Abstract
A depressed person may have particular difficulty obtaining social support unless, as previous research indicates, members of the person’s support network believe that their interactions with the depressed person will be rewarding. Continuing this line of research, two studies investigated how message framing influences perceptions of providing social support to someone diagnosed with depression. In Study 1, participants first evaluated a website created by the research team, which emphasized either the rewards of volunteering to help individuals suffering from depression (gain-framed) or the drawbacks of not volunteering (loss-framed). One week later, participants read a vignette about a friend suffering from depression. Participants initially exposed to the gain-framed website indicated that the friend was in greater need of help, and they expressed stronger intentions to help and maintain supportive contact with the friend. The first phase of Study 2 was identical to the first phase of Study 1. However, a week after evaluating the framed website, participants interacted via instant messaging with a confederate posing as a prospective undergraduate student, who disclosed during the conversation that she had been diagnosed with depression. Participants initially exposed to the gain-framed website indicated greater comfort interacting with the prospective student and greater willingness to engage in follow-up interactions with the student (e.g., exchange emails, talk on the phone) compared to participants initially exposed to the loss-framed website. The implications of these findings for increasing the provision of social support to individuals with depression are discussed.
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Notes
Additional composite measures included items asking about the participant’s current affective state, likelihood of responding negatively to the friend, perceptions of hearing about the friend’s difficulties, feelings of responsibility and ability to help the friend, attributions for the friend’s difficulties, and perceptions of the general strain of helping 6 months later. None of these composite measures was influenced by message frame, so we do not discuss them in this paper.
Participants’ perceptions of the volunteer website’s design and clarity from Phase 1 were included in this analysis as a covariate according to our general criteria for including covariates. Namely, the measure accounted for an appreciable amount of error variance in the final model (in this case, p = .09). The pattern of the framing effect remains the same if this measure is excluded from the analysis. However, it is important to note that controlling for perceptions of the website’s design and clarity in Phase 1 strengthens one of the study’s primary attitudinal outcomes, which argues against the concern that the manipulation of framing and the clarity of the framed appeals might have been confounded in this study.
Additional composite measures included items asking about the participant’s current affective state, overall enjoyment of the online interaction, responsibility to interact with the prospective student in the future, and perception of the student’s emotional stability and personality. In addition, participants were asked to indicate campus resources that the student might need or use. None of these measures was influenced by message frame, so we do not discuss them in the results.
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The first and second authors contributed equally to this project. Support for this research was provided by the National Science Foundation’s Course, Curriculum, and Laboratory Improvement program (0737399). Additional support was provided by Lewis & Clark College’s John S. Rogers Science Research Program. We would like to thank Kelsey Chapple, Nicolia Eldred-Skemp, Clare Montgomery-Butler, Corinne Innes, Dmitri Alvarado, Claire Beatus, Azalea Lewis, Lauren Tracy, Laurel Anderson, and the other members of the Behavioral Health and Social Psychology Laboratory for their invaluable contributions to this research.
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Detweiler-Bedell, J.B., Detweiler-Bedell, B., Baugher, A. et al. Using Message Framing to Promote Social Support in Depression: When Misery Makes Better Company. Psychol Stud 58, 38–47 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12646-012-0173-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12646-012-0173-7