The Social Neuroscience research group is focused on the scientific study of several social topics from a biopsychosocial perspective, comprehending human behaviour with a humanistic approach. The studies conducted by the group are mainly centred on violence and social stress, as well as on empathy, compassion and cooperation.
This gives rise to Neurocriminology, a discipline aimed at applying the methodology and the study techniques of neurosciences to understand, predict, treat and even prevent violence and criminality. Neurocriminological knowledge can be used both for prevention and for diagnosis and treatment of violence, as well as for estimating the probability of recidivism.
There are concrete risk factors that predispose an individual to violent behaviour, such as:
- alcohol and/or drug dependencies
- neuropsychological deficits
- alterations in emotional and behavioural regulation
- violent thought schemas
- adverse social situations
Based on these risk factors, among others, people tend to behave in a violent manner, without considering future consequences, be them positive or negative. They also fail to use the available information within their surroundings to foresee the consequences of their actions and inhibit their behaviour.
An example of this predisposition to violence is observed in men convicted of gender‑based violence. Studies with a biopsychosocial perspective offer additional information on gender‑based violence, as they can describe its neurocriminological profile and define the role each risk factor plays in relation to the propensity to violence. They also allow for an analysis of the effectiveness of treatment for the neuropsychological and biopsychological variables studied. The results of these studies are being nationally and internationally applied, and they could be extended to reach many more people in similar situations.
While not entirely free of ethical and legal concerns, neuroscience is becoming an important influence on the comprehension and study of violent and criminal behaviour. In this regard, Positive Neurocriminology focuses on positive processes such as:
- empathy
- compassion
- positive emotions
- prosocial behaviour
The knowledge derived from our active lines of research could be used to design crime prevention and crime intervention programmes.
Cooperation is a typical human behaviour centred on social relationships. It can be defined as an adaptive strategy that consists of working jointly with others, thereby increasing the probability of achieving a common goal. This cooperative behaviour results from cognitive and emotional processes related to constructs such as altruism and empathy. For this reason, the most relevant application of the research is to use the obtained results to promote prosocial behaviour and to treat and prevent antisocial behaviour. Nevertheless, studies analysing the psychobiological changes that occur when cooperating, performed in controlled laboratory conditions, are still scarce. Even so, there is an exponential increase of studies on psychobiological mechanisms of cooperation, which provide crucial information for developing a more cooperative and empathetic social model.
In the last years, mindfulness has become a very useful strategy in healthcare environment because of its favourable influence on different populations’ health. Moreover, some research has pointed out that mindfulness-based interventions positively influence the empathy of university students and healthcare professionals. These result are promising in relation to the introduction of mindfulness in the training of psychologists. However, the studies conducted up until now have only included self-assessment measurements to assess the empathy, which excludes them from being considered truly useful interventions, as the increase of subjective perception of the participants does not guarantee an improvement of their empathetic capacity. In this sense, new studies that include situational assessment of empathy are required, with measurements of execution and biological markers such as oxytocin, a hormone that has been related to empathy and affective links.
