Abstract
Answers to questions at the interface of health, emotion, and relationships (HER) are critical for intervening in medical and social ills ranging from heart disease to aggression. The articles in this special issue report on recent research that targets the HER interface and summarize talks that were given at the 2011 mini-conference of the International Association for Relationship Research held at the University of Arizona. The articles present interdisciplinary approaches for tackling the complexity of HER processes across different relationships, levels of analysis, health domains, and methodologies. The papers report on many new findings but also highlight unanswered (and unasked) questions. In doing so, this work points to areas that are ripe for future cross-disciplinary discussion and investigation.
One reason why the scientific study of relationships is a vital, vibrant and growing enterprise is the well documented link between the quality and quantity of a person’s relationships and their physical and mental health (Holt-Lunstad, Smith, & Layton, 2010; House, Landis, & Umberson, 1988; Whisman, 1999). Emotional processes likely play an important role in this association, especially because they are central to human interactions and are tightly coupled with health and wellbeing in their own right (Butler, 2011; Gross & Munoz, 1995; Kinnunen, Kokkonen, Kaprio, & Pulkkinen, 2005; Ryff & Singer, 2001). A full understanding of the complex associations linking relationships, emotions, and health remains to be grasped, but on this topic one thing is clear: The path forward demands interdisciplinary research at the nexus of these domains.
The articles in this special issue report on recent research that targets the interface of health, emotion, and relationships (HER) and summarize a series of talks that were given at the 2011 mini-conference of the International Association for Relationship Research (IARR) held at the University of Arizona. Questions at the interface of HER represent some of the most pressing and difficult scientific challenges of our time. Intervening in medical and social illnesses such as heart disease, aggression, cancer, loneliness, and depression demands an understanding of the interplay of emotions, relationships, and health. The purpose of the 2011 IARR mini-conference was to bring together interdisciplinary experts tackling this challenge across a variety of relationships (e.g., romantic, parent–child, adult caregiving), health domains (e.g., mental, physical, behavioral and biological factors), and methodologies (e.g., neuroimaging, clinical interventions, momentary experience sampling). The subset of papers in this special issue demonstrates the breadth and depth of the research presented at the conference.
A central challenge for understanding HER is that we are faced with multi-mechanism, multi-person, complex systems that are evolving over time. The research in this issue tackles this complexity in various ways. Several of the papers present research methods for measuring and modeling processes occurring across levels of analysis (e.g., biological, psychological, social) and over time. For example, Beckes and Coan (this issue) discuss emerging statistical approaches for representing temporal synchronization between relationship partners’ neural activity. This focus on social coordination of short-term brain activity is complemented by Robles and colleagues’ presentation (this issue) of daily assessment methods capable of tracking biological, psychological, and social factors over a period of months.
Several other contributors focus on a time-span of years and present evidence for developmental pathways connecting health, emotion, and relationships. First, Leuken and colleagues (this issue) review evidence for a cascading lifetime pattern connecting early family adversity, dysregulated socio-emotional stress responding in childhood and adolescence, and physical and mental health problems later in life. Whisman (this issue) focuses on the adult phase of this trajectory and reviews extensive research demonstrating that relationship discord in adulthood covaries with a wide range of psychological and behavioral disorders. Furthermore, this association is moderated by several individual difference factors, suggesting that relationship discord may function as an interpersonal stressor and thereby increase risk among people with a predisposition for psychopathology.
In the study of HER, one of the most important and critical directions for future research is building individual and family-level interventions to promote health outcomes by altering relational and emotional processes. Cohen and Janicki-Deverts (2009) made this point quite forcefully by noting that most research in the field of HER is observational in nature. In essence, we have few experimental interventions that are informed by relationship theory and science. Given this state of affairs, one important direction for future research is to invent research paradigms that can triangulate information across levels (from the brain to the family) and across time-spans (from minutes to years) to build better interventions (cf. Cacioppo, Bernston, Sheridan, & McClintock, 2000). Furthermore, as pointed out by Robles (this issue), if policy makers and medical practitioners are to be convinced of the relevance of relationships and emotions for health, research investigating the dynamics of HER must demonstrate clinically relevant effects. Although building relationally informed interventions that demonstrate clinically meaningful effects appears to be a tall order, the work in this special issue demonstrates ways to move in this direction.
One clear implication of all of the work gathered here is that health cannot be entirely understood at the individual level; relationship functioning must also be taken into account. A good example of this fact is provided by King and DeLongis’ study (this issue) of daily emotional well-being in stepfamilies. Husbands’ interpersonal behavior (demanding and withdrawing) predicted not only their own emotional well-being, but that of their wives as well. Martire (this issue) addresses this topic in the context of behavioral interventions for improving people’s adaptation skills and coping with chronic illness. As she eloquently points out: “Most adults are in an intimate relationship, and return from an illness diagnosis or acute health event to a daily life in which symptom management and lifestyle changes play out in a dyadic context” (this issue). She then reviews evidence that couple-oriented behavioral interventions do, in fact, provide benefits for patients and suggests ways in which those interventions could be enhanced.
One central question about future research is echoed by all contributors to this issue: What are the dynamic mechanisms operating at the interface of HER? Interestingly, perhaps the most powerful tool for answering this question is scientists themselves forming new social relationships. As suggested by Uchino (this issue), advanced understanding of HER will benefit from the formation of closer links between relationship scientists and health researchers. No one person in one career can be an expert on all aspects of HER. To integrate the various parts of the HER puzzle, we need to promote and foster within- and cross-discipline collaborations that bring together scientists with diverse skills who can address problems of interest at multiple levels of analysis. The 2011 IARR mini-conference on health, emotion, and relationships spurred conversations along these lines. It is our hope that the resulting articles collected in this issue will help to stimulate many future discussions among a diverse range of scholars.