The power of social relationships
The two studies I address today both relate to benefits of healthy social relationships. First, Sahi et al. (2023) published “You Changed my Mind: Immediate and enduring impacts of social emotion regulation” in Emotion. Here’s the edited abstract:
As social creatures, our relationships with other people have tremendous downstream impacts on health and well-being. However, we still know surprisingly little about how our social interactions regulate how we think and feel through life’s challenges. Getting help from other people to change how one thinks about emotional events—known as “social reappraisal”—can be more effective in downregulating negative affect than reappraising on one’s own, but it is unknown whether this regulatory boost from social support persists when people face the same events alone in the future. In a preregistered study of 120 young adults (N = 60 same-gender dyads, gender-split sample) involving in-lab emotion regulation tasks and a follow-up task online approximately 1 day later, we found that participants responded less negatively to aversive images that were socially regulated (i.e., reappraised with the help of a friend) both immediately and over time, as compared to images that had been solo regulated (i.e., reappraised on one’s own) or not regulated (i.e., passively viewed). Interestingly, the regulatory boost from social support observed both in the lab and at follow-up was driven by women dyads. This work highlights one important mechanism explaining how support from others can facilitate emotional well-being: By changing peoples’ lasting impressions of distressing events, interactions with others can help prepare them to cope with future exposure to those events on their own, underscoring how valuable others’ perspectives can be when navigating ongoing emotional stressors.
I like this study because it emphasizes the power of friendship, especially in women. The next study looks at the power of good social relationships in both late adolescence and older age.
Wagner, Wieczorek & Brandt (2023) published “Boosting yourself? Associations between momentary self-esteem, daily social interactions, and self-esteem development in late adolescence and late adulthood” in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Here’s the edited abstract:
Research over the past 2 decades has repeatedly shown that the evaluation of one’s own worth—trait self-esteem—is closely linked to the quality of social relationships and perceptions of social inclusion. However, there is limited evidence on the dynamics between momentary self-esteem and perceptions of social inclusion in everyday life, as well as on their possible long-term (bottom-up) effects on the development of trait self-esteem. We addressed this research gap using longitudinal data from a German multimethodological study (N = 324) in which N = 235 late adolescents (Mage = 17.7; 76% female) and N = 89 older adults (Mage = 63.8; 64% female) were followed over 1 year. Based on three trait questionnaires with 6-month intervals and a 7-day experience-sampling burst at the first measurement point, we investigated momentary dynamics in self-esteem and longitudinal change by using multilevel and latent growth modeling. Results confirmed the positive association between momentary self-esteem and perceptions of social inclusion in everyday life, that is, self-esteem reactivity in both age groups. In addition, both self- and other-reports showed a consistent increase in trait self-esteem over 1 year. However, because the slope parameters did not indicate substantial interindividual variance, we were unable to test for bottom-up effects of self-esteem reactivity. We discuss the importance of daily social experiences for momentary self-esteem in late adolescence and late adulthood but also point to the need for further multimethodological research.
This study nicely complements the first both in having the sample of older adults and its multimethod approach. Both studies make it clear that having supportive social relationships is very beneficial to psychological wellbeing.