A cross-cultural study of the influence of emotional social support on the subjective well-being of the elderly in the United States and India.

The influence of emotional social support from significant others on the subjective well-being of the elderly was examined using systematically comparable data from the United States (n = 934; ages 60+) and Madras, India (n = 300; ages 55+). Subjective well-being was conceptualized as consisting of cognitive evaluation, negative affect, and positive affect. Interactional role theory perspectives and structural modeling were used to address the following issues: which sources of emotional support, (e.g., role relationships with adult children, spouse, friends and relatives) have an important influence on subjective well-being; the processes by which emotional support influences subjective well-being, i.e., directly, or through self-evaluation; which relationships influence the cognitive, and which ones the affective dimensions of subjective well-being; and to what degree the structure of subjective well-being, self-evaluation, and emotional support, and the relationships among these concepts are equivalent in both societies. Analyses were performed separately for widowed and married respondents, but due to sample size limitations, results for widowed Indians were considered exploratory. Neither children nor friends and relatives influenced well-being for widowed Americans. Results for married Americans and Indians revealed several similarities: emotional support from the spouse had the most pervasive influence (as hypothesized for Americans, but contrary to expectations for Indians); influenced cognitive evaluation most often; and influenced well-being directly as well as indirectly through self-evaluation. Support from children did not influence self-evaluation. Self-evaluation was consistently associated with subjective well-being. Measurement and structural models showed a high degree of invariance across the two samples. Support from other relationships revealed different patterns of effects on subjective well-being in both societies. For Americans, support from friends and relatives was more important than support from children. Sons were the only other significant support source for Indians. However, Indians expressed lower levels of feeling emotionally supported by children than Americans. Findings were discussed as suggesting that despite social structures in American and Indian society having been formed as a result of their distinctive cultures and history, cross-culturally similar relationships exist between emotional support from significant others, self-evaluation, and subjective well-being, for the elderly.PhDSocial Work and SociologyUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/105301/1/9116315.pdfDescription of 9116315.pdf : Restricted to UM users only