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If there’s one finding in the psychological literature that warrants your most urgent attention, I’d argue that this is it: Social relationships are our most powerful psychological currency; they are the key to our psychological health. There is no “I” in “Self.” The “I” is always in “Society.”
Human beings are social before they are anything else. Human interaction shapes our psychological landscape more than any other factor. As I argue in my new book, from which this post is adapted, psychological research has converged to support this conclusion. Bang for the buck, social connectivity is the most powerful predictor of well-being and life satisfaction, and the link is not merely correlational. Social connectivity creates well-being. Social isolation, by contrast, has been convincingly linked to higher mortality risk from all causes, on par with other well-established risk factors for mortality, such as smoking or alcoholism.
In 2017, psychologist Julianne Holt-Lunstad of Brigham Young University and colleagues summarized the literature on the effects of social connectedness to conclude that, “[a] robust body of scientific evidence has indicated that being embedded in high-quality close relationships and feeling socially connected to the people in one’s life is associated with decreased risk for all-cause mortality as well as a range of disease morbidities” (see also here). More recently, an extensive review of the research by Holt-Lunstad (2024) concluded:
In recent decades, …scientific evidence has been credibly demonstrating a significant causal effect of lack of social connection on leading physical and mental health indicators, such as cardiovascular disease, stroke, depression and dementia… The strongest evidence documents an independent directional influence of social connection indicators on risk for disease-related and all-cause mortality, adjusting for a robust set of demographic, lifestyle, biological, and health relevant factors
How does social connectedness exert its influence? One path of influence works through its effects on stress. Chronic stress is known to hinder immune function, increase inflammation and cardiovascular risks, and undermine sleep. Social connectedness reduces stress. Connectedness may also affect the operation of genetic health risks. For example, research has shown that high-quality marriage suppresses the activity of mental health risk-related genes.
Indirect effects are also likely since social isolation impacts not only our physiology but also our behavioral decisions. Whether we smoke, exercise, or keep our doctor’s appointments depends heavily on what others around us—our friends, family, and intimate partners—are doing (or want us to do). If your spouse insists that you get checked, you’re more likely to do so. Attempts at improving health habits are more likely to succeed if peer support is available. If all your friends quit smoking, you’re more likely to do that, too. The absence of robust social connections makes us more vulnerable to settling into unhealthy habits, such as poor diet and low physical activity.
Relationships are a key determinant of our path in life right from the start, on both the micro and macro levels. As infants, we depend on others to care for us; our ability to elicit caregiving behaviors in others is therefore programmed into our system. Early relationships will provide a template for understanding ourselves, appraising others, and viewing the world. Later on, our peer relationships and the community within which we are embedded will further shape our values, tastes, identity, and opportunities. Romantic pair bonds in adulthood provide yet another layer of influence. Quality pair bonding has been linked to lower levels of psychological distress and greater well-being.
For human beings, the path to health is relational. Therapy, too, is in essence a relational process. Contrary to popular belief (and common media depictions), people by and large don’t come to therapy to get advice. Advice is a dime a dozen on Google, or ChatGPT—and some of it is good. Rather, as Carl Rogers has noted, people come to therapy to have an experience. The active, healing ingredient in the therapy experience is the human connection at its core. The best predictor of success in therapy is client-therapist rapport, an index of the level of trust and mutuality in the interaction.
The therapeutic connection is unique among our other relations in that it is resolutely nonjudgmental, accepting, and attentive. Clients are regarded with compassion and respect and afforded a safe space within which hard truths heretofore denied may be acknowledged, abiding fears confronted, and extinguished hope rekindled. Moreover, when clients process an issue in therapy, they in effect bring it into the light of another’s benevolent attention. Such interpersonal light is often, as it were, the best mental disinfectant.
This effect, it turns out, is not limited to the confines of the therapy room. For example, a 2020 study by psychologist Karmel Choi (2020) and colleagues examined causal factors for depression in a population sample of over 100,000. The authors first identified correlations between multiple modifiable lifestyle factors (e.g., exercise, sleep, media use, diet, social support, etc.) and depression. Then, they used an analytic technique called Mendelian randomization to find causal relationships between lifestyle factors and depression and compare the strength of their influence. The most powerful causal factor influencing depression was “confiding in others,” which proved to be a strong protective factor.
It turns out that in humans, a secret loses much of its power to paralyze and poison us internally when shared voluntarily with others who can resonate with our experience, accept it, understand it, and understand us through it. In the act of discussing difficult matters, we become less alone, less opaque to ourselves, and thus less fragile. We manifest and build our strength when we acknowledge and share our vulnerabilities.
Life is quite the load, emotionally and otherwise, and it turns out that sharing the load eases it.
