PHED 2022- Wellness Focus Lifestyle, Behavior & Disease

1. Chapter 4 – Your Social Health
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Your Social Health
LectureOutline
I. The Social Dimension of Health
A. Social health refers to the ability to interact effectively with other people and
with the social environment, to develop satisfying interpersonal relationships,
and to fulfill social roles.
B. Supportive relationships buffer us from stress, distress, and disease.
C. Social support refers to the ways in which we provide information or
assistance, show affection, comfort, and confide in others.
1. A sense of belonging may have the greatest impact on a college students’
health.
2. Social contagion, is the process by which friends, friends of friends,
acquaintances, and others in our social circle, influence our behavior and
our health.
II. Communicating
Healthy, mutually beneficial relationships add joy to our years and maybe even
years to our life.
A. Learning to Listen
1. Communication stems from a desire to know and a decision to tell. The
first step is learning how to listen.
2. Information is easy to convey, emotions are not.
B. Being Agreeable but Assertive
1. “Agreeableness” includes being helpful, unselfish, generally trusting,
considerate, cooperative, sympathetic, warm, and concerned for others.
a. The benefits that agreeable people enjoy are strong relationships, less
conflict, happy marriages, better job performance, healthier eating
habits and behaviors, less stress, and fewer medical complaints.
b. Agreeable people aren’t so “nice” that other people easily influence or
take advantage of them.
2. Assertiveness involves respecting your rights and the rights of other
people even when you disagree.

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C. How Men and Women Communicate
1. Men
a. Speak more often and for longer periods.
b. Interrupt more, breaking in on another’s monologue if they aren’t
getting the information they need.
c. Look into a woman’s eyes more often when talking than they would if
talking with another man.
d. When writing, use more numbers, more prepositions, and articles such
as an and the.
e. Write briefer, more utilitarian e-mails.
f. In blogs or chat rooms, are more likely to make strong assertions,
disagree with others, and use profanity and sarcasm.
2. Women
a. Speak more in private, usually to build better connections with others.
b. Are generally better listeners.
c. Are more likely to wait for a speaker to finish rather than interrupting.
d. Look into another woman’s eyes more often than if talking with a man.
e. When writing use more words overall; more words related to emotion;
more idea words; more hearing, feeling, and sensing words; more
causal words; and more modal words.
f. Write e-mails in much the same way they talk.
g. In blogs or chat rooms, are more prone to posing questions, making
suggestions, and including polite expressions.
D. Nonverbal Communication
1. More than 90 percent of communication may be nonverbal.
2. Culture has a great deal of influence over body language.
III. Forming Relationships
We first learn how to relate as children.
A. Friendship
1. Friendship has been described as “the most holy bond of society.”
2. Friends can be a basic source of happiness, a connection to a larger world,
a source of solace in times of trouble.
3. On average we devote 40 percent of our limited social time to the five
most important people we know, who represent just 3 percent of our
social world.
B. Loneliness
1. Longer work hours, busy family schedules, frequent moves, high divorce
rates, have created even more lonely people.

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2. Loneliness is most likely to cause emotional distress when it is chronic
rather than episodic.
3. The true keys to overcoming loneliness are developing resources to fulfill
our own potential and learning to reach out to others.
C. Shyness and Social Anxiety Disorder
1. As many as 40 percent of people describe themselves as shy or socially
anxious.
a. An estimated 10 to 15 percent of children are born with a
predisposition to shyness.
b. Others become shy because they don’t learn proper social responses or
because they experience rejection or shame.
c. People are “fearfully shy” when they withdraw and avoid contact with
others and experience a high degree of anxiety and fear in social
situations.
d. Social phobia is where individuals typically fear and avoid various
social situations.
2. People can overcome shyness.
D. Building a Healthy Community
1. Altruism is helping or giving to others without thought of self-benefit.
a. Altruism enhances self-esteem, relieves physical and mental stress,
and protects psychological well-being.
E. Doing Good
1. Helping or giving to others enhances self-esteem, relieves physical and
mental stress, and protects psychological well-being.
2. Volunteerism helps those who give as well as those who receive.
IV. Living in a Wired World
Modern technology is changing our social DNA. The amygdala, a brain region
involved in processing emotional reactions, is bigger in individuals with large,
complex, social networks.
A. Social Networking on Campus
1. More than 94 percent of college students maintain a social networking
profile, with Facebook the most popular choice.
B. Facebook
1. The world’s most popular website worldwide was created by a college
student for college students in 2004.
a. The most common motivations undergraduates give for their Facebook
use are:
i. Nurturing or maintaining existing relationships
ii. Seeking new relationships

