1 Clackamas Community College, Oregon City, OR, USA.
2 Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada.
Pers Soc Psychol Bull. 2019 Jul;45(7):1028-1041. doi: 10.1177/0146167218802837. Epub 2018 Nov 22.
Indirect support seeking involves sulking, whining, and/or displaying sadness to elicit social support. Ironically, this strategy tends to backfire by prompting rejection from close others. The current research examines how low self-esteem contributes to the use and relational consequences of indirect support seeking during couples' interactions. Results across two dyadic, observational studies (Study 1 = 76 couples, Study 2 = 100 couples) demonstrated that support seekers with lower self-esteem engaged in greater indirect support seeking, and seekers' greater indirect support seeking was associated with greater negative support from partners. Furthermore, partners' negative support was associated with lower seeker perceptions of partner responsiveness, but only when support seekers were low in self-esteem. These results demonstrate how low self-esteem individuals' attempts to protect themselves from social rejection by utilizing indirect support seeking may ironically elicit negative partner support, and undermine the feelings of acceptance that low self-esteem individuals crave.
间接寻求支持包括生闷气、抱怨或表现出悲伤，以引起社会支持。具有讽刺意味的是，这种策略往往会适得其反，促使亲密的人拒绝。当前的研究考察了低自尊如何导致在夫妻互动中使用和关系后果的间接支持寻求。两项对偶观察研究的结果（研究 1=76 对，研究 2=100 对）表明，自尊心较低的寻求支持的人会更多地进行间接支持寻求，而寻求者更多的间接支持寻求与伴侣提供的更多负面支持有关。此外，伴侣的负面支持与寻求者对伴侣响应性的感知降低有关，但只有当寻求者自尊心较低时才会如此。这些结果表明，低自尊的个体试图通过利用间接寻求支持来保护自己免受社交拒绝，这可能会产生讽刺性的负面伴侣支持，并破坏低自尊个体渴望的接受感。
