Advice and Support: Self-Evaluation Considerations

描述（由申请人提供）：拟议的长期目标 研究是为了更好地了解社会支持的影响，特别是 由浪漫的伴侣和配偶提供。社会支持似乎 在重要方面有助于关系的满意度和稳定性， 可能在维持婚姻稳定和婚姻满意度方面发挥关键作用。 因为婚姻关系的各个方面都是可以接受的， 干预（Baucom等人，1998年），具有巨大的潜在社会效益 可能源于对社会支持的功能和影响的理解， 婚姻此外，预防工作特别有可能 响应于基础研究发现（Bradbury等人，（2000）婚姻 治疗目前正在经历深刻的变化（Gottman，1999）。这些 考虑导致的结论是，研究提供社会 婚姻方面的支持尤其及时。 当前的应用程序解决了社会比较研究中的几个空白 因为它们与社会支持有关，因此使这个机构 的研究更适用于应用背景下的支持， 关系和婚姻。每项拟议的研究都是强烈的理论驱动， 他们共同设计，以提供更坚实的理论基础， 社会比较文学在亲密关系中的应用 上下文特别是，我们研究的方式，“防御”可能导致 努力为合作伙伴提供支持。我们研究咨询和 指导性支持可能导致自我评价威胁和有问题反应 提供支持，包括咨询意见的负面影响， 对已经给出的建议的认知，以及未能利用这些建议。 我们还研究了社会比较过程影响 对合作伙伴支持的期望，以及对 搭档最后，对比了不同民族人群的反应 小组来检验对非裔美国人的预测的概括， 人口，一个亚文化背景，可能会更加强调 集体认同在更大的集体导向的背景下，社会 比较过程可能会以不同的方式展开。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The long-term objective of the proposed research is to better understand the effects of social support, particularly that offered by romantic partners and spouses. Social support appears to contribute in important ways to relationship satisfaction and stability, and may play a key role in maintaining marital stability and marital satisfaction. Because various aspects of marital relationships are amenable to efforts at intervention (Baucom, et al., 1998), considerable potential societal benefit may result from understanding the function and effects of social support in marriage. In addition, prevention efforts are particularly likely to be responsive to basic research findings (Bradbury et al., 2000), and marital therapy is currently undergoing profound changes (Gottman, 1999). These considerations lead to the conclusion that research on the provision of social support in marriage is particularly timely. The current application addresses several gaps in research on social comparison processes as they are related to social support and therefore renders this body of research more applicable to the applied context of support in romantic relationships and marriage. Each proposed study is strongly theory driven and jointly they are designed to provide a firmer theoretical foundation for the application of the social comparison literature to the close relationship context. In particular, we examine the way in which "defensiveness" may result from efforts to provide partners with support. We examine the way advice and directive support may lead to self-evaluation threat and problematic reactions to offers of support, including a more negative impact of advice, negative cognitions about advice that has been given, and failure to utilize the advice. We examine as well the potential for social comparison processes to influence expectations about partner support, and positive and negative evaluation of the partner. Finally, we contrast the response of persons in different ethnic groups to examine the generalization of predictions to an African-American population, a sub-cultural context that may place greater emphasis on collective identity. In the context of greater collective orientation, social comparison processes may unfold differently.