FIND TWO MORE FRIENDS AND CALL ME IN THE MORNING: New research shows that having a wide range of social relationships improves chances of a longer life. Is a social life set to be the next Rx from your doctor?
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A long lunch out with co-workers or a late-night conversation with a family member might seem like a distraction from other healthy habits, such as going to the gym or getting a good night's sleep. But more than 100 years' worth of research shows that having a healthy social life is incredibly important to staying physically healthy. Overall, social support increases survival by some 50 percent, concluded the authors behind a new meta-analysis.
The benefit of friends, family and even colleagues turns out to be just as good for long-term survival as giving up a 15-cigarette-a-day smoking habit. And by the study's numbers, interpersonal social networks are more crucial to physical health than exercising or beating obesity.
"I don't think a lot of people recognize that our relationships can have a physical impact as well as emotional," says Julianne Holt-Lunstad, an associate psychology professor at Brigham Young University and co-author of the new study, published online July 27 in PLoS Medicine.
The researchers analyzed results from 148 studies—which included a total of 308,849 participants—going back to the early 20th century. Most studies assessed survival in contrast to mortality from all causes, although the authors rejected studies that focused on suicide or accidental deaths.
"The findings are very exciting and show how important social relationships are for improving survival," Kira Birditt, an assistant research professor at University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research, who was not involved in the new study, noted in an e-mail to ScientificAmerican.com.
Accentuating the positive
Social relationships are thought to help improve health either by buffering individuals from stressful situations or creating a norm of healthful behaviors.
"There's a pretty large literature linking social relationships to a variety of physiological processes that are linked to disease risk," Holt-Lunstad says. Social support has been linked to lower blood pressure, and a diverse collection of contacts is associated with better immune system functioning. The list continues to grow, she says, now encompassing other bodily processes such as wound healing and inflammation.
Previous research has pointed to happiness as a key to longevity. But in most of the studies reviewed in the new paper, social connections were not classified in terms of their quality, thus likely lumping negative associations in with the more positive ones. This means the benefit of positive social connections is likely to be even higher.
"Most research shows that the negative aspects of relationships can be detrimental to health," Holt-Lunstad says. But Birditt, who has also done research in the field, notes that some of her work "indicates that the influence of social relationships on mortality is nuanced and depends on the type of relationship, the quality of the relationship and the health status of the individual." A 2008 study in Social Science & Medicine that she co-authored found that people with chronic illnesses actually had a lower mortality rate if they had negative—or at least more demanding—relationships with family members. "We speculated that spouses and adult children may be nagging the person with the chronic illness to take their medication or that more demands from these ties may be a sign of greater engagement," Birditt notes.
The more, the healthier
Despite the hyperconnected era of Facebook friends and Blackberry messaging, social isolation is on the rise. More people than not report not having a single person they feel that they can confide in—up threefold from 20 years ago, the report authors noted.
"People have assumed a threshold effect" when it comes to social relationships, Holt-Lunstad says. Many researchers thought "you're at risk if you're socially isolated, but as long as you have one person, you're okay," she says.
The decades of research that Holt-Lunstad and her colleagues examined showed that in fact social support and survival operate on a continuum: "The greater the extent of the relationships, the lower the risk," she says.
The analysis also assessed what kind of studies worked best to predict a person's survival. Questionnaires that had asked participants at least a few in-depth questions about various social connections (such as, "To what extent are you participating or involved in your social network?" or "To what extent can you count on other people?") were more effective at pinpointing a person's overall risk of mortality from all causes than those that simply determined if a person was single or married or lived with at least one other person. The more nuanced questions "tap into the perception of the availability" of other people, Holt-Lunstad explains, rather than just determining if a person is co-habitating. Holt-Lunstad and her colleagues found that divvied up this way, complex social networks increased survival rates by 91 percent.
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12 Comments
Add CommentTough break for introverts; sounds like they're doomed.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDo healthy people have more and/or better social relationships? Do individuals bias their reports due to differences in how they rate the number/quality of their relationships? Are there differences in how individuals deal with isolation and/or how the presence of numerous strong relationships affects a given person's overall health? Not to mention potential co-variates associated with potential financial help from friends and family. I would hazard a guess that many of the studies analyzed in the meta-analysis did not account for many of these variables.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDoubtless it is a good idea to improve social relationships and achieve happiness, but it's quite a stretch to claim that individuals with strong social ties live longer as a direct result of their relationships.
I agree with you ...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis seems to indicate that our cultural 'common sense' info that children absorb in their early years that people are each on their own, that they have only themselves, is flat out wrong.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is a major breakthrough in our culture, imho.
I wonder if the subheading on this article might misrepresent the findings when it refers to "a 50 percent boost in longevity". I would interpret that phrase as meaning that connected people live 50% longer than unconnected people. But that's not what I read in the study itself. In the editorial summary of the paper, I see this: "an OR (odds ratio) of 1.5 means that by the time half of a hypothetical sample of 100 people has died, there will be five more people alive with stronger social relationships than people with weaker social relationships." Note that participants in the included studies were followed for an average of 7.5 years. So the "survival rate" does not necessarily refer to overall lifespan, but rather survival over the period of the study. This all sounds quite different than living 50% longer.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI don't think I like sciam articles very much. They seem to demand that readers memorize things without understanding or analyzing the causes. The article reports that studies from the early 1900s were used in this examination. In this time period, of course it makes sense that having more social contacts will add years to your life.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf you're suffering from a goiter or can't find work during the great depression, clearly you might die if you don't have family or friends to assist you. If your foot is crushed under a horse while you're bucking barley on an isolated farm of migrant workers in the 1940s, of course you're fucked without people to care for you and the medical care that hasn't been developed yet.
How can this study factor out the change in socioeconomic conditions throughout the country that contribute to longevity? How can it factor out population growth, medical advances, fast food, obesity, mental health, transportation, communication advances, etc.
I realize that humans are social animals and that social experiences can have physiological effects, but these articles are too glitzy.
To the comment below: being an introvert does not mean not having social support, nor does it mean not having good quality relationships.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI agree with JoshRom that Sciam could be somewhat more scientific. Some years ago it used to be that way. I have come to the conclusion that Sciam is more and more catering for the easy and not very sophisticated reader.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs to the article on the influence of social contacts on longevity I would say that probably social contacts gives a person the feeling that living has some sense, and that it is therefore that people with many social contacts live longer. It would be interesting to find out what other incentives to live on exist and what effects they have.
I agree with JoshRom that Sciam could be somewhat more scientific. Some years ago it used to be that way. I have come to the conclusion that Sciam is more and more catering for the easy and not very sophisticated reader.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs to the article on the influence of social contacts on longevity I would say that probably social contacts gives a person the feeling that living has some sense, and that it is therefore that people with many social contacts live longer. It would be interesting to find out what other incentives to live on exist and what effects they have.
As positive psychologist pioneer, Dr. Chris Peterson said, "Other people matter."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou mention social media channels like Facebook isolating us, as opposed to serving it's inherent function of connecting us more. What's your opinion on the role online social networks play in this research?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf we take our socializing offline, but perhaps have a 1-2 hour Facebook chat with a friend in place of a phone conversation, do you see that still benefiting our 'social health?'
Great info and article--thanks.
You mention social media channels like Facebook isolating us, as opposed to serving it's inherent function of connecting us more. What's your opinion on the role online social networks play in this research?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf we take our socializing offline, but perhaps have a 1-2 hour Facebook chat with a friend in place of a phone conversation, do you see that still benefiting our 'social health?'
Great info and article--thanks.