Supportive people evoke positive affect, but do not reduce negative affect, while supportive groups result from favorable dyadic, not group effects

ABSTRACT

Background and Objectives:

We addressed understudied questions in social support. Do providers, who recipients agree are more supportive than others (i.e., consensually supportive), evoke more favorable affect in recipients? Do groups differ in their supportiveness and do supportive groups evoke favorable affect in their members? Can any group differences be explained by dyadic relationships within groups?

Methods:

We analyzed data from seven samples of well-acquainted groups and groups of strangers in which participants rated each other on supportiveness, and affect experienced when with each group member.

Results:

Social Relations Model analyses indicated that consensually supportive providers evoked higher positive affect in recipients but not lower negative affect. Uniquely supportive relationships evoked higher positive and lower negative affect. Groups differed in their supportiveness and more supportive groups evoked higher positive and lower negative affect. Correlations between support and affect at the level of groups primarily reflected dyadic relationships within groups, rather than the groups themselves. Groups of strangers showed the same effects as well-acquainted groups.

Conclusions:

The findings for consensually supportive providers and low negative affect is inconsistent with most social support theory. Supportive groups’ links to affect could be explained by dyadic relationships within groups, rather than the groups themselves.

KEYWORDS:

• Social support
• support groups
• RRT
• SRM
• affect

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Open data

The data for this paper are available at osf.io/2yg7b.

Notes

1 Historically, social support research has focused on informal support provided by social network members rather than providers of professional services (Barrera Jr, 1986; Cohen & Wills, 1985). Thus, the term “providers” in the current paper refers to informal support from social network members or strangers. Similarly, the term “supportive groups” does not refer to support groups organized or led by professionals. Instead, we assume that any group can be seen by its members as supportive.

2 Throughout the manuscript, we use the term “relational support” to refer to the aspect of perceived support that reflects relationship components specifically.

3 That Marines used a different perceived support measure than the other well-acquainted samples did not have an important impact on the findings. The Marines’ mean perceived support scores did not differ significantly from two of the three other well-acquainted samples. The Marines’ scores were significantly lower than those of the second apartment mate sample, but the latter’s scores were also significantly higher than those of the first apartment mate sample. Correlations among constructs for the Marines’ sample were similar to the correlations from other samples (Lakey et al., 2016).