The long-term objective of the proposed research is to better understand the effects of social support, particularly that offered by romantic partners and spouses. Social support appears to contribute in important ways to relationship satisfaction and stability, and may play a key role in maintaining marital stability and marital satisfaction. Because various aspects of marital relationships are amenable to efforts at intervention (Baucom, et al., 1998), considerable potential societal benefit may result from understanding the function and effects of social support in marriage. In addition, prevention efforts are particularly likely to be responsive to basic research findings (Bradbury et al., 2000), and marital therapy is currently undergoing profound changes (Gottman, 1999). These considerations lead to the conclusion that research on the provision of social support in marriage is particularly timely. The current application addresses several gaps in research on social comparison processes as they are related to social support and therefore renders this body of research more applicable to the applied context of support in romantic relationships and marriage. Each proposed study is strongly theory driven and jointly they are designed to provide a firmer theoretical foundation for the application of the social comparison literature to the close relationship context. In particular, we examine the way in which """"""""defensiveness"""""""" may result from efforts to provide partners with support. We examine the way advice and directive support may lead to self-evaluation threat and problematic reactions to offers of support, including a more negative impact of advice, negative cognitions about advice that has been given, and failure to utilize the advice. We examine as well the potential for social comparison processes to influence expectations about partner support, and positive and negative evaluation of the partner. Finally, we contrast the response of persons in different ethnic groups to examine the generalization of predictions to an African-American population, a sub-cultural context that may place greater emphasis on collective identity. In the context of greater collective orientation, social comparison processes may unfold differently.
