Determinants of Social Support Provision in Personal Relationships

Social support is discussed as dyadic interactions in which one person is experiencing distress and the other person attempts to provide support. Drawing from helping research in social psychology as well as social-support research, four sets of variables are presented which influence the likelihood of support attempts: stress factors, recipient factors, relationship factors and provider factors. We also present partial results of a pilot study of support intentions which suggests that the extent of past experience with major stressful conditions is significantly and positively associated with a willingness to provide support to peers themselves experiencing stressful problems.