PARSING COMPLEX SOCIAL-FACTORS TO DETERMINE COMPONENT EFFECTS .1. AUTONOMIC ACTIVITY AND REACTIVITY AS A FUNCTION OF HUMAN ASSOCIATION

Social support has been linked to long-term physiological change and health status. However, the effects of social support on physiological functions and health have not been uniform. Understanding of these relationships may be fostered by isolating the elementary components of social support and studying their individual and interactive effects on physiological response. To examine the potential of this approach, we conducted an experiment in which subjects performed arithmetic problems in one of three social contexts: alone, observed by a same-sex stranger, or observed by a same-sex friend. Consistent with past social psychophysiological research, basal autonomic activity did not vary as a function of social context, whereas sympathetic reactivity (as indexed by peak skin conductance activity) was greater in subjects who performed the task while observed by a stranger than in subjects who performed the task while observed by a friend or who performed the task alone. To determine whether the affective quality of social relations was also related to health outcomes, we surveyed undergraduates who lived in residence halls about their health status and their relationship with their roommates. Results revealed that the friendship the respondents felt toward their roommates (r = - .32) and the negative affectivity evoked by their roommates (r = +.60) predicted the number of visits by respondents to a health-care clinic during that academic year. These studies indicate that the affective quality of human association is an important moderator of physiological reactivity and health, and support the suggestion that basic social psychophysiological research can contribute to our understanding of health by identifying the physiologically potent facets of multifaceted social factors.