Lecture 1 - Relationships and well-being
Heart-failure study
• Happily married males had a bigger chance of survival (70% still alive
after 4 years)
• Unhappily married males had a smaller chance of survival (45% after 4
years)
Berkman & Syme study - Social integration and mortality
• Least socially integrated people had the most chance of dying (%)
• Most socially integrated people had the smallest chance of dying (7%)
• Same effect for females as for men
• Health is associated with sociability
Rhino-virus injection study - Cohen (1997)
Relationships support the immune syystem
• Low socially integrated people had a high change of objective illness (60%)
• High socially integrated people had a lower chance of objective illness
(35%)
• The same effect for self-reported illness
Our relations are strongly connected to our health!
Social relationships have a high effect on mortality risk
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,WHY is social integration associated with both physical
and psychological well-being?
Explanatory factors:
• You get stimulated by others. I you lack this stimulation you engage in
other unhealthy things
• Full fill our need to belong
• Safety
• Social support
Social integration → Social support → Health and well-being
Social support
• Emotional support & instrumental support. Strongly correlated and often
’confounded’ (go shopping when ill)
• Visible and invisible support
Social support → Health and well-being: How?
• Direct effect-hypothesis (main effect hypothesis)
– E.g. social support makes people to take better care of themselves
(less smoking, exercise; healthier diet, etc.); social influence/norms
– Experience more positive effect
• Stress-buffering hypothesis
– Social support reduces stress under potentially stressful circumstances
– Stress (e.g. cortisol) directly related to health via cardio-vascular
and immune system
Strength and strain model of marriage
main effects
Marital strength −−−−−−−→ psych mechanisms → bio mechanisms → health
outcomes
main effects
Marital strain −−−−−−−→ psych mechanisms → bio mechanisms → health out-
comes
A marriage can have a stress-buffering effect and a stress intensifying effect
• etc.
Psych mechanisms
• Cognition affect health behaviours
Bio mechanisms
• Hormonal
• Cardiovascular
• Immune
• Gene expression
Health outcomes
• Heart disease
• Cancer
• Asthma
• Autoimmune
• Diabetes
• Arthritis
Thus...
• Having an extensive social network strongly associated with people’s psy-
chological and physical well-being
• Social support is key; has a direct and indirect (stress-buffering) effect
• Role of relationships on health and well-being underestimated, by laypeo-
ple and psychologists alike
3
, The need to belong
• Evolved need to initiate and maintain relationships; critical for survival...
• Similar to need for food and water
Need to Belong-hypothesis
1. Changes in ’belongingness’ evoke strong effects
• Inclusion/social integration = healthy and happy
• Exclusion/loneliness = unhealthy and unhappy
2. Initiating social interactions seems innate + humans form social relation-
ships really easily
Initiating and maintaining social contact seems an innate trait
• Universal
• Minimal group research - identifying with group very easily
• Mere proximity leads to relationships
• Attachment literature
• Innate focus on others (face perceptual system)
Face perceptual system
Baby’s 30 minutes old attend their gaze more to faces than other equally complex
stimuli
Not belonging
Reactions to changes in belongingness: Social exclusion
• Ball throwing
• Bus paradigm
Immediate reactions to ostracism
• Ostracism threatens fundamental needs
– Lower sense of ’belonging’
– Loss of control
– Lower sense of meaningfulness
– Lower self-esteem (sociometer theory)
– No matter what...!
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