The DOI matches its Crossref record; 27 of the 27 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Psychological pathways linking social support to health outcomes: A visit with the “ghosts” of research past, present, and future
Open accessAbstract
Contemporary models postulate the importance of psychological mechanisms linking perceived and received social support to physical health outcomes. In this review, we examine studies that directly tested the potential psychological mechanisms responsible for links between social support and health-relevant physiological processes (1980s to 2010). Inconsistent with existing theoretical models, no evidence was found that psychological mechanisms such as depression, perceived stress, and other affective processes are directly responsible for links between support and health. We discuss the importance of considering statistical/design issues, emerging conceptual perspectives, and limitations of our existing models for future research aimed at elucidating the psychological mechanisms responsible for links between social support and physical health outcomes.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
Stress, social support, and the buffering hypothesis
Cohen, S., & Wills, T. A. (1985) · Psychological Bulletin · doi:10.1037/0033-2909.98.2.310 · Cited by 18,093
SPSS and SAS procedures for estimating indirect effects in simple mediation models
Preacher, K. J., & Hayes, A. F. (2004) · Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers · doi:10.3758/bf03206553 · Cited by 17,383
Social Relationships and Mortality Risk: A Meta-analytic Review
Holt-Lunstad, J., Smith, T. B., & Layton, J. B. (2010) · PLoS Medicine · doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1000316 · Cited by 7,272 · cited 5×
“…Linking Social Support to Health Perceived social support is one of the most well-documented psychosocial factors influencing physical health outcomes (see reviews by Berkman et al., 2000; Cohen, 1988; Holt-Lunstad et al., 2010; House et al., 1988; Pinquart & Duberstein, 2010; Uchino, 2004).”
BackgroundInfluentialSocial Relationships and Health
House, J. S., Landis, K. R., & Umberson, D. (1988) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.3399889 · Cited by 7,073
Dickerson, S. S., & Kemeny, M. E. (2004) · Psychological Bulletin · doi:10.1037/0033-2909.130.3.355 · Cited by 5,881
Introduction to Statistical Mediation Analysis
MacKinnon, D. P. (2012) · doi:10.4324/9780203809556 · Cited by 5,618
Social Relationships and Health.
Cohen, S. (2004) · American Psychologist · doi:10.1037/0003-066x.59.8.676 · Cited by 4,852 · cited 3×
“However, it should be noted that many of these authors also caution about making strong inferences about these psychological mechanisms given the lack of direct available evidence (Berkman et al., 2000; Cohen, 2004; Uchino, 2004).”
BackgroundFrom social integration to health: durkheim in the new millennium
Berkman, L. F., Glass, T., Brissette, I., & Seeman, T. E. (2000) · Social Science & Medicine · doi:10.1016/s0277-9536(00)00065-4 · Cited by 4,821
Mechanisms Linking Social Ties and Support to Physical and Mental Health
Thoits, P. A. (2011) · Journal of Health and Social Behavior · doi:10.1177/0022146510395592 · Cited by 4,076
Social Cognitive Neuroscience: A Review of Core Processes
Lieberman, M. D. (2007) · Annual Review of Psychology · doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.58.110405.085654 · Cited by 2,010
Cited by
A new look at social support: A theoretical perspective on thriving through relationships
Feeney, B. C., & Collins, N. L. (2015) · Personality and Social Psychology Review · doi:10.1177/1088868314544222 · Cited by 1,521
Current directions in stress and human immune function
Morey, J. N., Boggero, I. A., Scott, A. B., & Segerstrom, S. C. (2015) · Current Opinion in Psychology · doi:10.1016/j.copsyc.2015.03.007 · Cited by 340
Social support and subjective burden in caregivers of adults and older adults: A meta-analysis
del-Pino-Casado, R., Frías-Osuna, A., Palomino-Moral, P. A., Ruzafa-Martínez, M., & Ramos-Morcillo, A. J. (2018) · PLOS ONE · doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0189874 · Cited by 272
Social Support and Physical Health: Models, Mechanisms, and Opportunities
Uchino, B. N., Bowen, K., Kent de Grey, R., Mikel, J., & Fisher, E. B. (2018) · Principles and Concepts of Behavioral Medicine · doi:10.1007/978-0-387-93826-4_12 · Cited by 257
Self-citationThe Online Social Support Scale: Measure development and validation.
Nick, E. A., Cole, D. A., Cho, S.-J., Smith, D. K., Carter, T. G., & Zelkowitz, R. L. (2018) · Psychological Assessment · doi:10.1037/pas0000558 · Cited by 191
Metadata
- Authors
- Uchino, B. N., Bowen, K., Carlisle, M., & Birmingham, W.
- Venue
- Social Science & Medicine
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2012-04
- Volume
- 74
- Issue
- 7
- Pages
- 949-957
- ISSN
- 0277-9536 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W1981192219
- Cited by
- 435
- References
- 27
- FWCI
- 25.26
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Psychological pathways linking social support to health outcomes: A visit with the “ghosts” of research past, present, and future. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1016/j.socscimed.2011.11.023
- The paper
- Uchino, B. N., Bowen, K., Carlisle, M., & Birmingham, W. (2012). Psychological pathways linking social support to health outcomes: A visit with the “ghosts” of research past, present, and future. Social Science & Medicine. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2011.11.023
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
