This study extends and tests advice response theory (ART) by examining message content, message politeness, and advisor characteristics, along with situational and recipient factors as influences on the outcomes of advice. Participants (N = 244) discussed a real, current problem with a friend, completing measures about the advisor, recipient, and situation prior to the interaction, and assessments of advice message qualities and outcomes immediately after. The findings not only support ART but also indicate the need to consider how evaluations of advice evolve over time.

Although the demand for faculty service has increased substantially in recent years, the workload is not shared equitably among tenure-track faculty (Guarino & Borden, 2017; Pyke, 2011). Women faculty tend to spend more time on service activities than men, and they tend to perform important yet less institutionally recognized forms of service like mentoring, committee work, emotional labor, and organizational climate control (Babcock, Recalde, Vesterlund, & Weingart, 2017; Misra, Lundquist, Holmes, & Agiomavritis, 2011). Drawing from the theory of gendered organizations (Acker, 1990), this interview study examined how institutional gender biases impact the visibility and evaluation of faculty service across the tenure-track career trajectory. Our findings reveal how task-oriented forms of service tend to be more visible and valued than relationally oriented service. In addition to addressing a gap in the literature, our study presents practical recommendations to make service more visible, valuable, and equitable across faculty ranks and gender identities.

We propose a comprehensive explanation for gender differences in responses to supportive communication grounded in a dual-process theory of communication outcomes. Two studies confirmed consistent gender differences in responses by US college students to supportive communication and assessed the mediating effects of an ability factor (cognitive complexity) and two motivational factors (expressive and instrumental orientations) on situation elaboration and message evaluation. Study 1 focused on everyday comforting contexts (N=318), whereas Study 2 focused on bereavement (N=103). Both studies found that cognitive complexity mediated gender differences in situation elaboration and further found that cognitive complexity and expressive orientation collectively mediated gender differences in evaluative responses to supportive messages. Theoretical and pragmatic implications of the results are discussed.

We report tests of hypotheses derived from a theory of supportive communication outcomes that maintains the effects of supportive messages are moderated by factors influencing the motivation and ability to process these messages. Participants in two studies completed a measure of cognitive complexity, which provided an assessment of processing ability, and reported their degree of upset with a problem situation, which was hypothesized to impact both motivation and ability; they subsequently evaluated the helpfulness of comforting messages that varied in person centeredness. Consistent with predictions, an index of message processing depth-the degree to which participants discriminated between the helpfulness of better and worse supportive messages-was associated with the factors additively in both studies and interactively in one study.

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.