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iii. Enhancing their reputation
iv. Avoiding loneliness
v. Keeping tabs on other people
vi. Feeling better about themselves
2. Women are more likely to use networking sites to compare themselves
with others and search for information.
3. Men are more likely to look at other people’s profiles to find friends.
4. Freshmen who had a stronger emotional connection to, and spent more
time on, Facebook reported having fewer friends on campus and
experiencing more emotional and academic difficulties in adjusting to
college life.
C. Self-Disclosure and Privacy in a Digital Age
1. Self-disclosure is how much we reveal about ourselves to another person.
2. Social networking has transformed issues of privacy and disclosure.
a. Previously personal moments now play out in public, sometimes by
choice, sometimes by chance.
D. Digital Sexual Disclosures
1. Sexual disclosure can have unanticipated consequences.
a. Woman’s sexy pictures increased the sexual expectations of male
students.
b. Yet at the same time, lessened the guys’ interest in a serious
relationship.
E. Problematic Cell Phone and Internet Use
1. In a recent study of about 500 male and female undergraduates “high-
frequency cell phone users” reported higher levels of anxiety, less
satisfaction with life, and lower grades than peers who use their cell
phones less.
2. Estimates of problematic Internet use among college students range from
1 to 6 percent.
3. For some the Internet has become an outlet for anger.
a. Cyberbullying consists of deliberate, repeated, and hostile actions that
use information and communication technologies, including online
web pages and SMS text messages, with the intent of harming others
by means of intimidation, control, manipulation, false accusations, or
humiliation.
b. Cyberstalking is a form of cyberbullying that uses online sites, forums,
and social media to harass victims and try to damage their reputation
or turn others against them.
V. Dating on Campus

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A. Hooking Up
1. Hooking up refers to a sexual encounter between two people who usually
are not seriously dating and who may or may not know each other well.
2. Why Students Hook Up
a. Students may engage in or endorse casual, commitment-free sexual
encounters for various reasons, including a belief that hooking up is
harmless because it requires no emotional commitment, that hooking
up is fun, that hooking up will enhance their status in a peer group,
that hooking up allows them to assert control over their sexuality, and
that hooking up is a reflection of sexual freedom.
3. Alcohol use and intoxications often play a role in hooking up.
4. Consequences of Hooking Up
a. Although hookups imply no conditions and no expectations, they can
and do have unanticipated consequences, including unwanted
pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections, and sexual violence.
B. Friends with Benefits
1. About 45 to 50 percent of college students report having engaged in a
friends-with benefits relationship in the preceding 12 months.
VI. Loving and Being Loved
Love is essential for both physical and psychological well-being. People who lack
love and commitment are at high risk for a host of illnesses, including infections,
heart disease, and cancer.
A. Intimate Relationships
1. Intimacy is the open, trusting sharing of close, confidential thoughts and
feelings.
2. In intimate relationships, empathy becomes even more important.
3. Committed intimate relationships may be beneficial for college students’
physical and mental health, just as marriage is for spouses.
B. What Attracts Two People to Each Other?
1. We tend to be attracted to people who are similar to ourselves in age, race,
ethnicity, socioeconomic class, and education.
2. In several studies of college students, four predictors ranked as the most
important reasons for attraction: warmth and kindness, desirable
personality, something specific about the person, and reciprocal liking.
C. Infatuation
1. At the time you are experiencing it, there is no difference between
infatuation and lasting love.
2. However, if it is infatuation, it won’t last.
a. Infatuation refers only to falling in love.

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b. People genuinely in love build a relationship together.
c. Infatuation can be a disguise for a strong sex drive, a fear of loneliness,
loneliness itself, or a hunger for approval.
D. The Science of Romance Love
1. A Psychological View
a. Robert Sternberg says love can be viewed as a triangle with three faces:
passion, intimacy, and commitment.
b. Sternberg identified six types of love:
i. Liking
ii. Infatuation
iii. Romantic love
iv. Companionate love
v. Fatuous love
vi. Consummate love
2. An Anthropological View
a. Anthropologists have found evidence of romantic love between
individuals in most of the cultures they have studied – it seems to be a
human universal or at the least, a near-universal.
3. A Biochemical View
a. According to research on neurotransmitters love sets off a chemical
reaction that causes our skin to flush, our palms to sweat, and our
lungs to breathe more deeply and rapidly.
b. As the initial lovers’ high fades, other brain chemicals may come into
play such as endorphins, which are morphine-like chemicals that can
help produce feelings of well-being, security, and tranquility.
E. Mature Love
1. Passionate love is characterized by intense feelings of elations, sexual
desire, and ecstasy.
2. Companionship love is characterized by friendly affection and deep
attachment.
3. Mature love is a complex combination of sexual excitement, tenderness,
commitment, and most of all - an overriding passion that sets it apart from
all other love relationships in one’s life.
VII. Dysfunctional Relationships
Mental health professionals define a dysfunctional relationship as one that doesn’t
promote healthy communication, honesty, and intimacy and either person is made
to feel worthless or incompetent.
A. Intimate Partner Violence
1. Nearly half of all couples experience some form of physical aggression.

