Casual interactions
Even ‘weak ties’ to others can better your physical and emotional health
Close relationships with family and friends, we know, are important for our health and well-being. But what about the people who make up our broader social networks: the parents at school drop-off, the neighbor down the street or that colleague in another department who always makes you laugh?
While research on the benefits of social connections has generally focused on the importance of “strong ties,” or the intimate relationships we have with family and close friends, a growing body of research is shedding light on the hidden benefits of casual acquaintances, too. Surprisingly, these “weak ties” (that funny colleague, for example) can serve important functions such as boosting physical and psychological health and buffering against stress and loneliness, researchers have found, including a co-author fromCarnegie Mellon University.
Weak ties can be online acquaintances such as Facebook friends. They may also include someone you see frequently but don’t know well — a gym buddy, a member of your church or synagogue, or someone you see at a regular volunteer activity.
“While most people can only keep up a few strong ties because of the time and investment they require, weak ties can number in the hundreds,” says Karen Fingerman, a professor of human development and family sciences at the University of Texas at Austin, who has been studying the impact of such “peripheral” ties for the past 20 years.
Decades of research suggest that having a diverse network of strong and weak ties is physically and psychologically protective. Maintaining various social roles, such as being a spouse, best friend, colleague and, say, a member of a cycling club and the PTA, is associated with better cognitive functioning, better emotional and physical health, and a decreased risk of mortality in later life.
People with high levels of what psychologists call social integration — those who participate in a broad range of relationships that consist of both intimate and weak ties — tend to be healthier and happier. Ms. Fingerman says that we don’t know why wide networks have so many benefits, but a variety of reasons have been proposed: They help buffer against stress, keep us calmer and encourage positive health behaviors. At certain stages of life, they also can provide novel information that might land us a job or get us to the doctor faster.
New research highlights one way that diverse networks may influence our physical health. In a study published recently in the journal Health Psychology, researchers analyzed data from more than 4,000 people, ages 52 to 94.
The researchers wanted to see whether high levels of social integration were associated, over time, with less age-related loss of lung function, an important indicator of health and longevity. (Reduced lung function predicts mortality and disease outcomes, such as cardiovascular disease, asthma and other lung disorders.)
Participants’ lung function was assessed at the start of the study and