The production and reception of verbal person-centered social support in face-to-face and computer-mediated dyadic conversations

This dissertation is founded on the assumption that social support is a valuable interpersonal resource that can vary in terms of its quality and efficacy for both support providers and receivers. The goal of this study is to obtain a more comprehensive understanding of the social support process by investigating the manner in which personal, relational, and contextual qualities influence the production and reception of different social support messages.;As a starting point, Chapter 1 defines some of the key concepts in this dissertation. Namely, social support is introduced and reasons are established for its continued study. The remainder of this chapter discusses computer-mediated communication as a distinct communication channel with implications for the study and process of social support.;Chapter 2 provides a more detailed conceptualization and review of research on social support with a concentration on verbal person-centeredness. Verbal person-centered (VPC) messages exist within a theoretical hierarchy that describes message features that are likely to produce more or less beneficial supportive outcomes. This dissertation concentrates on the three main levels of the VPC hierarchy: low person-centered, medium person-centered, and highly person-centered messages. Given their pervasiveness in published research, this chapter also examines sex differences in the provision and reception of social support messages.;In Chapter 3, computer-mediated communication (CMC) is considered as a novel channel for the enactment of comforting interactions. This chapter reviews the research that has been conducted related to social support online and makes predictions about how social support is expected to unfold in CMC given the assumptions of several theories of mediated interpersonal communication. This chapter also describes a preference for online social interaction as an individual difference thought to influence people's experiences of interpersonal CMC. Consistent with the research, theory, and variables reviewed to this point, hypotheses specify the influence of personal, relational, and contextual variables on support providers', receivers', and third party observers' impressions of supportive interactions.;Chapter 4 describes an experiment designed to test the influence of several moderating variables on people's perceptions of supportive interactions. This chapter begins by describing the procedures, participants, and research design of this experiment. This project involved randomly assigning male and female participants to dyads that engaged in conversations about a personal stressor experienced by one of the participants. One participant identified a personally distressing topic to talk about, and the other participant was designated the support provider. Support providers were trained to provide one of the three main levels of person-centered support. Participants then enacted a conversation via an online or face-to-face channel. Research participants completed Internet-based surveys before and after their interactions to measure a number of personal qualities and perceptions of their conversations. Finally, this chapter summarizes the self-reported and rated variables used to test the hypotheses proposed in Chapter 3.;The results of this study are described in Chapter 5. Results provide support for the hyperpersonal perspective of mediated interaction because participants were able to create effective interactions online. I also observed gender differences in message production and reception. Men assigned to the highly person-centered condition experienced the greatest benefit from conducting their supportive interactions online, such that they perceived greater communicative efficacy producing comforting messages online than face-to-face. In contrast, a preference for online social interaction exerted little influence on people's perceptions of supportive interactions.;Finally, Chapter 6 reviews the results presented in Chapter 5 and articulates the implications of this study for a theory of verbal person-centered social support and the continued study of social support in mediated contexts. Limitations of this study and benefits of using an experimental research design to study verbal person-centered social support are also discussed. The chapter concludes by proposing some directions for future research in the study of social support across face-to-face and CMC communication channels.