They Drive Me Crazy: Difficult Social Ties and Subjective Well-Being

• In Event: 4213 - Health in Social Context: The Role of Work, School, Family, and Community

Abstract

While previous research has mainly focused on the supportive functions of personal networks, their negative aspects have been largely overlooked. This study addressed this lacuna by examining the implications of having difficult social ties for psychological distress and feeling lonely among young and older middle-age adults. It is based on data from the University of California Social Network Study (UCNets), which collected information from about 1,150 individuals and some 12,000 of their social ties using an egocentric network method. The advantage of this approach, unlike most other studies that rely on global network measures, is in identifying specific ties and their roles in the network. The findings show that overall what mattered for subjective well-being was not the presence of the alter in the network but rather the quality of the relationship, specifically that respondents did not feel that the alter was “difficult.” Having a non-difficult partner was associated with a lower frequency of feeling lonely and having non-difficult adult children with lower psychological distress. The adverse effect of a difficult partner was reduced if that partner also provided support and if the larger network was supportive; it was exacerbated if the network was burdensome. Other cross-over effects are discussed. These results point to the importance of studying the effect of difficult social ties on well-being not in isolation but rather as part of the larger networks in which they are embedded.

Authors

• Shira Offer, Bar-Ilan University

• Claude S. Fischer, University of California-Berkeley