Elsevier

Biological Psychology

Volume 86, Issue 2, February 2011, Pages 137-142
Biological Psychology

Social support and the reactivity hypothesis: Conceptual issues in examining the efficacy of received support during acute psychological stress

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsycho.2010.04.003Get rights and content

Abstract

Social support has been reliably related to better physical health outcomes. One influential model suggests that social support is related to lower cardiovascular disease mortality because it reduces the potentially deleterious consequences of cardiovascular reactivity during acute stress. However, received support and perceived support are separable constructs and epidemiological research suggests variability in links between received support and health. This is important because most social support and acute laboratory stress studies are essentially based on the receipt of support. In this paper, we focus on the conceptualization of received support and its implications for understanding links to support laboratory reactivity paradigms. This analysis highlights the role of theoretically important task, recipient, and provider categories of factors that moderate the effectiveness of received support, as well as the need to examine links between naturalistic perceptions of support and cardiovascular reactivity during stress.

Section snippets

Social support and the reactivity hypothesis: conceptual issues in examining the efficacy of received support during acute psychological stress

Social support has been reliably related to lower rates of morbidity and mortality, especially from cardiovascular disease (Berkman et al., 2000, Cohen, 1988, Uchino, 2004). A critical question in this area relates to the underlying biological mechanisms that may be responsible for such links (Uchino, 2004). One prominent perspective is the stress-buffering model of support which suggests that social support may reduce mortality by decreasing harmful cardiovascular reactions during stress (

Conclusions

The plausibility of links between social support and reactivity in the laboratory are based on several assumptions. One important assumption is that the operationalization of support in the laboratory, matches that of epidemiological studies that have found support to predict reduced cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. As argued in this review, most laboratory reactivity studies are operationalized based on the receipt of support. However, the prior epidemiological literature has shown a

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    Support for this paper was generously provided by grant numbers R01 HL085106 from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, and R21 AG029239 from the National Institute on Aging.

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