An exploration of hostility and social support : a focus on joint cognitive mechanisms

Although past research has consistently demonstrated that hostile individuals report fewer satisfactory sources of social support, it remains unclear whether their evaluation is based on an objective assessment of their social environment or is coloured by hostile cognitions. To evaluate this question, 120 young adults, falling in the upper or lower tercile groups on a hostility measure, participated in a social cognition experiment. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three priming conditions (Hostility, Support, or Neutral) designed to activate cognitive schemata. They then read through vignettes depicting stressful situations typically encountered by students and evaluated how supportive various offers of help would be perceived in response to these problems. A 2 Hostility (high, low) x 3 Condition (hostility, support, or neutral) MANOVA examined the impact of personality and primed schemata on judgments of social support. Analyses yielded a significant Hostility x Condition interaction. Simple main effect analyses indicated that individuals low in hostility made the most negative judgments of perceived helpfulness in the Hostility condition, supporting the prediction that an active hostile schema biases people to view offers of help in a more pejorative way. However, hostile participants made their most negative judgments in the Support condition, which could indicate that an active social support schema is associated with increased mistrust and guardedness about offers of help in hostile individuals. These data suggest that hostile and non-hostile individuals process support-related information differently, which has important implications for interventions designed to augment social resources in at risk individuals.Arts, Faculty ofPsychology, Department ofGraduat