Advice and Support: Self-Evaluation Considerations

简介(由申请人提供)：建议的长远目标 研究是为了更好地了解社会支持的影响，特别是 由恋人和配偶提供。社会支持似乎对 在重要方面对关系满意度和稳定性做出贡献，以及 可能在维持婚姻稳定和婚姻满意度方面起到关键作用。 因为婚姻关系的各个方面都可以通过努力 干预(Baucom等人，1998)，相当大的潜在社会效益 可能源于对社会支持的功能和影响的理解 婚姻。此外，预防工作特别可能是 对基础研究结果的反应(Bradbury等人，2000年)，以及婚姻 治疗目前正在经历深刻的变化(Gottman，1999)。这些 考虑到这一点，得出的结论是，对提供社会福利的研究 对婚姻的支持尤其及时。 目前的应用填补了社会比较研究中的几个空白 过程，因为它们与社会支持相关，因此呈现了这个身体 研究更适用于罗曼蒂克中支持的应用语境 关系和婚姻。每一项拟议的研究都是强烈的理论驱动和 它们共同的设计是为了为 社会比较文学在亲密关系中的应用 背景。特别是，我们研究了“防御性”可能产生的方式。 来自为合作伙伴提供支持的努力。我们检查建议和建议的方式 指导性支持可能导致自我评估、威胁和问题反应 对于提供支持，包括更负面的建议的影响，负面的 对已经给出的建议的认知，以及没有利用这些建议。 我们还考察了社会比较过程影响的可能性 对合作伙伴支持的期望，以及对 搭档。最后，我们对比了不同民族的人的反应 研究对非裔美国人的预测泛化的组织 人口，这是一种亚文化背景，可能会更加强调 集体身份。在更大的集体取向的背景下，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.