The positive influence of social network ties on physical health and mortality has been well-documented in several traditions of research. Most of this work has focused on the support-providing aspect or social bonds in attempting to explain the mechanisms by which social ties influence physical and emotional health. Far less attention has been paid to the social control or regulatory aspect of social bonds. Little is known about interpersonal efforts to exercise social control, and even less is known about how these processes operate in marriage -- the relationship that is thought to be most influential for emotional and physical health. The proposed study will adopt a dyadic perspective on social control processes in marital relationships by examining the motivations and perceptions of both members of the marital dyad. The following aims are proposed: 1) To examine whether health-related social control attempts by one's spouse ar related to better health practices; 2) To determine in what circumstances social control elicits positive and negative emotional reactions; 3) To determine if marital quality is related to the success of social control attempts, and 4) To examine social control from a dyadic perspective, assessing the beliefs of both spouses in order to better understand the processes that facilitate or inhibit appropriate health behavior. Accordingly, 120 married couples who reported on-going situations at time 1 will be reinterviewed about the social control they experience from their spouse, social control they direct toward their spouse, health behaviors, emotional reaction, and factors that are proposed to moderate the association between social control and health behavior. At time 1 each couple will report on two specific situations, -- one in which they tried to influence their spouse to change a health behavior and one in which their spouse tried to influence them to change a health behavior. This research has tow health-related goals: 1) to increase the success of interventions that have sought to include spouses in health behavior change programs, and 2) to increase knowledge about the why social relationships appear to be so consequential for physical health.
| Lewis, Megan A; Butterfield, Rita M (2005) Antecedents and reactions to health-related social control. Pers Soc Psychol Bull 31:416-27 |
