Source Analysis

A source Barbara Fredrickson uses in her essay “Love 2.0: How Our Supreme Emotion Affects Everything We Feel, Think, Do, and Become” is “Social Relationships and Health”, a journal article published in Science in 1988 by James S House, Karl R. Landis, and Debra Umberson. This article focuses on how scientists are starting to find connections and relations between an individual’s health and their social relationships. The article explains how people with fewer, less substantial relationships with other human beings leads to a higher risk of death. There exists a plethora of evidence that correlates less social interactions with increased sickness and death. Now, there is evidence to prove that high mortality can be caused by low levels of healthy social interactions. This article has a very analytical tone. It uses plenty of data and numbers to prove the claim this point. It invokes the reader’s attention as it also has a conversational tone, as it invokes its own questions and tries to answer them. Mostly though, the article is an analysis of multiple points of data, and explaining how it all connects to the question at hand. This is a very scientific article. In the end, it discusses the implications of high deaths because of low relationships, and what we must do to try to prevent this from happening more often. It also makes sure to point out that the research and conclusions made are not perfect, as the studies for this topic are scarce and not well established.

James S. House, Karl R. Landis, and Debra Umberson (1988). “Social relationships and health” Science 241 (4865): 540-45. 

http://www.fundacion-salto.org/documentos/social%20relationships-health,%20science,%201988.pdf