Journal
PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE
Volume 26, Issue 2, Pages 135-147Publisher
SAGE PUBLICATIONS INC
DOI: 10.1177/0956797614559284
Keywords
health; interpersonal interaction; psychological stress; social support; touch; stress buffering; open data
Categories
Funding
- National Institutes of Health's National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine [AT006694]
- National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases [AI066367]
- National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute [HL65111, HL65112]
- National Institutes of Health [UL1 RR024153, UL1 TR0005]
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Perceived social support has been hypothesized to protect against the pathogenic effects of stress. How such protection might be conferred, however, is not well understood. Using a sample of 404 healthy adults, we examined the roles of perceived social support and received hugs in buffering against interpersonal stress-induced susceptibility to infectious disease. Perceived support was assessed by questionnaire, and daily interpersonal conflict and receipt of hugs were assessed by telephone interviews on 14 consecutive evenings. Subsequently, participants were exposed to a virus that causes a common cold and were monitored in quarantine to assess infection and illness signs. Perceived support protected against the rise in infection risk associated with increasing frequency of conflict. A similar stress-buffering effect emerged for hugging, which explained 32% of the attenuating effect of support. Among infected participants, greater perceived support and more-frequent hugs each predicted less-severe illness signs. These data suggest that hugging may effectively convey social support.
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