from mental ill health to poor lifestyle choices. Measures of social factors we will collect include social cognition, or how an individual perceives the world around them, and emotional intelligence, or how they interpret and understand social factors. Social cognition and emotional intelligence are both traits that may be improved through interventions, so if these social factors are found to be associated with anxiety or other adverse health outcomes they represent modifiable risk factors. No interventions are proposed as part of this study; we seek to collect data on these social traits that vary in the healthy human population. We will calculate heritability of these measures by looking at how social cognition, emotional intelligence and anxiety are similar in people who are part of the same family versus individuals who are unrelated to each other. Measures that have been shown to be heritable (e.g., have an underlying genetic component) will be used in genome-wide association studies to determine which genes are responsible for differences in these measures.
REC name
North of Scotland Research Ethics Committee 1
REC reference
16/NS/0130
Date of REC Opinion
9 Feb 2017
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion