Journal
JOURNAL OF HEALTH AND SOCIAL BEHAVIOR
Volume 62, Issue 3, Pages 371-387Publisher
SAGE PUBLICATIONS INC
DOI: 10.1177/00221465211029353
Keywords
health; social cost; social network; social relationship; social resource
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Funding
- Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange [GS010-A-19]
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This article reviews the research tradition on social relationships, social networks, and health, highlighting the harmful consequences they can have on physical and mental well-being. It proposes a social cost model to integrate the adverse aspects of these properties and suggests future research directions in this area.
The research tradition on social relationships, social networks, and health dates back to the beginning of sociology. As exemplified in the classic work of Durkheim, Simmel, and Tonnies, social relationships and social networks play a double-edged-protective and detrimental-role for health. However, this double-edged role has been given unbalanced attention. In comparison to the salubrious role, the deleterious role has received less scrutiny and needs a focused review and conceptual integration. This article selectively reviews the post-2000 studies that demonstrate the harmful physical and mental health consequences of social relationships (intimate relationships and parenthood) and social networks. It uses a parsimonious three-category typology-structural forms, structural composition, and contents-to categorize relationship and network properties and proposes the social cost model, in contrast to the social resource model, to synthesize and integrate the adverse aspects of these properties. It concludes with future research directions.
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