The world is aging at an unprecedented rate, with older adults representing the fastest-growing segment of the population in most economically developed and developing countries. This demographic shift leaves much uncharted territory for researchers who study social relationships and health. Social relationships exert powerful influences on physical health in later adulthood, a critical conside...

OBJECTIVE Although the link between enhanced social relationships and better health has generally been well established, few studies have examined the role of leisure activity in this link. This study examined how leisure influences the link between social relationships and health in older age. METHOD Using data from the 2006 and 2010 waves of the nationally representative U.S. Health and Ret...

The proliferation of smartphones exploits many new opportunities for mobile advertising. Many researchers believe that mobile advertising will be not only a killer application in mobile commerce, but also a noteworthy business model for many emerging mobile applications to monetize. Location based advertising (LBA) is a new advertising that integrates mobile advertising with location based serv...

Relationships have both positive and negative dimensions, yet most research in the area of intimate partner violence (IPV) has focused on social support, and not on social conflict. Based on the data from 309 English-speaking Canadian women who experienced IPV in the past 3 years and were no longer living with the abuser, we tested four hypotheses examining the relationships among severity of p...

OBJECTIVES We present a novel way of classifying and comparing measures of social relationships to help readers interpret the growing literature on loneliness and social isolation and to provide researchers with a starting point to guide their choice of measuring tool. METHODS Measures of social relationships used in epidemiological studies were identified from two systematic reviews-one revi...

Stress in an important determinant of socially mediated causes of poor health. Stress can increase the risk of cardiovascular disease, lower immune function, and impair other physiological functions. We review the literature on stress and physiology in primates and other animals in order to extract from it important insights into human health patterns. From this literature, we learn that both d...