Advice Padded With Encouragement: A Preliminary Assessment of an Extended Integrated Model of Advice Giving in Supportive Interactions

Study 1

Negative situations differ along various dimensions and provoke different support needs (Cutrona & Russell, 1990). Some situations threaten individuals’ self-esteem or sense of competence (Burleson, 2003; Holmstrom, 2012); these include failures (i.e., a lack of success as a result of a lack of ability), transgressions (e.g., violation of social standards), insults, exclusions (i.e., intentional decrease in social contact) and blunders (i.e., embarrassing mistakes; Holmstrom, 2012). Such situations are esteem threatening because people believe that they have caused their own negative situations (Holmstrom, 2012).

Esteem support, sometimes referred to as identity or ego support, can be defined as a form of social support that is provided to others with the intent of “enhancing how they feel about themselves and their attributes, abilities, and accomplishments” (Holmstrom, 2012, p. 78). Although systematic investigation of esteem support as a distinct form of social support has a relatively recent history (Holmstrom, 2012; Holmstrom et al., 2013), research indicates that it is both prevalent and beneficial. For example, esteem support is one of the most common forms of support provided by therapists or physicians, and is often provided in conjunction with informational support (e.g., Donovan et al., 2014; Soundy et al., 2014). A similar pattern has been observed in online support groups. For example, in social support provided to young adults with cancer in an online community, informational support such as advice is commonly followed by emotional or esteem support to encourage the recipient to stay strong (Donovan et al., 2014). It was found that the combined support helps the recipient to cope with the stress derived from the uncertainty caused by the disease (Donovan et al., 2014).

The salutary effects of esteem support have been explicated in the cognitive-emotional theory of esteem support messages (CETESM; Holmstrom & Burleson, 2011; Holmstrom & Kim, 2015). The theory indicates that when stressful situations threaten key aspects of self-identity (Burleson, 2003; Holmstrom et al., 2013), positive feedback about competence helps restore the aspects of self-evaluation that were damaged (Holmstrom et al., 2013). Moreover, esteem support is beneficial for recipients in rebuilding esteem and ego because the support facilitates rethinking about causes of the situations, reduces emotional stress, and enhances a sense of self-confidence and control over the situation (Holmstrom et al., 2013; Holmstrom & Kim, 2015; see also Matsunaga, 2011). The self-enhancement, or feeling good about oneself, motivates individuals to take actions and achieve goals (Holmstrom et al., 2013). For example, in motivating unemployed individuals to search for new jobs, esteem support that focused on improving recipients’ feelings about themselves was found to be positively related to job search behaviors (Holmstrom et al., 2013; Holmstrom et al., 2014).

In advising situations, the addition of esteem support could encourage the target to confront the problematic situation and enhance their confidence in coping with the situation. Research has shown that advice recipients tend to respond to advice more favorably when they receive esteem support (e.g., Cavallo et al., 2014) or when they believe they are capable of carrying out the recommended action (Feng & Burleson, 2008; Feng & MacGeorge, 2010; MacGeorge, Guntzviller, Branch et al., 2016). Furthermore, messages that project optimistic outcomes can make people feel better in difficult circumstances (Clark et al., 1998). Accompanying advice with esteem support can strengthen the recipient’s confidence because esteem support not only expresses the provider’s care and concern for the recipient, but conveys encouragement, reassurance, and hope (Burleson, 2003). Such encouragement can better motivate the target to consider the feasibility of the advised behavior and should enhance the recipient’s perception of the quality of advice.

Prior research testing IMA has established that advice-giving episodes in supportive interactions should start with emotional support to create a positive environment for subsequent conversation (Feng, 2009, 2014), then analyze the problem to assess whether the target needs or wants advice, and finally formulate personalized advice when needed (Feng, 2009, 2014). Given prior research support for IMA, the appropriateness of the emotional support—problem inquiry and analysis prior to advice is assumed in the current study. The EIMA proposes the addition of esteem support as a fourth step in the sequence, after the advice is given. By offering advice, the support provider conveys to the recipient that a plan to address the situation is available, suggesting that coping with the situation is feasible. The EIMA proposal is that esteem support will be maximally facilitative of advice giving when it is offered after instead of before the recipient gets the advice because esteem support following the advice will strengthen the recipient’s confidence about improving the situation through the previously advised action. Evidence from experimental research on verbal persuasion provides support for this supposition (e.g., Brownlow et al., 2011; for a review, see Wong, 2015). Specifically, receiving instructions on how to perform a task and then encouragement that other peers had found the task to be easy and nonstressful can significantly boost the recipient’s performance compared with not receiving this information (Brownlow et al., 2011). Based on the above rationale, we proposed the following hypotheses:

Study 2

In Study 2, we sought to replicate and extend Study 1 in three ways: (a) utilize a college student sample (rather than an MTurk sample), (b) examine the effects of esteem support on different outcomes (coping efficacy and intention to follow advice), and (c) and assess the potential mediating role of coping efficacy.

