Emotion, Social Relationships and Health

A growing literature, on humans and animals, documents linkages between social integration and affiliative relationships and a variety of health and disease outcomes,including mortality. The actual mechanisms through which these efforts occur are, however, not well understood. Emotion likely plays a central role in mediating connections between relational experiences, underlying neurobiological processes, and health outcomes. Many prior studies have focused on the size and proximity of social networks, thereby neglecting their emotional features. When studied, emotion in social relationships has also been heavily weighted on the side of negative and conflictual interactions, thus giving minimal attention to the possible protective benefits of enduring love, nurturance, and affection. This volume brings together, for the fist time, these differing lines of inquiry to advance understanding of how emotion in significant social relationships influences health. The collection integrates knowledge from those with expertise in mapping the nature of emotional experience in human relations with those who are linking social ties to health outcomes, and those who explicate underlying neurobiological mechanisms. A main message of the book is that full explication of how emotion, social relationships, and health are woven together demands multidisciplinary inquiry. To this end, the volume brings together leading experts from fields of affective science, clinical and social psychology, ep