Social interactions buffer the effects of poor health on older adults’ well-being

What is it about?

Frequently socially interacting with other people is known to be positively related to higher well-being in daily life. Social interactions are also a possible way to receive and perceive social support. Social support has shown to be important for psychological well-being. The buffering hypothesis of social support even suggests that having social support can weaken negative effects of stressors on well-being. This means that stress is usually associated with less well-being but if social support is received, these negative effects of stress on wellbeing are not as strong. With increasing age, health declines. This decline is associated with a decline in well-being as well and can be seen as a stressor. This study defined poor subjective health as a stressor and investigated whether frequency of social interactions can serve as a buffer between the relationship of poor health and poor well-being. We used data from 118 participants (65 years or older) collected daily over a span of 21 days. Participants reported all social interactions they had (face-to-face, on the telephone, or via text/email) and their daily positive and negative affect and loneliness. They also evaluated their daily health and indicated their health complaints. We found that on days with poorer health, participants also reported less well-being. For the buffering effects we found that on days with more face-to-face interactions, the effect of poor health on loneliness was smaller. Similarly, we found that on days with more telephone interactions, poor health was less strongly related to less positive and more loneliness than on days with less telephone interactions. Participants who reported more telephone calls over the study period than other participants also reported less negative effects of more health complaints on negative affect and loneliness than participants who reported less telephone calls over the study period. For participants who reported more sms/email interactions over the study period, the negative effect of more health complaints on positive affect and of self-reported health on loneliness was also less strong. Our study shows that frequent social interactions can buffer negative effects of poor health on well-being, but different modalities might be better suited to buffer adverse effects in different contexts.

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Why is it important?

Our research shows that not only face-to-face social interactions can positively influence well-being but also other modalities like text messages or telephone calls. Further, our results suggest that different modalities might be able to buffer negative effects of poor health on well-being. However, different modalities might be beneficial in different contexts. It is possible that having a larger online network or being able to digitally connect to others may increase the social support people think they could mobilize in times of crisis buffering negative effects of poor health on well-being. Digital connections should be studied further as a way to keep the social network larger and increase perceived social support. However, to actually receive social support, people might still prefer face-to-face interactions. Future research should investigate how context factors like situation, mood, or reason for an interaction are related to choosing a certain interaction modality.

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