"Our relationships with other people are complex, but they matter a great deal. In this edited volume, we review recent perspectives on the connections between social relationships and physical and mental health. Although the potential for psychological events and emotions to affect health is no longer novel, our understanding of their intricacies--from physiological processes to cultural mechanisms--is constantly evolving. The individual chapters in this book explore the myriad connections between stress and illness and how these connections are shaped by the quality of our relationships with other people. Relationships, as examined in this volume, span the full continuum--from social support to social isolation--as do their benefits and costs. Throughout the volume, we emphasize two key themes. First, for all the reasons mentioned previously, the chapters emphasize the fact that relationships matter. The quality and quantity of our connections with other people predict outcomes ranging from happiness to heart disease, from adjustment to maladjustment, and from mortality to longevity. The chapters in this volume are designed to explore the scope of and the mechanisms for these associations, as well as their implications for improving both health and relationships. Second, the chapters emphasize the fact that perceptions matter. One of the most robust conclusions from the stress literature (if not all psychological literature) is that people's perceptions are dramatic and important moderators of emotional, behavioral, and physiological responses. Both actual support (e.g., Cohen, 2004) and perceived support (e.g., Lakey & Cassady, 1990) are predictive of better health; both physical isolation (e.g., Berkman & Syme, 1979) and perceived loneliness (e.g., Hawkley et al., 2003) are predictive of poorer health. A host of individual differences likewise moderate the impact of social threat, caregiver stress, romantic loss, and exposure to risky families. Each of the chapters in this volume highlights the importance of perceptions and individual differences and examines the reasons that these play such an important role. The chapters discuss a number of related constructs under the general umbrella of health, including physical and mental health outcomes, as well as the emotional and physiological mechanisms that may act as precursors to these outcomes. In many cases, these chapters examine moderators of the link between health and relationships--for example, the impact of a romantic loss depends in part on the personality and gender of the person experiencing the loss. In other cases, where the mechanisms are understood, the chapters focus on mediators of the link between health and relationships--for example, physical affection appears to be the mediating mechanism for the health benefits of marriage. The topic of health and social relationships spans multiple perspectives within psychology and related fields, and we have attempted to capture this diversity in this volume. Although the primary intended audience is academic psychologists, we believe that many of the chapters will be of interest to health care professionals and therapists who focus on relationship issues. We also anticipate this volume can be an excellent companion to graduate and advanced undergraduate courses on the topics of stress, health, emotion, and relationships"--Introduction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).

Understanding how people initiate, develop, maintain, and terminate relationships is a core issue in psychology, and the subject matter of this book. The contributors explore and integrate the subtle influence that evolutionary, socio-cultural, and intra-psychic (cognitive, affective and motivational) variables play in relationship processes.

The authors share what they have learned about social relationships over the course of years struggling with the effects of autism, identifying Ten Unwritten Rules as general guidelines for handling social situations.

Building Social Relationships addresses the need for social skills programming for children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorders and other social difficulties by providing a comprehensive model that incorporates the following five steps: assess social functioning, distinguish between skill acquisition and performance deficits, select intervention strategies, implement intervention, and evaluate and monitor progress. The model describes how to organize and make sense of the myriad social skills strategies and resources available to parents and professionals. It is not meant to replace other resources or strategies, but to synthesize them into one comprehensive program.

Social Exchange in Developing Relationships is a collection of papers that deals with the systematic study of the development of relationships. The papers discuss several theoretical perspectives, such as evolutionary theory, personality theory, cognitive developmental theory, equity theory, role theory, and attribution theory. One paper discusses romantic relationships—the evolution of first acquaintance to close or intimate commitment. Another paper presents the hypothesis that the factors causing a relationship to begin will also probably steer intermediate cognitive processes, eventually influencing the nature of the relationship. Commitment requires specific concepts such as input levels contributed to the relationship, duration of these inputs, and their consistency of occurrence. The equity theory suggests that equity principles determine the selection of one's mate and how they (the partners) will get along in the future. One paper analyzes the dynamic theories of social relationships and the resulting research strategies: that the conceptualization of a parameter of a social relationship can affect the choice of data collection techniques and other matters. Sociologists, psychologists, historians, students, and academicians doing sociological research, can benefit greatly from this collection.

This volume brings together, for the first time, inquiries into the size and proximity of social networks and emotion in social relationships to advance understanding of how emotion in significant social relationships influences health. The collection integrates knowledge from those with expertise in mapping the nature of emotional experience in human relations with those who are linking social ties to health outcomes, and those who explicate underlying neurobiological mechanisms. The book puts forth the idea that full explication of how emotion, social relationships, and health are woven together demands multidisciplinary inquiry and brings together leading experts from fields of affective science, clinical and social psychology, epidemiology, psychiatry, psychoneuroimmunology, psychoneuroendocrinology, and health to promote the above synthesis.

"A thoughtful, scholarly yet accessible account of emotion that speaks to current debates associated with the ‘affective turn’ in disciplines including sociology, cultural studies, geography and psychology... invaluable for anyone wanting to understand contemporary engagements with affect, emotion and feeling." - John Cromby, Loughborough University "A lucid, engaging, and thoroughly insightful review of current social scientific thinking on emotions in social life by a leading scholar in the field... The book is sure to become essential reading for both students and researchers interested in emotion" - Jason Hughes, University of Leicester "A masterful exposition of the links between emotions and social relations... Empirically rich and theoretically deep, this is a highly readable book. - Svend Brinkmann, University of Aalborg This book is a compelling and timely addition to the study of emotions, arguing that emotion is a response to the way in which people are embedded in patterns of relationship, both to others and to significant social and political events or situations. Going beyond the traditional discursive understanding of emotions, Burkitt investigates emotions as a complex and dynamic phenomenon that includes the whole self, body and mind, but which always occur in relation to others.