±
. _This Week’s Citation
Cobb S. Social support as a moderator of life stress.
TM FEBRUARY 1985
Psychosom. Med. 38:300-14, 1976.
IBrown University. Providence. Rh
ference was due to the more sup-
I
Social support is defined as informa-
tion leading the subject to believe that portive behavior of the people in
he or she is loved, esteemed, and be- the small, tight-knit, rural commu-
longs to a network of mutual obliga- nity where feelings and concerns
tion. The evidence showing it to be pro- were shared and accepted.
tective against the health conse- The fact that she was able to find
quences of various life stresses is re-
viewed. [The Social Sciences Citation reasonable support for this hypoth-
Index® (SSCI®) indicates that this paper esis in the data already collected
has been cited in over 400 publications led to the further discussion within
since 1976.] the research program entitled Men-
tal. Health in Industry. My col-
leagues, John R.P. French, Jr., and
Robert L. Kahn, also became in-
trigued. We all started looking for
effects in current studies, and I be-
Sidney Cobb gan to browse in the widely scat-
4 Water Street tered literature on the subject.
S. Easton, MA 02375 Then I was elected president of
the American Psychosomatic Soci-
ety. By that time, I was convinced
that social support was of serious
January 15, 1985 importance to psychosomatic med-
icine, so it was hardly surprising
In 1969, Susan Gore asked me if I that I picked the topic for my presi-
had any problems on my mind wor- dential address.
thy of a thesis. I was, at the time, at I suppose one of the reasons that
the Institute for Social Research of this paper has been cited more
the University of Michigan and often than other reviews appearing
beginning to analyze the data from at about the same time is because
a major longitudinal study of the the report defined the term social
health and mental-health effects of support (reference 1 shows how the
job loss. I told her that the prelimi- definition has since evolved and
nary analyses were showing that been clarified) and because the
the comparison between our urban review limited itself to the health
and rural plant closings were sug- and mental-health effects discov-
gesting that though the social ef- ered in studies from a wide variety
fects were worse in the rural area, of disciplines. Probably much more
the health effects were less strik- important than these intrinsic char-
ing. She was intrigued and agreed acteristics of the paper is the sim-
to join the research team. After ple fact that it appeared in a wide-
scouting the data a bit, and after ly read journal at the beginning of
much discussion, she decided to an explosion of interest in this sub-
pursue the hypothesis that the dif- ject.
I. Cobb S & Jonea I M. Social support. support groups and marital relationships. IDuck S. ed.l
Personal relationship.r. 5: repairing personal relationships. London: Academic Press, 19S4.
18 S&BS 1985 by SI® CURRENT CONTENTS®
