Effects of social support visibility on adjustment to stress: experimental evidence

Previous fieldwork has suggested that visible social support can entail an emotional cost and that a supportive act is most effective when it is accomplished either (a) outside of recipients' awareness or (b) within their awareness but with sufficient subtlety that they do not interpret it as support. To investigate the latter phenomenon, the authors conducted 3 experiments in which female participants were led to expect a stressful speech task and a confederate peer provided support in such a way that it was either visible or invisible (N=257). Invisible support (practical and emotional) reduced emotional reactivity relative to visible and no support. Visible support was either ineffective or it exacerbated reactivity. Explanatory analyses indicated that support was effective when it avoided communicating a sense of inefficacy to recipients.