0000000000704090
AUTHOR
Juliet R. H. Wakefield
Comparing social contact and group identification as predictors of mental health
Current research on social integration and mental health operationalizes social integration as frequency of interactions and participation in social activities (i.e., social contact). This neglects the subjective dimension of social integration, namely group identification. We present two studies comparing the effect exerted by social contact and group identification on mental health (e.g., depression, stress) across two different groups (family; army unit), demonstrating that group identification predicts mental health better than social contact.
Greater family identification-but not greater contact with family members-leads to better health: Evidence from a Spanish longitudinal study
We investigated the effect of family identification (one's subjective sense of belonging to and commonality with the family) on self-reported ill-health in 206 Valencian undergraduates, with eight months between T1 and T2. While greater family identification T1 predicted lower ill-health T2, ill-health T1 did not predict family identification T2. family contact T1 (one’s intensity of interaction with family) was unrelated to ill-health T2. This shows that family identification impacts positively on health over time (rather than health impacting positively on family identification over time), and this is not reducible to effects exerted by family contact. These findings indicate that encoura…
Greater university identification - but not greater contact - leads to more life satisfaction: evidence from a Spanish longitudinal study
Background: A growing body of literature has highlighted the relationship between group identification (a subjective sense of belonging to one’s social group, coupled with a subjective sense of commonality with the group’s members) and wellbeing. However, little of this work is longitudinal, and few studies address reciprocal causality or control for intensity of contact with fellow group members.\ud \ud Method: We investigated the effect of university identification on satisfaction with life (SWL) over time (and vice versa) in 216 Spanish undergraduates, with seven months between T1 and T2. \ud Results: While greater university identification T1 predicted higher SWL T2, SWL T1 did not pred…