From whom do people seek what type of support? A regulatory scope perspective

Bibliographic Data

ID10165940
AuthorsD S Lee (0000-0003-4267-4604, corresponding author), Kentaro Fujita (0000-0002-6902-9085)
Year2022
Volume124
Issue4
Pages796-811
Publication date2022-07-21
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Personality and Social Psychology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0022-3514 • E-ISSN: 1939-1315
PublisherAmerican Psychological Association (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1037/pspi0000405
OpenAlexW4286494311
LanguageEN
Citations received10

From whom do people seek what type of support? Although people regularly seek support from close and distant others, little work has systematically investigated when and why people approach different people in their support network for different types of support. The present research introduces a novel distinction of social support and explores its relationship to the scope or range of support providers people would consider asking for support. Based on a recent extension of construal level theory (Trope et al., 2021), five experiments tested the bidirectional relation between levels of support and scope-the latter assessed by the social distance of potential support providers. Experiment 1 demonstrated that people can categorize supportive behaviors into low-level support (i.e., addressing the effect of a problem) and high-level support (i.e., addressing the cause of a problem). Experiments 2 and 4 showed that being prompted to seek low-level (vs. high-level) support-oriented people toward support providers who are socially proximal (vs. distal). In Experiment 3, thinking about interacting with a socially proximal (vs. distal) support provider led to a greater focus on receiving low-level (vs. high-level) support. Testing the implication of the link between levels of support and scope, Experiment 5 demonstrated that support recipients reported they would feel more gratitude when they imagined receiving low-level (vs. high-level) support from socially proximal (vs. distal) support providers. Broader implications for social support, interpersonal relationships, and construal level theory research are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

Construal level theory · Interpersonal communication · Interpersonal relationship · MEDLINE · Perspective (graphical · PsycINFO · Scope (computer science · Social support · Attachment and Relationship Dynamics · Behavioral Health and Interventions · Psychology · Social Psychology

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