Making social support judgments: The role of similarity and conscientiousness

Recent social support theory predicts that people derive initial social support judgments about others from global qualities, such as attitudes, values, and personality. This article presents three studies that test this hypothesis. In Study 1, participants described the personal qualities and supportiveness of an individual from their social networks. Study 2 experimentally manipulated the personal characteristics of targets by using a hypothetical other paradigm. In Study 3, strangers participated in brief interactions, and then rated each other on supportiveness and other personal characteristics. In each study, persons were seen as supportive insofar as they were perceived as similar to subjects, and as being conscientious. As predicted, these judgments could be made with very little information about targets, and with no information about the provision of supportive behaviors. Further, the same information used to make initial support judgments was used in thinking about well-established relationships as well.