Recipient Reactions to Social Support: Contributions of Enacted Support, Conflicted Support and Network Orientation

Abstract

There is a need for a greater understanding of factors that influence individuals' satisfaction with social support. Theory and research on recipient reactions to aid guided the selection of variables for this study and its hypotheses. Results for seventy-eight mental health outpatients indicated that network orientation, conflicted support and enacted support had significant unique effects on support satisfaction. When psychological distress was the criterion, network orientation was a significant predictor, but its effect was not mediated by support satisfaction. The discussion focused on how network orientation, conflicted support and enacted support add to our understanding of recipient reactions to support.

Coping strategies, social support, life orientation and health-related quality of life following traumatic brain injury

“…Coping strategies have been found to be associated with emotional outcome in patients 1-5 years following injury [22]. Failure to cope with stressful life events together with low social support may exacerbate the psychological stress and depressive symptoms of persons with TBI [9,23,24].…”

Attachment Style Dimensions, Network Orientation and the Process of Seeking Help from College Teachers

“…For example, individuals with a negative network orientation may believe that they need to be careful whom they tell personal things to and that other people never really understand their problems and may take advantage of them if they confide in them. As with general expectations, a positive network orientation has been positively associated with personality factors such as high affiliation, high trust and high nurturance (Vaux et al, 1986) and was found to be the only significant predictor of psychological distress when compared with enacted support and the number of conflicted ties in the network (Barrera & Baca, 1990). In this paper, social support network orientation was conceptualized as a construct similar to the general social support expectations construct.…”

The Lived Experience of Volatile Substance Misuse: How Support Contributes to Recovery and Sustained Well-being

“…Focus is on the individual's confidence that the support will be available if needed. This category has shown to be the most strongly associated with psychological well-being (Barrera & Baca, 1990;Cohen & Pressman, 2004). (3) Enacted support-actions of others when assistance and support are requested in the face of stress.…”