Related Experiment Video
Updated: Aug 6, 2026

The Social Dimension of Stress: Experimental Manipulations of Social Support and Social Identity in the Trier Social Stress Test
Published on: November 19, 2015
One-size-fits-all or friend-specific? A social relations model approach to social support in friendships
Anas Alsayed Hasan1, Sarra Jiwa2, Victoria Pringle2
1University of Windsor, Canada.
Abstract:
When providing support to a friend in need, do we tailor our support to the specific person and situation in front of us? Past work tends to assume that this is the case, but it's possible that people have broader support-giving tendencies that persist regardless of the context. Here, we decomposed sources of social support using the Social Relations Model among close friend groups (N = 328 participants, 87 groups, 522 dyads). We found consistent evidence that social support is both a general tendency and a dynamic process, which destabilizes theorizing of social support as an entirely relational (i.e., tailored) process. Overall, our results highlight the importance of accounting for different sources of variance in interpersonal processes.
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