Different aspects of social relationships contribute to subjective well-being via different functional connectomes

Abstract

The achievement of improved subjective well-being (SWB) is a worldwide issue. Prior studies using self-report questionnaires have demonstrated that better social relationships (SR) form the foundation for better SWB. To confirm the relationships with objective measure and investigate the biological underpinning, we conducted connectome-based prediction modeling with a 10-fold cross-validation, utilizing resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging data (n = 761). Two aspects of SWB (life satisfaction and positive affect) were successfully predicted using SR-related functional connections (FCs). The models also showed good prediction performance in a validation sample (n = 91), suggesting that our models are generalizable. All six aspects of SR considered were related to different sets of FCs with minimal overlap in edge level. The contributions of these FC sets to the two aspects of SWB were substantially different. In the future, effort should be made to improve all aspects of SR to achieve better SWB.