The effects of the social environment on stress-related cardiovascular activation: Current findings, prospects, and implications

Social relationships have been shown to be health-protective and to improve cardiovascular disease prognosis. One of the mechanisms by which social re lationships may alter health status is through altering patterns of neuroen docrine or hemodynamic responding to ongoing activity. For example, researc h with non-human primates suggests that disrupted social relationships may increase cardiovascular risk through their effects on sympathetic nervous s ystem activation. In humans a number of recent reports have shown that the presence of an affiliative companion can reduce cardiovascular activity dur ing psychologically challenging tasks, results which are consistent with th is proposed mechanism of effect. We review the recent human literature whic h has examined the effects of the social environment on stress-related card iovascular activity. Although findings in this literature are generally con sistent, recent anomalous results are reviewed which shed light on some of the context-dependent effects of social affiliation. Additional areas for f urther investigation are examined, including possible mechanisms for explai ning these social affiliation effects, individual differences which may mod erate these effects, and emerging methodological advances for examining how these effects may generalize to the natural environment.