ABSTRACT
We spend about two-thirds of our waking hours in the presence of other humans. The lion’s share of that time is spent in the company of “close others,” including family, friends, and co-workers. Indeed, since the time that our ancestors climbed out of the trees and began walking upright on the plains of Africa, we’ve lived our lives with other humans, hunting in groups, cooking and eating together, and raising our children in concert with other families. Not surprisingly, the exceptional sociability of human life colors nearly every phenomenon studied in the social and behavioral sciences: Close others exert a powerful impact on our psychological and physical health. Our cognitive and affective experiences are fundamentally interpersonal. Our “selves”—including our values, dispositions, and behavioral tendencies-are shaped by our relations with close partners. Indeed, virtually all societal structures and processes-formal and informal, economic, legal, and political-are colored by our relations with others. As such, it’s not hyperbole to assert that “no attempt to understand behavior…will be wholly successful until we understand the close relationships that form the foundation and theme of the human condition” (Berscheid & Peplau, 1983, p. 19).
