A hypothesized need to form and maintain strong, stable interpersonal relationships is evaluated in light of the empirical literature. The need is for frequent, nonaversive interactions within an ongoing relational bond. Consistent with the belongingness hypothesis, people form social attachments readily under most conditions and resist the dissolution of existing bonds. Belongingness appears to have multiple and strong effects on emotional patterns and on cognitive processes. Lack of attachments is linked to a variety of ill effects on health, adjustment, and well-being. Other evidence, such as that concerning satiation, substitution, and behavioral consequences, is likewise consistent with the hypothesized motivation. Several seeming counterexamples turned out not to disconfirm the hypothesis. Existing evidence supports the hypothesis that the need to belong is a powerful, fundamental, and extremely pervasive motivation.

The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation.

Social support is defined as information leading the subject to believe that he is cared for and loved, esteemed, and a member of a network of mutual obligations. The evidence that supportive interactions among people are protective against the health consequences of life stress is reviewed. It appears that social support can protect people in crisis from a wide variety of pathological states: from low birth weight to death, from arthritis through tuberculosis to depression, alcoholism, and the social breakdown syndrome. Furthermore, social support may reduce the amount of medication required, accelerate recovery, and facilitate compliance with prescribed medical regimens.

Social support as a moderator of life stress

It is generally agreed that social ties play a beneficial role in the maintenance of psychological well-being. In this targeted review, we highlight four sets of insights that emerge from the literature on social ties and mental health outcomes (defined as stress reactions, psychological well-being, and psychological distress, including depressive symptoms and anxiety). First, the pathways by which social networks and social supports influence mental health can be described by two alternative (although not mutually exclusive) causal models—the main effect model and the stress-buffering model. Second, the protective effects of social ties on mental health are not uniform across groups in society. Gender differences in support derived from social network participation may partly account for the higher prevalence of psychological distress among women compared to men. Social connections may paradoxically increase levels of mental illness symptoms among women with low resources, especially if such connections entail role strain associated with obligations to provide social support to others. Third, egocentric networks are nested within a broader structure of social relationships. The notion of social capital embraces the embeddedness of individual social ties within the broader social structure. Fourth, despite some successes reported in social support interventions to enhance mental health, further work is needed to deepen our understanding of the design, timing, and dose of interventions that work, as well as the characteristics of individuals who benefit the most.

/pdf/social-ties-and-mental-health-50hrl19lk1.pdf

Social ties and mental health.

Far more attention has been paid to emotion regulation in childhood than in adulthood and old age. However, a growing body of empirical research suggests that the emotion domain is largely spared from deleterious processes associated with aging and points instead to developmental gains in later life. By applying tenets from socioemotional selectivity theory, we attempt to explain the observed gains in terms of motivation. We argue that age is associated with increasing motivation to derive emotional meaning from life and decreasing motivation to expand one's horizons. These changes lead to age differences in social and environmental choices (consistent with antecedent emotion regulation), coping (consistent with response-focused regulation), and cognitive processing of positive and negative information (consistent with goal-directed attention and memory). Broader implications for life-span development are discussed.

Socioemotional Selectivity Theory and the Regulation of Emotion in the Second Half of Life

The buffering hypothesis suggests that social support can moderate the impacts of life events upon mental health. However, several problems have yet to be resolved in this literature. Social support has been inadequately conceptualized and operationalized; therefore, the specific dimensions of support that reduce event impacts cannot be identified. The direct effect of events upon support and the interactive (buffering) effect of events with support have been confounded in many studies, such that results may have been biased in favor of the hypothesis. The relationships between events, support, and psychological disturbance have not been clarified theoretically; thus, the possibility that support itself is an etiologicalfactor has been overlooked. This article reviews empirical work on the buffering hypothesis, outlines alternate conceptualizations and operationalizations of support, presents a refined hypothesis and model for analysis, and suggests three theoretical approaches that may be used to explain the interrelationships between support, events, and disturbance.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2136511.pdf

Conceptual, methodological, and theoretical problems in studying social support as a buffer against life stress.

This study is one of a series devoted to the analysis of the relation between adult socialization patterns and adaptation Panel data collected for an older sample are drawn upon to document further the equivocal nature of this relationship when conventional measures of social role and interaction are compared with three different types of indicators of adaptation The comparative importance, respectively, of social privilege and social deprivation for adaptation varies in accordance with the subjectivity of adaptive measure used It also differs for self as compared with professional appraisals of well-being Regardless of the overall pattern of these interrelationships, deviant cells are sizeable The introduction of a variable bearing on the quality of social relationships, in this case the presence or absence of a confidant, helps considerably to explicate both sets of findings The presence of an intimate relationship serves as a buffer both against gradual social losses in role and interaction and against the more traumatic losses accompanying widowhood and retirement Age and sex differences may have implications for the differential in the survival rates of men and women, as well as for the relation between socialization patterns and adaptation at earlier stages of the lifespan

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2092237.pdf

Marjorie Fiske Lowenthal

Papers

Interaction and adaptation: Intimacy as a critical variable.

Social Isolation and Mental Illness in Old Age

Book selection and censorship : a study of school and public libraries in California