ArticleAnnals of behavioral medicine : a publication of the Society of Behavioral Medicine2023
Support-Giving Is Associated With Lower Systemic Inflammation.
Article in Annals of behavioral medicine : a publication of the Society of Behavioral Medicine, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
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.
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Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Prosocial helping behaviors attenuate accelerated cognitive decline driven by APOE ε4.Alzheimer's & dementia : the journal of the Alzheimer's Association · 2026Article
- Volunteering, chronic stress, and systemic inflammation among middle-aged and older adults.Psychoneuroendocrinology · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundSupport-giving has emerged as a health-relevant social behavior, such that giving more support is associated with better physical health. However, biological mechanisms by which support-giving and health are linked remain unclear. Whether support-giving uniquely relates to health relative to other psychosocial factors is also an open research question. PURPOSE: Two studies test the hypothesis that support-giving is uniquely (over-and-above other psychosocial factors) related to lower systemic inflammation, a biological correlate of health.
methodsCross-sectional associations of support-giving with markers of systemic inflammation (i.e., interleukin-6 [IL-6], C-reactive protein [CRP]) were examined in two independent samples of midlife adults (Study 1, n = 746; Study 2, n = 350).
resultsConsistent with hypotheses, giving to more social targets (to family and friends, and also volunteering for various causes), but not receiving support from similar targets, was associated with lower IL-6. In conceptual replication and extension with a different measure of support-giving, higher frequency of support-giving behavior was associated with lower IL-6, even after adjusting for social network size and individual differences in social desirability. There were no associations between support-giving and CRP in either sample.
conclusionsFuture research needs to establish causality and directly test mechanistic pathways, but together, findings reaffirm the health-relevance of support-giving behavior and shed light on a promising biological mechanism by which such effects may occur.
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