Everyone will grieve in their lifetime. It is a universal process that has significant implications for our psychological and social functioning. When someone loses a close partner or child it creates both a sense of emotional loss and often causes significant social changes. People lose their spouses social connections and parents often find themselves outside of the social network of parents that provided a large amount of social contact.

Despite the universal nature of grieving surprisingly little is known about the process. One of the best researchers on this topic is George Bonanno, a professor at Teachers College, Columbia University. And a recent paper by Pressman and Bonanno has looked into the time course, social resources, and cultural differences in this process. One of the things they found is that people tended to display their grief in many different social situations early in the grieving process (alone, with family, among friends) but as time passed individuals seemed to use their social resources for different, but equally important, parts of grieving. They would still grieve alone and with their families, but displayed grief less with their friends and used them more to avoid thinking about the deceased. This effect was especially strong in a sample of grievers from Mainland China, who tended to grieve openly with their friends the least. It seems that in loss, people are adept at using different social relationships for different parts of the grieving process.

Further Reading:

http://devweb.tc.columbia.edu/research/esrl/index.htm

Pressman, D. L., & Bonanno, G. A., (2007). With whom do we grieve? Social and cultural determinants of grief processing in the United States and China. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 24, 729-746.