ReviewPsychosomatic medicine2012
Close relationships and health in daily life: a review and empirical data on intimacy and somatic symptoms.
Review in Psychosomatic medicine, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 26 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
26 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 87 citations in OpenAlex.
- Social Support and Antibody Responses to Vaccination: A Meta-Analysis.Annals of behavioral medicine : a publication of the Society of Behavioral Medicine · 2020Pooled it
- Daily mother-infant skin-to-skin contact and maternal mental health and postpartum healing: a randomized controlled trial.Scientific reports · 2022Trial
- Effectiveness of skin-to-skin contact versus care-as-usual in mothers and their full-term infants: study protocol for a parallel-group randomized controlled trial.BMC pediatrics · 2017Trial
- Perceptions About Dyadic Physical Activity Intervention for Rural-Dwelling People With Cognitive Impairment.Journal of aging and physical activity · 2025Article
- Development and Validation of the Transgender/Nonbinary Identity Support From Partners Scale.Psychology of sexual orientation and gender diversity · 2025Article
- The association between childhood sexual abuse and somatic symptoms at midlife: The roles of depression and intimate partner relationship quality.Journal of family violence · 2024Article
- The importance of high quality real-life social interactions during the COVID-19 pandemic.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Promoting appetitive learning of consensual, empowered vulnerability: a contextual behavioral conceptualization of intimacy.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Review
- Internalized homonegativity moderates the association between attachment avoidance and emotional intimacy among same-sex male couples.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- Recruiting Cisgender Female Couples for Health Disparity-Focused Daily Diary Research: Challenges, Successes, and Lessons Learned.Psychology and sexuality · 2022Article
- Having a Good Time Together: The Role of Companionship in Older Couples' Everyday Life.Gerontology · 2022Article
- Positive Encounters as a Buffer: Pain and Sleep Disturbances in Older Adults' Everyday Lives.Journal of aging and health · 2021Article
- Article
- Automated Detection of Stressful Conversations Using Wearable Physiological and Inertial Sensors.Proceedings of the ACM on interactive, mobile, wearable and ubiquitous technologies · 2020Article
- Self-Rated Health and Age-Related Differences in Ambulatory Blood Pressure: The Mediating Role of Behavioral and Affective Factors.Psychosomatic medicine · 2020Article
- Linking Daily-Life Interpersonal Stressors and Health Problems Via Affective Reactivity in Borderline Personality and Depressive Disorders.Psychosomatic medicine · 2020Article
- Social interactions and physical symptoms in daily life: quality matters for older adults, quantity matters for younger adults.Psychology & health · 2019Article
- Couples' daily self-regulation: The Health Action Process Approach at the dyadic level.PloS one · 2018Article
- Interpersonal mechanisms linking close relationships to health.The American psychologist · 2017Article
- Sexual intimacy in couples is associated with longer telomere length.Psychoneuroendocrinology · 2017Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectiveTo review research on close relationships and health in daily life, with a focus on physiological functioning and somatic symptoms, and to present data on the within-person effects of physical intimacy on somatic symptoms in committed couples' daily life. The empirical study tested whether prior change in physical intimacy predicted subsequent change in symptoms, over and above their concurrent association. In addition, the study tested if increasing and decreasing intimacy had asymmetric effects on symptom change.
methodsIn this study, 164 participants in 82 committed couples reported physical intimacy and somatic symptoms once a day for 33 days.
resultsPrior within-person change in intimacy predicted a subsequent reduction in symptoms; when a person's intimacy increased from one day to the next day, then symptoms decreased over the following days (B = -0.098, standard error [SE] = 0.038, p = .013). This lagged effect of intimacy held over and above the association of concurrent change in intimacy and symptoms (B = -0.122, SE = 0.041, p = .004). The study found asymmetric effects of prior increase and decrease in intimacy; prior intimacy increase predicted reduced subsequent symptoms (B = -0.189, SE = 0.068, p = .047), whereas prior intimacy decrease was unrelated to subsequent symptoms (B = -0.003, SE = 0.063, not significant). There was no evidence for asymmetric effects of intimacy increase and decrease on concurrent symptom change.
conclusionsClose relationships exert influences on health in daily life, and part of this influence is due to intimacy.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.