Social buffering
In social psychology, social buffering is a phenomenon where social connections can alleviate negative consequences of stressful events.
Although there are other models and theories to describe how social support can help reduce individuals' stress responses, social buffering hypothesis is one of the dominant ones. According to this idea, social partners, who can be familiar others or conspecifics, act as buffers in the face of stressful events, specifically while the stress is happening. The model further describes that social support is especially beneficial when levels of stress are also high, but buffering effects are not as relevant when levels of stress are low.
Social buffering has been explored in humans and other social animals, and is important to questions about physical and mental health. Research has attempted to gain insight about the protective effects of social support in several domains, such as biological, developmental, neurological, and clinical settings. Social buffering is also relevant to other psychological processes, including fear, social bonding, and emotional reactivity.
Background
Early history
Psychological research in the mid-twentieth century began to increasingly reveal the role of stressful life events on psychological well-being. This was also around the time that there was a focus on creating standardized approach to diagnosing mental illnesses, with the first Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders being published in 1952. With a honed focus on effective, universal ways to measure mental well-being, and the application of experimental psychology on social issues, a large literature on the effects of social support began to form. This occurred in an effort to fill in the gaps on the specific factors that mediate the relationship between life events and psychological consequences.Specific focus on the attenuation of social support on the negative impacts of stressful events on physical and mental health began in the mid-1970s. This is around the time when the idea of social buffering began to take shape.
It is unclear where the phrase social buffering hypothesis was first mentioned, but one of the most credited and cited works on the topic was published by researchers Sheldon Cohen and Thomas A. Wills in 1985.
Social buffering has been an important feature in psychology since its early use, specifically relevant to social and health psychology. The framework has been applied to several other areas as well, and methods of measurement and definitions of relevant terminology continue to be refined and built upon.
Social support
Social buffering is a subset of social support, and not all occurrences of social support are social buffering. Social support encompasses both the expectation and actual act of being assisted, nurtured, attended to, or participation in a social network.Research on social support makes the distinction between perceived support and received social support. Perceived social support refers to the amount of support people believe that they could potentially receive from their available support system, while received social support is the level of support that people have received. Some studies have shown that perceived social support may be better for mitigating the negative effects of stress on health and psychological well-being, suggesting there is a measurable difference between the types of social support, and proper definition of variables is important to research in the area.
Social support is robustly associated with positive health outcomes. Research has shown that people with larger social networks, higher-quality relationships, and greater access to social support resources have better mental and physical health. The effects of social support have been studied in many different domains of psychology, such as social, developmental, clinical, and health psychology, as well as neuroscience.
Competing model: direct effects hypothesis
The social buffering hypothesis is often compared to or evaluated with the direct effect hypothesis. This hypothesis differs from social buffering in that it holds that social support enhances physical and psychological well-being in general, regardless of the presence of stressors. This model says that social support is beneficial all the time, and that people with high social support have overall better health than those without it.The two models tend to deal with different measures of social support. The direct effects hypothesis measures the level at which a person is integrated into a social network, while the social buffering hypothesis assesses how available the social resources are that help people respond to stressful events. The language around both hypotheses also tends to be different, with the direct effects hypothesis often looking at the enhancement of health and well-being as a result of the perception of support and integration in a network, whereas the buffering hypothesis is more concerned with protection, especially in times of need.
Statistically, the direct effect hypothesis holds that there is no interaction between stress and social support, meaning the same beneficial effects will be observed notwithstanding of the level of stress. Conversely, according to the social buffering hypothesis, the magnitude of the beneficial effect from social support is larger when stress is present, which is reflected in a statistically significant observable interaction when the two effects are studied experimentally. This also means that knowledge of the degree of stress is required for the social buffering hypothesis, where this level may not be as relevant in the context of the direct effects hypothesis.
Despite these models providing somewhat separate explanations, research has found support for both hypotheses, and some work even suggests that both processes happen simultaneously. Researchers have suggested that work directed at critically comparing the two hypotheses may not actually benefit the field studying social support. Instead, it may be more beneficial to use either one as a model that aims to explain specific questions about how social support relates to mediators of health that can be behavioral, psychological, emotional, or biological.
Biology
Research studies done on social buffering and health consequences consistently show that the HPA axis plays a central role in the link between the two.The hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis is a crucial regulator of neuroendocrine responses in the body. The HPA axis is made up of a series of pathways and feedback loops that involve the hypothalamus, anterior pituitary gland, and adrenal gland. It modulates several physiological processes, including the autonomic nervous system, immune system reactions, metabolism, and several other processes that are active during short-term physiological responses to stress. The HPA axis also plays a major role in bodily homeostasis, which includes regulating the cardiovascular system, reproductive system, and central nervous system in addition to those previously mentioned.
Proper functioning of the HPA axis is very important for adaptation and development, and both over- and under-reactivity can lead to a series of consequences. It is important for humans to experience high levels of circulating stress hormones early in life so that they can learn to effectively respond to threat and adapt to their environments. However, too much stress in childhood can lead to long-term and often irreversible dysfunction of the HPA axis.
HPA axis activity goes up during aversive or arousing situations, which can be induced by physical or psychosocial events. The HPA axis is particularly sensitive to psychological stressors, including uncertainty, novelty, and the feeling of being out of control. In addition to being influenced by psychological stressors, one of the most powerful and widely studied moderators of HPA axis activity induced by stressful events is social support. This is why the HPA axis is often a focal point in physiological research examining social buffering effects.
The biological mechanisms of social buffering have been explored, and several components have been identified as relevant: