Give thanks for a little and you will find a lot: The role of a support seeker’s reply in online support provision

ABSTRACT

This experiment examined reciprocal communication among support seekers and support providers in online support forums. An interactive online support forum web page was employed where comments to a support-seeking post and a support seeker’s reply to previous comments were manipulated, and participants could post their responses on the interactive web page. Results showed that support seekers received more supportive responses from subsequent viewers when they expressed appreciation for earlier comments. Compared with an appreciative reply to supportive comments, the same reply to unsupportive comments elicited more positive expectancy violations and thus higher levels of action-focused supportiveness in viewers’ responses. This study extended the application of expectancy violations theory to the context of online support forums.

KEYWORDS:

• Online support
• support seeking
• support seeker reply
• support provision
• expectancy violation
• verbal person-centeredness

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Siyue Li (PhD, University of California at Davis) is an assistant professor in the School of Communication at The Ohio State University.

Bo Feng (PhD, Purdue University) is a professor in the Department of Communication at University of California, Davis.

V. Skye Wingate (MS, Morehead State University) is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Communication at University of California, Davis.

Notes

1 We conducted a follow-up test to see if sex played a role in viewers’ perceptions and support provision. Our analysis showed that male and female participants in this study did not differ in any of the dependent variables, ps ≥ .23.

2 In the larger project, a support seeker’s reply also varies in the presence or absence of additional reasoning. Reasoning in support-seeker’s reply included two versions contingent on the topics. In the roommate post, the additional reasoning in the reply was “I should have mentioned that the light I used was a small desk light, not a floor lamp. And I already dimmed it.” In the internship post, the support-seeker added in the reply “I should have mentioned that I was late for work because my dog was sick and I had to take the dog to the vet.” This factor was not included in the analyses reported in this study.

3 The support-seeking messages were adopted from Li and Feng’s study (2015). Others’ comments were developed for this particular study. Most comments were selected from real forums and were modified for this study (e.g., derive an unsupportive version based on the supportive version of a comment).

4 Although action-focused supportiveness bears some resemblance to the notion of confirmation in the advice research, it is not a synonym for confirmation. Instead, action-focused supportiveness is a much richer and broader concept than confirmation. While confirmation in the advice research (e.g., Feng & MacGeorge, 2010; Yaniv, 2004; Yaniv & Kleinberger, 2000) reflects the extent to which advice recommends an action that was already intended by its recipient, action-focused supportiveness refers to the extent to which the support-provider endorses (implicitly or explicitly) the target’s intended or enacted behavior. Action-focused supportiveness may be exhibited in a variety of forms, including sharing similar personal experience/behavior, making a recommendation that is in line with the target’s intended or enacted behavior (which is essentially the same as confirmation in advice), or offering assistance to the target in order to help the target perform the target’s intended behavior.

5 The results showed that the appreciative reply to unsupportive comments (M = 5.29, SD = 0.92) was generally perceived to be positive, and the unappreciative reply to supportive comments (M = 2.89, SD = 1.23) was evaluated negatively.

6 The results showed that the appreciative reply to unsupportive comments (M = 5.29, SD = 0.92) was generally perceived to be positive, and the unappreciative reply to supportive comments (M = 2.89, SD = 1.23) was evaluated negatively.