Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Humans Need Social Interactions


     Could you live without your family and friends? Would you feel relieved to have no one to share memories with, or would you feel lonely and depressed? I know I would feel depressed if I had no human interaction. I would probably go insane.

     It is proven that humans need social interaction to survive. Have you heard of the German Emperor, Frederick II (1194 – 1250)? He was known for doing experiments on humans. One of his experiments was with infants. He took infants from their mothers and raised them without human interaction. His objective was to find out what language the infants would speak once they were old enough to speak, but instead all of the infants died because there was no human interaction.

     Why does social relationships matter? We form relationships because we need that human interaction. We need-to-belong. Need-to-belong is a hypothesis that says each of us is born with a fundamental drive to seek, form, maintain, and protect strong social relationships. With these relationships, it brings us rewards three rewards.

      1)      Emotionally:

         Friends provide us with emotional support and encouragement during times of emotional turmoil. Friends also bring us happiness.  

      2)      Materially:

         Relationships help us meet our material needs like food, shelter, money, and transportation. Humans love to share with others that they feel close with.

      3)      Medically:

         Relationships bring happiness and relaxation, which helps to deal with negative effects of stress, and helps us to deal with illnesses. Stress as we all know has many negative effects on the body such as sleep deprivation, unhealthy weight gain, and decrease in white cell counts.

     I for one do need human interaction and relationships. I know without my family, friends, and my loving boyfriend I would be depressed and lonely. During my first year of college, I didn’t have any friends, and my family was a few hours away. So I had no one, which caused me to have depression and loneliness. I became unhealthy; was getting sick quite a bit, and felt sluggish. When I moved back home, I became healthier, and full of energy because of that human interaction. Family and friends took the stress off of my back with laughter. Did you know that laughter gives you dopamine and endorphins? Health benefit right there!

     Here’s a good link to read about “touch” and human interactions:

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