The Influence of Communication Modality on Verbal Person-Centered Supportive Conversations between Friends

Abstract

Decades of research document that individuals depend on others in times of difficulty and stress, making social support one of the most important relational resources on which people rely. Not all support is equally effective, however, and past research identifies Verbal Person Centeredness (VPC) as an important feature characterizing the quality of support. Although a wealth of research has explored VPC within the context of face-to-face (FtF) communication, people are increasingly incorporating computer-mediated channels (e.g., social networking sites, text messaging, Skype) to create, sustain, and supplement supportive interactions. Yet, little research exists that systematically examines how or why such modalities uniquely influence supportive communication in general, or verbal person-centered supportive communication in particular. Thus, the purpose of this project was to acquire a more nuanced and ecologically valid understanding regarding how established relational partners, particularly friends, engage in verbal person-centered supportive communication via different communication modalities. An affordance-based framework was used to explore whether and how different communication modalities shape the communicative experiences and outcomes reported by support receivers and providers following a verbal person-centered supportive conversation with a friend. 246 friend-dyads participated in an experiment by engaging in a video-recorded supportive conversations that occurred via either face-to-face, text messaging, or Skype. The interactions were manipulated such that participants engaged in conversations reflecting either low VPC, moderate VPC, or high VPC. Participants also completed pre-/post-interaction surveys to assess personal/relational factors as well as to measure their perceptions and outcomes of the supportive conversation. Results suggest that Social Information Processing Theory best explains the communicative experiences of established relational partners engaging in verbal person-centered supportive communication via various communication channels. In particular, there was no significant differences in support providers’, receivers’, and third-party raters’ perception of support quality across face-to-face, text messaging, and Skype communication channels. Additionally, results revealed that participant's perceived affordances differed both as a function of 1) their role within a supportive conversation (e.g., receiver, provider), and 2) the communication channel through which they were interacting. Finally, perception of affordances significantly predicted the conversational experiences and outcomes for both support providers and receivers. Interestingly, in some instances, perceived affordances differently influenced outcomes as a function of the level of VPC. Ultimately, this study is one of the first to explore the influence of communication context on verbal person-centered supportive interactions between friends. Taken together, the results of this study present important theoretical and pragmatic implications for computer-mediated communication, perceived affordances, and verbal person-centered supportive communication.