The social cure - Jetten e.a. - 2009 - Article

How is belonging to multiple social groups related to health?

Commonly, people belong to several different social groups: a student society, sports team, work colleagues, book club, and so forth. Once, membership in a large number of groups was thought to be detrimental, because it was thought that this would complicate our lives and subsequently cause stress. Nowadays, however, research has shown that being part of multiple social networks enhances our resilience and enables one to cope more effectively with difficult live events such as the death of a loved one, job loss, or moving to a completely new area. In fact, belonging to social groups and networks appears to be an important predictor of health, just like diet and exercise are important predictors of health. Further, research has shown that wat matters most is not the number of social groups that one belongs to, but the relations among them. For instance, women who reported higher levels of enery at home, said it was because working have them an energy boost. This is just one example that shows that people may experience work-family facilitation rather than work-family conflict.

The idea that belonging to social groups may improve one's health has been illustrated in many different scientific studies. For instance, a group of researchers studied 655 stroke patients and found that patients who were socially isolated were almost twice as likely to have another stroke within five years after the initial stroke, compared to those with meaningful social relationships. In another study, researchers (Jetten, Haslam, Iyer, Tsivrikos & Postmes) found that, within first-year university students, one of the best predictors of healthy adjustment to the new identity of university student actually was the number of groups that each student had belong to prior to starting school. Students that had belonged to more groups before starting university had lower levels of depression, even after adjusting for other factors such as uncertainty about college and academic obstacles that everyone may encounter.

Does belonging to social groups always make people healthier?

While belonging to social groups is beneficial for our health, one may also wonder whether groups always make us healthier. Can groups also bring us down? For instance, when there is a lot of internal conflict within a group. Or if the group is stigmatized by society. The answer to this question is not very decisive. Briefly, group "failure" has been found to result in one of two outcomes: people either distance themselves from the group and report lower levels of identification, or (as is often the case) their affiliation grows stronger and they feel even more group solidarity. In various studies it was found that the degree of identification actually was the best predictor of health. Whether the group was stigmatized/discriminated or not, if one felt high commitment and feelings of belonging to the group, they reported higher levels of well-being.

What about social networks, such as facebook and instagram? Do they make people healthier? Again, there is no indecisive answer. Some suggest that they are particularly valuable for people who are less mobile, for instance older adults or disable persons. Others warn that social media may instead increase social isolation. Researchers for instance found that people who very frequently used social media were less involved in the "real" communities around them compared to people wo used social media less frequently.