Samuele Zilioli
Social relationships shape both psychological well-being and the biological processes that regulate health and disease. In this talk, I will integrate findings from a series of studies conducted with youth with asthma and middle-aged and older African American adults to illustrate how social environments become biologically embedded across the lifespan. I will begin with forms of social threat (i.e., loneliness, social isolation, discrimination, vigilance, and family conflict), which reliably predict alterations in diurnal cortisol, chronic HPA axis activity, systemic inflammation, and cardiovascular physiology. I will then turn to social safety (i.e., warmth, involvement, responsiveness, and broader social support), which buffers stress physiology, promotes healthier immune function, and contributes to better physical health trajectories. Together, this work demonstrates that the body continuously monitors the social world for cues of safety and threat, and that these signals become embedded in neuroendocrine and immune systems over time. By bridging relationship science, psychosocial stress research, and biopsychosocial models of health inequities, this research highlights the importance of considering multilevel social contexts in understanding health outcomes.
Dr. Samuele Zilioli is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Psychology and Family Medicine & Public Health Sciences at Wayne State University in Detroit. Before moving to the United States, he completed his undergraduate and graduate training in Italy and Canada. He completed a B.A. and M.A. in Psychology from the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart and a Ph.D. in Cognitive and Neural Sciences from Simon Fraser University, where he received the Governor General’s Gold Medal for highest academic standing. He later completed a postdoctoral fellowship in health psychology at Wayne State University. Dr. Zilioli’s research examines how psychosocial stressors, particularly those related to socioeconomic status and race/ethnicity, interact with psychosocial resources to shape glucocorticoid-related processes, and how these biopsychological mechanisms link stress to immune, cardiovascular, metabolic, and other health outcomes across the lifespan. His work has been funded by the National Institute of Justice and is currently supported by the National Institutes of Health. His scholarly contributions have been recognized with several honors, including the W.C. Young Recent Graduate Award from the Society for Behavioral Neuroendocrinology, the Excellence in Health Psychology Research by an Early Career Professional Award from the American Psychological Association’s Division 38 (Health Psychology), and the Neal E. Miller New Investigator Award from the Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research.