How Does the Comforting Process Work? An Empirical Test of an Appraisal-Based Model of Comforting

Abstract

Burleson and Goldsmith's (1998) comforting model suggests an appraisal-based mechanism through which comforting messages can bring about a positive change in emotional states. This study is a first empirical test of three causal linkages implied by the appraisal-based comforting model. Participants (N = 258) talked about an upsetting event with a confederate trained to display low, moderate, or high levels of person centeredness and nonverbal immediacy. After the conversation, participants completed several scales. Latent composite structural equation modeling was used to examine the model, which showed that person-centered and immediate emotional support exerted a direct effect on emotional improvement. Above and beyond this direct effect, personcentered comfort also encouraged people to verbalize their thoughts and emotions. These verbalizations facilitated cognitive appraisals, which in turn exerted a strong direct effect on emotional improvement. Mediation analyses further suggested that verbalizations of positive emotion words in conjunction with reappraisals partially mediated the influence of person-centered comfort on emotional improvement.

Sharing Emotions and Space – Empathy as a Basis for Cooperative Spatial Interaction

“…The more Max leans forward to place objects near his partner, the more Max expresses his empathy. This is in agreement with Jones and Wirtz [12], who state that human approach behaviors such as leaning forward, have been shown to convey positive affect, involvement and liking. While this paper focuses more on the technical details of the proposed approach, in future work an evaluation of this approach is planned to investigate how Max's modulated helping actions impact a human partner's engagement in achieving a successful cooperation.…”

What Counts as Effective Emotional Support?: Explorations of Individual and Situational Differences

“…The modest effects observed for personality and situational factors in the current studies (as well as for demographic factors in previous studies), in conjunction with the large effects observed for message person centeredness, suggest that messages with different levels of person centeredness exert differential effects on recipients because they impact underlying cognitive and emotional processes in recipients. More specifically, it does not appear that HPC messages are simply conventional devices within certain social groups for indicating care and concern; rather, these messages appear to influence how recipients think about their feelings and the circumstances producing those feelings (Burleson & Goldsmith, 1998;Jones & Wirtz, 2006).…”

The Benefits and Risks of Telling and Listening to Stories of Difficulty Over Time: Experimentally Testing the Expressive Writing Paradigm in the Context of Interpersonal Communication Between Friends

“…Moreover, little research has used experimental procedures (cf. Jones & Wirtz, 2006) to assess the impact of discussing difficult issues over time, despite the fact that friends often discuss difficulty more than once (e.g., Rose, 2002). Thus, in the current study, we expand on evidence from both the EWP and social support literature and pose the following research question to examine the impact of listening to friends' stories of difficulty over time:…”