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2. In a survey of more than 1,500 never-married undergraduates, 25 percent
reported that they had experienced at least two acts of physical abuse in a
dating relationship.
3. The majority of students who abuse or who are physically abused by a
dating partner may not identify themselves as being in an abusive
relationship.
B. Emotional Abuse
1. Abuse consists of any behavior that uses fear, humiliation, or verbal or
physical assaults to control and subjugate another human being.
2. Emotional abuse includes name calling, blaming, threatening, accusing,
demeaning, judging, and trivializing, minimizing, or denying what a
person says or feels.
3. Often people who were emotionally abused in childhood find themselves
in similar circumstances as adults.
4. Abusers also may have grown up with emotional abuse and view it as a
way of coping with feelings of fear, hurt, powerlessness, or anger.
5. Among the signs of emotional abuse are:
a. Attempting to control various aspects of your life
b. Frequently humiliating you
c. Making you feel as if you are to blame
d. Wanting to know where you are
e. Becoming jealous or angry
f. Threatening to harm you
g. Trying to coerce you
C. Codependency
1. Codependency has expanded to include any maladaptive behaviors
learned by family members in order to survive great emotional pain and
stress, such as an addiction, chronic mental or physical illness, and abuse.
2. Some therapists refer to codependency as a “relationship addiction.”
3. Among the characteristics of codependency are:
a. An exaggerated sense of responsibility for the actions of others
b. An attraction to people who need rescuing
c. Always trying to do more than one’s share
d. Doing anything to cling to a relationship and avoid feeling abandoned
e. An extreme need for approval and recognition
f. A sense of guilt about asserting needs and desires
g. A compelling need to control others
h. Lack of trust in self and/or others
i. Fear of being alone
j. Difficulty identifying feelings

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k. Rigidity/difficulty adjusting to change
l. Chronic anger
m. Lying/dishonesty
n. Poor communications
o. Difficulty making decisions
4. Enabling
a. Enabling is unwittingly contributing to a person’s addictive or abusive
behavior.
D. When Love Ends
1. Sometimes two people grow apart gradually, and both of them realize
that they must go their separate ways. More often, one person falls out of
love first.
2. In surveys, college students say it’s more difficult to initiate a breakup
than to be rejected.
3. It can help if both parties end the relationship in a way that shows
kindness and respect.
VIII. Partnering across the Lifespan
Even though men and women today may have more sexual partners than in the
past, most still yearn for an intense, supportive, exclusive relationship, based on
mutual commitment and enduring over time.
A. The New Transition to Adulthood
1. Emerging adulthood – a unique developmental period that spans the late
teens and the 20s, marked by volatility and identity formation.
a. More than 95 percent of Americans consider the most important
markers of adulthood to be completing school, establishing an
independent household, and being employed full time.
b. Only about half consider it necessary to marry or have children to be
regarded as an adult.
2. Emerging adults who want to get married in their 20s generally express
greater religiosity and more conservative sexual attitudes, are less
sexually active, and engage in fewer risky behaviors.
B. Cohabitation
1. Although couples have always shared homes in informal relationships
without any official ties, “living together,” or cohabitation, has become
more common.
2. The number of couples living together has spiked in recent years.
a. One reason may be economic.
3. Cohabitation can be a prelude to marriage, an alternative to living alone,
or an alternative to marriage.

