Jennifer D. McCullough

Explaining the Impact of Attachment Style on Evaluations of Supportive Messages: A Dual-Process Framework

This article reports tests of hypotheses derived from a theory of supportive message outcomes that maintains that the effects of supportive messages are moderated by factors influencing the motivation and ability to process these messages. Participants (N = 331) completed measures of attachment style, which provided individual-level assessments of processing motivation, and responded to either a mildly or moderately severe problem, which manipulated situational motivation.They subsequently evaluated the helpfulness of comforting messages that varied in person centeredness and were attributed to either an acquaintance or a close friend. Although message evaluations were strongly influenced by person centeredness, this effect, as expected, was also moderated by attachment style and problem severity. Results are discussed in terms of the dual-process theory of supportive message outcomes.

Are Gender Differences in Responses to Supportive Communication a Matter of Ability, Motivation, or Both? Reading Patterns of Situation Effects Through the Lens of a Dual-Process Theory

Women process information about support situations and messages more extensively than men, but little is known about whether these gender differences reflect underlying differences in processing ability, motivation, or both. Two studies examined information processing by men and women in both relatively less serious and more serious situations. Participants in Study 1 responded to more and less serious experimental scenarios, whereas participants in Study 2 reported on a recent bereavement situation. In both studies, the pattern of observed gender differences was most consistent with women possessing both greater ability and greater motivation to process information about support situations and messages.

Explaining Gender Differences in the Perception of Support Availability: The Mediating Effects of Construct Availability and Accessibility

Perceived support availability (PSA), a general belief about the likelihood that social support will be available when needed, is associated with numerous processes and outcomes of supportive communication. Currently, however, there is little understanding of the factors that contribute to this belief. Numerous studies have reported gender differences in PSA, with women generally indicating that they see support as more available than do men; in turn, gender differences in PSA have been cited to explain gender differences in the production and interpretation of supportive messages. In an effort to explain gender differences in PSA and, more broadly, understand the social-cognitive factors that contribute to individual differences in PSA, this article proposes and reports a test of a theoretical model that treats PSA as the outcome of the availability and accessibility of cognitive schemata for construing social situations. Participants (150 men and 271 women) completed instruments providing assessments of PSA, construct availability (cognitive complexity), and construct accessibility (expressive and instrumental orientations). Bootstrap procedures for the simultaneous assessment of multiple mediators found that construct accessibility generally was a stronger mediator of gender differences in PSA than construct availability. However, a cooperative suppression effect was found for 1 index of construct accessibility, complicating the interpretation of mediation effects.

The Creative Character of Talk: Individual Differences in Narrative Production Ability

The creative character of human message behavior is at once ubiquitous and elusive. Our talk is routinely novel, and yet our understanding of the processes that give rise to such creativity is in its infancy. Moreover, everyday experience suggests that some people are simply better at “thinking on their feet” than are others. The current studies sought to ascertain whether people do, indeed, differ in their ability to produce novel messages or whether our impression of individual differences is more perceived than actual. Two studies involving examination of simple SITUATION-ACTION-BECAUSE narratives are reported. The results of Study 1 suggest that people do differ in their message-production abilities. Additional analyses suggest that this individual difference in message-production ability is distinct from extraversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism as assessed by the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire. EPQ lie-scale scores were, however, related to narrative-production performance, and this may reflect differences in social knowledge and skill. Study 2 replicated the finding of an individual difference in narrative-production ability and again indicated that performance in the experimental paradigm is related to lie-scale scores, but not extraversion or neuroticism (as those dimensions are assessed by the EPI). Additional findings in both studies relate message fluency to the cognitive demands of narrative production. Implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.

A Phrase Well Turned: Creative Facility in Narrative Production

It is commonly recognized that messages are simultaneously patterned and creative, but studies of message production have tended to focus on repetitive features of messages, to the relative exclusion of examination of their novel characteristics. This study is concerned with creative facility—the ability readily to construct novel, appropriate messages. In order to investigate this phenomenon, subjects produced a series of simple SITUATION-ACTION-BECAUSE narratives and also completed measures of speed of information processing (Digit-Symbol Substitution Test, DSST), cognitive tempo (Matching Familiar Figures Test, MFFT), and need for cognitive structure (Personal Need for Structure scale, PNS). Results indicate each of these measures was related to the speed with which participants were able to formulate their narratives. Moreover, the impact of both cognitive tempo, assessed as number of errors on the MFFT, and need for cognitive structure was heightened under more cognitively demanding message-production conditions. Implications of these results and suggestions for future research are discussed.