people

Curriculum Vita

Research Interests

Our relationships with others form a ubiquitous part of our everyday lives. In the classic analysis by Emile Durkheim (1951), suicide rates were higher among individuals who were less socially integrated. The loneliness and despair that characterize a lack of social connections may be responsible for such unfortunate outcomes. Less obvious, however, is the possibility that individuals with poor relationships may also be more at risk for physical disease endpoints such as cardiovascular disease, cancer, or infectious diseases. Is there evidence that such an association exists? If so, how is it that social relationships influence such disease processes? The answer to the first question is relatively well documented. In a review of large prospective studies it was found that less socially integrated individuals had higher mortality rates from all causes, including cardiovascular mortality (House, Landis, & Umberson, 1988). In fact, the evidence linking social relationships to mortality was comparable to standard risk factors such as smoking and physical activity.

What is less known is the answer to the second question of how social relationships influence such long-term health outcomes. Our program of research has been aimed at examining how social relationships influence health at multiple levels of analysis. We have been examining the social (e.g., types of social interactions), cognitive (e.g., how these interactions are interpreted or construed), and physiological (e.g., cardiovascular, endocrine, and immune) processes associated with our all important social relationships (see Uchino, Cacioppo, & Kiecolt-Glaser, 1996; Uchino, Uno, & Holt-Lunstad, 1999 for reviews). For instance, in our program of research we have found that perceptions of supportive relationships predicts reduced cardiovascular reactivity during stress (Uchino & Garvey, 1997; Uno, Uchino, & Smith, 2000) and lower blood pressure in older adults (Uchino, Kiecolt-Glaser, & Cacioppo, 1992; Uchino et al., 1995; Uchino et al., 1999). More recently, we have been developing a broad framework for conceptualizating relationships that differ in how we feel towards them (i.e., primarily positive, primarily negative, both postive and negative). Critical data are now being collected but our recent studies funded by the National Institutes of Health suggest that network members who are sources of positive and negative feelings (ambivalence) may have important and detrimental physiological consequences in their own right (Uchino et al., 2001; Uno et al., 2002). We are now evaluating various hypotheses about why relationships that are sources of ambivalence may have negative consequences.

This research was generously supported by the National Institute of Mental Health, National Institute of Aging, and National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.

Education

Post-doc, The Ohio State University (1993-1994)
Ph.D., The Ohio State University (Psychology, 1993)
M.A., The Ohio State University (Psychology, 1991)
B.A., University of Hawaii at Moanoa (Psychology, 1989)

Selected Publications

Uchino, B.N.,Thoman, D., Byerly, S. (in press). Inference patterns in social psychology: The use and impact of confirmation, falsification, and crucial tests. Social and Personality Psychology COMPASS.

Uchino, B.N., Birmingham, W., Berg, C.A. (in press). Are older adults less or more physiologically reactive? A meta-analysis of age-related differences in cardiovascular reactivity to laboratory tasks. Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences.

Uchino, B.N., Smith, T.W., Birmingham, W., Carlisle, M.C. (in press). Social neuroscientific pathways linking social support to health. To appear in J. Decaty & J. Cacioppo (Eds.), Handbook of social neuroscience. New York: Oxford.

Birmingham, W., Uchino, B.N., Smith, T.W., Light, K.C., & Sanbonmatsu, D.M. (2009). Social ties and cardiovascular function: An examination of relationship positivity and negativity during stress. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 74, 114-119. Download

Uchino, B.N. (2009). Understanding the links between social support and physical health: A lifespan perspective with emphasis on the separability of perceived and received support. Perspectives in Psychological Science, 4, 236-255. Download

Uchino, B.N. (2009). What a lifespan perspective might tell us about why distinct measures of support have differential links to physical health. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 26, 53-62. Download

Campo, R.A., Uchino, B.N., Holt-Lunstad, J., Vaughn, A.A., Reblin, M., & Smith, T.W. (2009). The assessment of positivity and negativity in social networks: The reliability and validity of the Social Relationships Index. Journal of Community Psychology, 37, 471-486. Download

My current graduate students

McKenzie Carlisle
Kimberly Bowen