Perception of Importance of Emotional Support under Stress and Characteristics of Individual’s Social Network

• Main Authors: Tatyana L. Kryukova, Anastasia O. Aripova
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia (RUDN University) 2019-12-01
• Series: RUDN Journal of Psychology and Pedagogics
• Subjects: social support; emotional support; social network; quality of a social network: breadth, density, structure; stressful situations; coping behavior
• Online Access: http://journals.rudn.ru/psychology-pedagogics/article/viewFile/21373/17069

The article gives the concept of emotional support as a social support component shown in stress and coping problem field; it focuses on the problem of relations between the socio-psychological traits of one’s social network and the value of emotional support. The goal is to confirm the interplay between a person’s social network while under stress with situations of different complexity levels. It is assumed that there is a connection between the social and psychological qualities of the network with stressful situations of high and medium levels of emotional complexity. The study involves 196 men and women (17-60 years old; average age - 37 years old, SD = 12.5). Among the methods there is authors’ questionnaire and the G. Perry’ Social Network technique (1990). The results show that there are relationships between the qualities of a person’s social network (breadth, structure) and its estimates of the value of emotional support in stressful situations of medium and high levels of emotional difficulty. It has been found that the emotional support is most important from people from the social network of the personality in the situations of loss, and the least important in the following situations: “reconciliation of spouses”, “end of loan payments” and others. If a person has many friends included into their social network, they value less emotional support in situations of “birth of a child” and “personal success”. People appreciate the importance of the emotional support more if they receive it from their spouse in the situation of “dismissal from work”; from the colleagues the emotional support is the most important in the situations of “dismissal” and “change of position”. At the same time, the statistically significant associations of the social and psychological qualities of the social network and the value of support for an individual in everyday life/emotionally simple situations have not been revealed.