#social-connectedness

#social-connectedness

If there's one finding in the psychological literature that warrants your most urgent attention, I'd argue that this is it: Social relationships are our most powerful psychological currency; they are the key to our psychological health. There is no "I" in "Self." The "I" is always in "Society." Human beings are social before they are anything else. Human interaction shapes our psychological landscape more than any other factor.

He resumed this theme in his "Parting Prescription for America," in January 2025, shortly before his term ended. As he emphasizes, and as we've noted previously, social connection has important effects on mental and physical health both through its objective dimensions-the number of relationships and communities, the time we spend with them, and the material supports they offer-and through the subjective sense of connection and belonging, of being loved and cared for.