Brian Lakey

Locus of control as a stress moderator: The role of control perceptions and social support

The study investigated the effects of locus of control beliefs as an individual difference variable on (a) the relationship between negative life events and psychological disorder, (b) perceptions of control over negative life events, and (c) the receipt and impact of social support. Ninety-three college undergraduates (52 internals, 41 externals) reported the negative events which occurred to them in the past year, their perceived control over these events, the amount of socially supportive transactions they received, and their psychological symptomatology (anxiety and depression). The correlation between negative events and anxiety was greater for externals than for internals. However, locus of control did not effect ratings of control over negative events or the correlations between high and low control negative events and psychological disorder. Locus of control did effect the receipt and impact of social support. Externality was positively related to the quantity of support received (r(90) = .21, p less than .05) but the stress-buffering effect of support was obtained for internals and not externals. Implications of the results from understanding the process by which locus of control moderates the effects of stress are discussed.

Cognitive processes in perceived social support.

Les auteurs rapportent deux etudes dans lesquelles ils essaient de montrer que le soutien social percu fonctionne en partie comme un construit cognitif de personnalite

Sourcebook of Social Support and Personality

Conceptual and Methodological Issues in Research on Social Support and the Personality: Personality and Social Support Processes: A Conceptual Overview G.R. Pierce, et al. A Relational Schema Approach to Social Support T. Pierce, et al. The Dynamics of Volitional Reliance: A Motivational Perspective on Dependence, Independence, and Social Support J. Solky-Butzel, R.M. Ryan. Coping as an Individual Difference Variable J.T. Ptacek, S. Gross. Social Support, Personality, and Mental and Physical Health: Social Support, Coping, and Psychological Adjustment: A Resource Model C.J. Holahan, et al. Social Support and Personality in Depression: Implications from Behavioral Genetics J.E. Roberts, I.H. Gotlib. Social Support and Personality in Life Stress Adjustment L.H. Cohen, et al. Social Support in Marriage An Analysis of Intraindividual and Interpersonal Components L.A. Pasch, et al. Social Support, Personality and Supportive Interactions: Adult Attachment Patterns and Social Support Processes K. Bartholomew, et al. Personality and Help-Seeking: Autonomous vs. Dependent A. Nadler, J. Fisher. Social Support, Stress and Personality: Do All Women Benefit from Husbands Presence During Childbirth? G. Keinan. 9 Additional Articles. Indexes.

Relational regulation theory: a new approach to explain the link between perceived social support and mental health.

Perceived support is consistently linked to good mental health, which is typically explained as resulting from objectively supportive actions that buffer stress. Yet this explanation has difficulty accounting for the often-observed main effects between support and mental health. Relational regulation theory (RRT) hypothesizes that main effects occur when people regulate their affect, thought, and action through ordinary yet affectively consequential conversations and shared activities, rather than through conversations about how to cope with stress. This regulation is primarily relational in that the types of people and social interactions that regulate recipients are mostly a matter of personal taste. RRT operationally defines relationships quantitatively, permitting the clean distinction between relationships and recipient personality. RRT makes a number of new predictions about social support, including new approaches to intervention.

Alexithymia, social support and health problems

This article presents three studies examining whether alexithymia is associated with less perceived and network social support, whether such relationships are accounted for by reduced social skills associated with alexithymia, and whether limited social support links alexithymia to health problems. The relationships between alexithymia (Toronto Alexithymia Scale), social variables, and physical health and depression were examined in both healthy young adults and patients. Alexithymia (especially deficits in identifying and communicating feelings) was related to less perceived support, fewer close relationships, and less social skill: the social skills deficit accounted fully for the association between alexithymia and a smaller social network. Additionally, alexithymia was related to both somatic complaints and depression, but social support generally was not. It is concluded that alexithymia is associated with reduced perceived and network social support, that these associations are likely due to alexithymia-related deficiencies in social skills but that reduced social support does not account for the relationship between alexithymia and health problems.

A Social-Cognitive Perspective on Social Support

We hope that you were able to answer “yes” to this question from Procidano and Heller’s (1983) perceived social support scale, because “yes” answers across a number of similar items are associated with a wide range of positive outcomes. But consider for a moment how you arrived at your answer. From one perspective, you could have made your answer as a “good scientist” would. You carefully recalled and summed all the instances of emotional support that you had received and compared them to the amount that you believe most people get. If your score was a standard deviation above the mean, you answered “Yes,” a standard deviation below, you answered “No,” and within a standard deviation from the mean produced a “Don’t know.”

