Sociophysiology is the "interplay between society and physical functioning" (Freund 1988: 856) involving "collaboration of two neighboring sciences: physiology and sociology" (Mauss 1936: 373).
[4] Such "socio-psycho-biological study" has uncovered a "sharing of physiology between people involved in a meaningful interaction" (Adler 2002: 884), as well as "mutually responsive physiologic engagement having normative function in maintaining social cohesion and well-being in higher social animals" (Adler 2002: 885).
[5] Furthermore, sociophysiology explores the "intimate relationship and mutual regulation between social and physiological systems that is especially vital in human groups" (Barchas 1986: 210).
Thus the duty of the socio-physiologist is to give a description of the nervous processes of groups which have resulted in changes in the [physical and social] environment.In addition, sociophysiology "describes structure-function relationships for body structures and interactive functions relevant to psychiatric illness" (Gardner 1997: 351), and also "assumes that psychiatric disorders are pathological variants of the motivation, emotions, and conflict involved in normal communicational processes" (Gardner and Price 1999: 247–248).
For example, the findings of a recent study "suggest that political attitudes vary with physiological traits linked to divergent manners of experiencing and processing environmental threats" (Oxley et al. 2008: 1669).