Ray Colter D, Veluscek Alaina M
Hugh Downs School of Human Communication, Arizona State University, PO Box 871205, Tempe, AZ, 85287-1205, USA.
J Cancer Educ. 2018 Jun;33(3):649-652. doi: 10.1007/s13187-016-1125-z.
Social support studies often focus on psychological outcomes for the support recipient and also presume potential support providers who will attempt to provide support in the first place. Therefore, the negative relational outcomes associated with not receiving emotional support when support is expected (nonsupport) are an understudied topic. Instances of nonsupport were compared to various emotional support messages on relational and psychological outcomes to understand how nonsupport compares against support messages of varying quality. Two hundred twenty-four women with breast cancer were asked to think of a person expected to provide emotional support if they disclosed their diagnosis on social media. Participants were given either a hypothetical support message from this person or told the person provided no message even though a message was expected. Dunnett's t tests were used to analyze the nonsupport condition against low, moderate, and highly person-centered support messages. Providing no emotional support message (nonsupport) creates low levels of emotional improvement and high levels of negative relational ramifications similar to low person-centered messages. Moreover, only participants receiving the low person-centered message agreed on average they would rather have received no message at all instead. Because low person-centered messages and saying nothing whatsoever both create negative relational ramifications, support providers should strive to communicate emotional support messages with at least a moderate amount of person-centeredness. These findings further suggest those who are expected to provide emotional support cannot dodge this obligation since nonsupport is shown to have negative relational outcomes to low person-centered support messages.
社会支持研究通常关注支持接受者的心理结果，并且还假定了潜在的支持提供者，这些提供者首先会试图提供支持。因此，当预期会得到情感支持却未得到（无支持）时所产生的负面关系结果是一个研究不足的主题。将无支持的情况与各种情感支持信息在关系和心理结果方面进行比较，以了解无支持与不同质量的支持信息相比如何。224名乳腺癌女性被要求设想一个如果她们在社交媒体上透露自己的诊断结果就会提供情感支持的人。参与者要么收到来自这个人的一条假设的支持信息，要么被告知尽管预期会有信息，但这个人没有提供任何信息。使用邓尼特t检验来分析无支持情况与低、中、高以个人为中心的支持信息之间的差异。不提供情感支持信息（无支持）会带来低水平的情绪改善和高水平的负面关系影响，这与低以个人为中心的信息类似。此外，只有收到低以个人为中心信息的参与者平均表示他们宁愿根本没有收到任何信息。由于低以个人为中心的信息和完全不提供任何信息都会产生负面关系影响，支持提供者应该努力传达至少具有适度个人中心性的情感支持信息。这些发现进一步表明，那些被期望提供情感支持的人不能逃避这一义务，因为无支持已被证明会产生与低以个人为中心的支持信息类似的负面关系结果。