Low Social Support and Major Depression: Research, Theory and Methodological Issues

Publisher Summary Existing research on social support and depression has been guided by stress and coping social support theory that states that social support is a stable resource that protects people from depression by buffering the effects of stress through social supports effects on coping and appraisal. This chapter reviews research on social support and depression with an emphasis on testing social support theory. Low social support has been linked to a wide range of mental health constructs, including non-specific psychological distress, post-traumatic stress disorder, eating disorders, low self-esteem, and clinical depression. Depression is determined through formal diagnostic criteria, based on the information derived from structured interviews. Commonly used diagnostic criteria are the Diagnostic and Statistic Manual of Mental Disorders, Research Diagnostic Criteria, and the Bedford College criteria. Commonly used structured interviews included the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM disorders, the Present State Examination, and in several important studies of depression in adolescents, the Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia for School-Age Children. Alternative theories of social supports link to depression and methods appropriate for testing those theories are reviewed.Publisher Summary Existing research on social support and depression has been guided by stress and coping social support theory that states that social support is a stable resource that protects people from depression by buffering the effects of stress through social supports effects on coping and appraisal. This chapter reviews research on social support and depression with an emphasis on testing social support theory. Low social support has been linked to a wide range of mental health constructs, including non-specific psychological distress, post-traumatic stress disorder, eating disorders, low self-esteem, and clinical depression. Depression is determined through formal diagnostic criteria, based on the information derived from structured interviews. Commonly used diagnostic criteria are the Diagnostic and Statistic Manual of Mental Disorders, Research Diagnostic Criteria, and the Bedford College criteria. Commonly used structured interviews included the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM disorders, the Present State Examination, and in several important studies of depression in adolescents, the Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia for School-Age Children. Alternative theories of social supports link to depression and methods appropriate for testing those theories are reviewed.

Social Support and Preventive and Therapeutic Interventions

Social support has been one of the most intensely studied psychosocial factors in health since research in this area began in the mid-1970s. From the very beginning, a major goal of social support research has been to guide novel preventive and treatment interventions (Heller, 1979). This hope has been sustained by the consistent finding that persons with low levels of perceived social support have more negative mental and physical health outcomes than their more fortunate counterparts (Barrera, 1986; Cohen & Wills, 1985; B. R. Sarason, I. G. Sarason, & Pierce, 1990a). In fact, the relation between perceived support and health appears to be one of the more replicable effects in psychology.

Perceived Support and Low Emotional Distress: The Role of Enacted Support, Dyad Similarity, and Provider Personality:

Two important issues in social support research are (a) the characteristics of support providers (e.g., enacted support and provider personality) that perceivers use to judge supportiveness and (b) the extent to which correlations between supportiveness and other constructs reflect the idiosyncratic perceptions of perceivers as well as the social consensus among observers. One-hundred daughter caregivers of parents with probable Alzheimer’s disease and their most important support providers completed measures of perceived and enacted support, dyad similarity, the personality characteristics of providers, and caregivers’ depressive symptoms. A number of different provider characteristics were linked to provider supportiveness. However, these links varied depending on whether they reflected the idiosyncratic perceptions of caregivers or the shared views of caregivers and providers. The link between perceived and enacted support was composed of both idiosyncratic and shared components, whereas the link between support and few depressive symptoms was composed only of idiosyncratic perception.

Antecedents of perceived support: Is perceived family environment generalized to new social relationships?

Cognitive models of social support hypothesize that relatively enduring expectancies about social support influence ongoing social information processing. Drawing from research that suggests that perceived support cognitions are generalized to novel social stimuli, we hypothesized that negative perceptions of the family environment would be generalized to perceptions of new social relations. Incoming freshmen who had moved away to college were assessed in the first week of their first semester on perceived family environment, psychological distress, and a variety of interpersonal person variables (i.e., social skills, agreeableness, and extraversion). Followup measures of perceived support at college were obtained at the end of their first semester. Controlling for social desirability, persons with negative perceptions of their family environments, higher distress, and lower levels of social competence, agreeableness, and extraversion developed lower levels of perceived support than their more fortunate counterparts. In addition, the relation between perceived family environment and developed perceived support did not appear to be mediated by psychological distress or the interpersonal person variables. Implications for understanding the processes by which perceived support is developed in new social settings were discussed.