In the research thus far into social wellness, there are two interesting findings. One is a finding by the U.S. based Gallup organization reported by Tom Rath in his book on social wellness in the workplace titled, “Vital Friends”. After working with eight million different records, they found that physical and emotional social wellness indicators did not markedly improve until a person had four friends. Further, the wellness indicators did not rise with additional friends beyond four. It seems that according to this research at any rate, four is the magic number.
Tom and the Gallup organization offer no explanation for this however once again, I have my own theory and that is that four is the minimum number for a group of humans living in primitive circumstances required to survive, and that the most ancient centers of our brain know this and react accordingly.
Regardless of the fact that we do not know for sure why the “four friend effect” occurs, it does and we must work with the reality that it does. If we don’t, our bodies will react with their painful and damaging biochemical motivators regardless of our intellectual objections.
Other research into social isolation seems to indicate that connecting with a friend on at least a weekly basis, although not necessarily the same one, is necessary to maintain physical and emotional health factors. Given that the week is the pulse of modern life, this is a simple metric to use as a target to keep us on track. I have no doubt that the origins of whatever the timetable actually is, is much older.