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4. Couples who cohabit before getting engaged later report less marital
satisfaction, dedication, and confidence as well as more negative
communication and greater potential for divorce than those who lived
together after engagement or after getting married.
5. In some areas, committed couples may register as domestic partners
which would qualify them for benefits such as health insurance.
C. Long-Term Same-Sex Relationships
1. Like heterosexual couples, same-sex relationships progress through
various stages.
2. Because there are no social norms for same-sex unions, researchers
describe these relationships as more egalitarian.
3. Same-sex couples have to deal with everyday ups-and-downs in a social
context of isolation from family, workplace prejudice, and other social
barriers.
4. They display less belligerence, domineering, and fear with each other than
straight couples do.
D. Marriage
1. The proportion of married people, especially in younger age groups, has
been declining for decades.
2. Most young adults view marriage positively and 95 percent expect to
marry in the future.
3. Preparing for Marriage
a. There are scientific ways of predicting marital happiness.
b. Predictors of marital discord, unhappiness, and separation include:
i. A high level of arousal during a discussion
ii. Defensive behaviors
iii. A wife’s expressions of contempt
iv. A husband’s stonewalling
4. The Benefits of Marriage
a. Married people are healthier than those who are divorced, widowed,
never married, or live with a partner.
b. Married people live longer and have lower rates of coronary disease
and cancer, are less likely to suffer back pain, headaches, and other
common illnesses, and recover faster with a better chance of surviving
a serious illness.
c. Married people have lower rates of most mental disorders than single
or divorced individuals.
d. Married men have lower rates of alcohol and drug abuse, depression,
and risk-taking behavior than divorced men.
e. Happy marriage boosts mental health and well-being in both spouses.

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f. Theories as to why marriage benefits health include:
i. Selection
ii. Social support
iii. Behavioral regulation
5. Same-Sex Marriage
a. Sometimes called gay, single-sex, or gender-neutral marriage, refers to
a governmentally socially, or religiously recognized marriage in which
two people of the same sex live together as a family.
b. Same-sex marriages account for about 2 to 7 percent of all marriages
contracted in a single year.
c. These marriages have triggered intense controversy.
6. Issues Couples Confront
a. Even though most couples quarrel about money, they rarely fight over
how much they have. What matters more is what money means to
both partners.
i. To avoid fighting:
(a) Recognize the value of unpaid work.
(b) Talk about financial goals you hope to attain five years from
now.
(c) Go over your finances together so that you have a firm basis in
reality for what you can and can’t afford.
(d) Set aside money for each person to spend without asking or
answering to the other.
b. Like every other aspect of a relationship, sex evolves and changes over
the course of marriage.
i. What matters most isn’t the quantity alone, but the quality of
sexual activity and intimacy.
c. Extramarital Affairs – a husband or wife who learns about a spouse’s
affair typically feels a devastating sense of betrayal as well as deep
feelings of shame, fear of abandonment, depression, and anger.
d. Two-Career Couples – More than 75 percent of women with children
work which can bring pressure to a relationship.
i. Two-career couples must be able to discuss their problems openly
to resolve these pressures.
7. Conflict in Marriage
a. Happier couples interject positive interactions, like a joke or a smile,
into their arguments.
b. As long as the ratio of positive to negative interactions remains at least
five to one, the relationship remains intact.
8. Saving Marriages

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a. Happy marriages allow both partners to self-actualize and develop to
their fullest potential.
b. Suggestions offered are:
i. Focus on friendship.
ii. Remember what you loved and admired in your partner in the first
place.
iii. Show respect.
iv. Forgive one another.
v. Compliment what your partner does.
c. Couples therapy uses a variety of psychological techniques which
include:
i. Behavioral marital therapy
ii. Emotionally focused therapy
iii. Insight-oriented marital therapy
E. Divorce
1. The marriage rate is 6.8 per 1,000 Americans.
2. Among younger adults, divorce rates have plateaued or declined in the
past two decades, but they have doubled among persons over 35.
a. In addition to age, other factors lower the risk of divorce, including:
i. Some college education
ii. Income higher than $50,000
iii. Marrying at age 25 or older
iv. Not having a baby during the first seven months after the wedding
v. Some religious affiliation
vi. Coming from an intact family
b. Race also influences marriage and divorce rates.
c. Children whose parents divorced are less likely to marry and to stay
married.
IX. Family Ties
Only one third of households now include children.
A. Diversity within Families
1. Families have become as diverse as the American population and reflect
different traditions, beliefs, and values.
2. American families are diverse in other ways. Multigenerational families,
with children, parents, and grandparents, make up 3.7 percent of
households.
3. Three of every 10 households consist of blended families, formed when
one or both of the partners bring children from a previous union.
B. Unmarried Parents

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1. The proportion of babies born to unmarried parents has grown from
about 4 percent in 1940 to about 40 percent today.
2. One- third of fathers virtually disappear from their children’s lives within
five years.
3. An increasing number of college students have children.
Key Terms
altruism
blended family
codependency
cohabitation
cyberbullying
cyberstalking
dysfunctional
enabling
family
hookup
intimacy
same-sex marriage
self-disclosure
social contagion
social anxiety disorder