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Friendship and Social Interaction pp 207–226Cite as

Social Support and Stress: The Buffering Effects of Friendship

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Abstract

The idea that people have beneficial effects on one another is not a new one, but scientists have only recently become aware of the extent of these effects. Research on mental and physical health outcomes has suggested that having friends and confidants can have a positive effect on how one copes with stress and how vulnerable one is to a variety of ills. However, the reasons for this are not clear, and the ways in which having friends translates into these positive outcomes, or how loss of friendship relates to more negative ones, is not well-established either. In this chapter, we focus upon the relationship between friendship, social support, and stress. Several issues are addressed, including the nature of social support and its relation to social comparison theory, the stress response and how it is affected by support variables, and how friendship and social support overlap and differ from one another.

Keywords

  • Social Support
  • Emotional Support
  • Social Comparison
  • Symptom Reporting
  • Social Comparison Theory

These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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Authors
  1. Raymond Fleming
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  2. Andrew Baum
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Old Dominion University, 23508, Norfolk, Virginia, USA

    Valerian J. Derlega & Barbara A. Winstead & 

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Fleming, R., Baum, A. (1986). Social Support and Stress: The Buffering Effects of Friendship. In: Derlega, V.J., Winstead, B.A. (eds) Friendship and Social Interaction. Springer Series in Social Psychology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-4880-4_11

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-4880-4_11

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