Social influences on cognitive processing in enacted social support: effects on receivers’ cognitive appraisals, emotion, and affiliation

ABSTRACT

Background and objectives. Social support is linked with psychological health, but its mechanisms are unclear. We examined supporters’ influence on recipients’ cognitive processing as a mechanism of effects of support on outcomes associated with depression.

Design/methods. 2 × 2 between-subjects experiment. 147 participants (1) experienced a negative event (false feedback); (2) received social support modeling one of two contrasting cognitive processing modes (abstract/evaluative or concrete/experiential); (3) generated explanations for the event, later coded for processing mode and internal/external causal attribution; and (4) reported on emotion, perceptions of self and future, and social affiliation. To examine relational effects, half of participants were led to perceive the supporter as similar to themselves via a shared birthday manipulation.

Results. Support condition influenced participants’ processing mode and causal attributions as predicted. Abstract/evaluative support led to more positive emotion and self-perceptions, and less pessimistic expectancies for the future than concrete/experiential support. Perceived similarity moderated effects on beliefs about an upcoming social interaction, magnifying positive affiliation outcomes of abstract/evaluative versus concrete/experiential support.

Conclusions. Processing modes that are generally maladaptive at the intrapersonal level may be adaptive (and vice versa) when they are interpersonally influenced, and perceived similarity may facilitate interpersonal effects of processing mode on affiliation.

KEYWORDS:

• Cognitive processes
• social support
• relationships
• depression
• coping

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to Amanda Benbow, Stephanie Kent, Kate McDermott, Ilana Seager, Annie Humphrey, Mona Khaled, and Kevin Puhlmann for assistance in data collection and coding.

Susan Nolen-Hoeksema passed away in January 2013. We are deeply grateful for her mentorship and friendship, and for her invaluable contributions to this study, which included substantial roles in hypothesis development, study design, and supervision of initial data collection. Her authorship does not imply agreement with final results or conclusions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 The constructs of abstract/evaluative and concrete/experiential processing, as defined and applied by Watkins (2008) and others, rest heavily on abstract versus concrete levels of cognitive construal (see Trope & Liberman, 2010; Vallacher & Wegner, 1987). Given their characteristics, it is unlikely that processing mode is frequently abstract but experiential, or concrete but evaluative, but it should be noted that the terms used here reflect the compound terms used in most related studies of processing mode.

2 In this study, social support was provided by female supporters only. Social support processes may differ in same-gender versus other-gender dyads in ways relevant to our hypotheses (e.g., heterosexual attraction, gender roles and expectations, or gender-cued perceptions of similarity) and to future work. Participant gender was examined as a potential moderator in all study analyses, and in all cases, there were no 2-way interactions between gender and either support condition or similarity condition, and no 3-way interactions.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported in part by an American Psychological Association Research Award to the first author, and by National Institute of Mental Health [grant number 5 T32 MH 015750].