Supportive people evoke positive affect, but do not reduce negative affect, while supportive groups result from favorable dyadic, not group effects.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: We addressed understudied questions in social support. Do providers, who recipients agree are more supportive than others (i.e., consensually supportive), evoke more favorable affect in recipients? Do groups differ in their supportiveness and do supportive groups evoke favorable affect in their members? Can any group differences be explained by dyadic relationships within groups? METHODS: We analyzed data from seven samples of well-acquainted groups and groups of strangers in which participants rated each other on supportiveness, and affect experienced when with each group member. RESULTS: Social Relations Model analyses indicated that consensually supportive providers evoked higher positive affect in recipients but not lower negative affect. Uniquely supportive relationships evoked higher positive and lower negative affect. Groups differed in their supportiveness and more supportive groups evoked higher positive and lower negative affect. Correlations between support and affect at the level of groups primarily reflected dyadic relationships within groups, rather than the groups themselves. Groups of strangers showed the same effects as well-acquainted groups. CONCLUSIONS: The findings for consensually supportive providers and low negative affect is inconsistent with most social support theory. Supportive groups' links to affect could be explained by dyadic relationships within groups, rather than the groups themselves.

When Forecasting Mutually Supportive Matches Will Be Practically Impossible.

Forecasting which dyads will develop mutually supportive relationships is an important applied and basic research question. Applying psychometric theory to the design of forecasting studies shows that agreement between dyad members about their relationship (relational reciprocity) sets an upper limit for forecasting accuracy by determining the reliability of measurement. To test this, we estimated relational reciprocity in Study 1. Participants in seven samples (six student and one military; N = 504; Ndyads = 766) rated each other on support-related constructs in round-robin designs. Relational reciprocity was very low, undermining reliability. Formulas from psychometric theory predicted that forecasting supportive dyads would be practically impossible. To test this, we had participants in Study 2 complete a measure for matching dyads derived from recent theory. As predicted, supportive matches could not be forecast with acceptable precision. Theoretically, this falsifies some predictions of recent social-support theory. Practically, it remains unclear how to translate basic social-support research into effective interventions.

The broadcast of shared attention and its impact on political persuasion.

In democracies where multitudes yield political influence, so does broadcast media that reaches those multitudes. However, broadcast media may not be powerful simply because it reaches a certain audience, but because each of the recipients is aware of that fact. That is, watching broadcast media can evoke a state of shared attention, or the perception of simultaneous coattention with others. Whereas past research has investigated the effects of shared attention with a few socially close others (i.e., friends, acquaintances, minimal ingroup members), we examine the impact of shared attention with a multitude of unfamiliar others in the context of televised broadcasting. In this paper, we explore whether shared attention increases the psychological impact of televised political speeches, and whether fewer numbers of coattending others diminishes this effect. Five studies investigate whether the perception of simultaneous coattention, or shared attention, on a mass broadcasted political speech leads to more extreme judgments. The results indicate that the perception of synchronous coattention (as compared with coattending asynchronously and attending alone) renders persuasive speeches more persuasive, and unpersuasive speeches more unpersuasive. We also find that recall memory for the content of the speech mediates the effect of shared attention on political persuasion. The results are consistent with the notion that shared attention on mass broadcasted information results in deeper processing of the content, rendering judgments more extreme. In all, our findings imply that shared attention is a cognitive capacity that supports large-scale social coordination, where multitudes of people can cognitively prioritize simultaneously coattended information. (PsycINFO Database Record

Ordinary Social Interaction and the Main Effect Between Perceived Support and Affect.

Relational regulation theory hypothesizes that (a) the main effect between perceived support and mental health primarily reflects ordinary social interaction rather than conversations about stress and how to cope with it, and (b) the extent to which a provider regulates a recipient's mental health primarily reflects the recipient's personal taste (i.e., is relational), rather than the provider's objective supportiveness. In three round-robin studies, participants rated each other on supportiveness and the quality of ordinary social interaction, as well as their own affect when interacting with each other. Samples included marines about to deploy to Afghanistan (N = 100; 150 dyads), students sharing apartments (N = 64; 96 dyads), and strangers (N = 48; 72 dyads). Perceived support and ordinary social interaction were primarily relational, and most of perceived support's main effect on positive affect was redundant with ordinary social interaction. The main effect between perceived support and affect emerged among strangers after brief text conversations, and these links were partially verified by independent observers. Findings for negative affect were less consistent with theory. Ordinary social interaction appears to be able to explain much of the main effect between perceived support and positive affect.

A sex difference in the predisposition for physical competition: males play sports much more than females even in the contemporary U.S.

Much evidence indicates that men experienced an evolutionary history of physical competition, both one-on-one and in coalitions. We thus hypothesized that, compared to girls and women, boys and men will possess a greater motivational predisposition to be interested in sports, especially team sports. According to most scholars, advocacy groups, and the United States courts, however, this hypothesis is challenged by modest sex differences in organized school sports participation in the contemporary U.S., where females comprise 42% of high school participants and 43% of intercollegiate participants. We conducted three studies to test whether organized school sports participation data underestimate the actual sex difference in sports participation. Study 1 analyzed the American Time Use Survey, which interviewed 112,000 individuals regarding their activities during one day. Females accounted for 51% of exercise (i.e., non-competitive) participations, 24% of total sports participations, and 20% of team sports participations. These sex differences were similar for older and younger age groups. Study 2 was based on systematic observations of sports and exercise at 41 public parks in four states. Females accounted for 37% of exercise participations, 19% of individual sports participations, and 10% of team sports participations. Study 3 involved surveying colleges and universities about intramural sports, which primarily consist of undergraduate participation in team sports. Across 34 institutions, females accounted for 26% of registrations. Nine institutions provided historical data, and these did not indicate that the sex difference is diminishing. Therefore, although efforts to ensure more equitable access to sports in the U.S. (i.e., Title IX) have produced many benefits, patterns of sports participation do not challenge the hypothesis of a large sex difference in interest and participation in physical competition.