As indicated by CETESM, events are likely to threaten self-esteem when people believe that they lack coping potential or expect the future outcome to be undesirable (Holmstrom et al., 2014). Esteem support messages targeted at improving recipients’ emotions and feelings about themselves should promote stronger belief in the ability to address problematic situations and expectation that the situations will be resolved (e.g., Agarwal et al., 2000; Bandura, 1977; Holmstrom et al., 2015), resulting in greater perceived coping efficacy and intention to implement the advice. Therefore, the addition of esteem support messages after advice can help boost recipients’ confidence in successfully handling their situations, as well as their intention to follow the advice. Additionally, social cognitive theory indicates that coping efficacy affects the initiation and persistence of behaviors (Bandura, 1977). Individuals with high coping efficacy believe that their actions will lead to the desired results, whereas those with low efficacy have doubts about the effectiveness of their actions and are thus reluctant to take them (Bandura, 1977). It is thus reasonable to infer that advice recipients’ perceived coping efficacy could operate as a mediator between esteem support and the evaluation of advice quality or the intention to follow advice.

Based on the preceding rationale, we proposed Hypothesis 1and Hypothesis 2 to retest the hypotheses in Study 1 (with the additional outcome of intention to follow advice). We also proposed two new hypotheses regarding the mediating role of coping efficacy.

General Discussion

The two studies in this article tested whether adding an esteem support message after the EPA sequence further improved responses to advice. In Study 1, we found that adding the esteem support message did not directly contribute to advice quality evaluation. Similarly, Study 2 showed that the advice offered in the EPAS, EPSA, and EPA models elicited similar responses across the expanded set of outcome variables.

One explanation for both studies’ null findings is a ceiling effect. A short esteem message may not be sufficient to change recipients’ perceptions of advice when that advice is already high quality and accompanied by emotional support and problem analysis. A larger quantity of supportive messages does not necessarily produce greater supportiveness (McLaren & High, 2015), but can matter in some situations (Malloch & Hether, 2019). Future studies should examine whether more substantive esteem messages produce results consistent with EIMA’s propositions.

Alternatively, esteem support messages may be helpful in boosting recipients’ self-esteem only when the stressful situation damages their perceived competence to a considerable extent. Events that involve failure, blunder, and transgression are particularly esteem threatening to individuals and in such cases esteem support messages’ effects are salient (Holmstrom, 2012; Holmstrom & Kim, 2015). The stressors examined in the current project (i.e., having temporary back pain, being underpaid, relationship trouble) are relatively low in severity compared with stressors such as job loss or diagnosis with a serious illness. Thus, the scenarios in these experimental stimuli might not have damaged recipients’ (imagined) self-esteem to the extent that they needed additional esteem support. Correspondingly, the advised courses of action are common approaches to addressing those problems (e.g., having a candid conversation with the other party) and highly feasible. It is very likely that the additional act of esteem support will have a more meaningful impact on advice recipient’s responses when the stressor is of more significant magnitude and if the recommended course of action is challenging and requires substantial effort (e.g., quitting a job). Future research should examine the boundary conditions under which esteem support will be more and less effective.

The present studies also have other limitations that may have influenced their findings. First, the participants on the Amazon Turk system and the college student sample were not representative of the entire population. Most were American young adults. Thus, the results in the present studies may not hold in other cultures or age groups. Although the superiority of EPA advice has been supported in both Chinese and American cultures (Feng, 2014), adding another esteem support move may have a different effect for different cultural groups. Future research may investigate cultural differences in the accuracy of the proposed EPAS model. Second, the present studies employed hypothetical scenarios to elicit imagined responses from the respondents. Although this approach was considered appropriate given the focus of the study on message evaluation (see Burleson & MacGeorge, 2002), there are limitations with this type of design. Participants’ imagined reactions may not be the same as their spontaneous reaction to real-life interactions. Future research may employ a different study design to investigate the utility of esteem support.

Although findings from the current studies did not support the EIMA, they are far from being conclusive. Moving forward, in light of the limitations with the current studies, several additional directions for future research are worth considering. First, source factors were not examined in the current study. Advice response theory indicates that who gives the advice matters to the recipient’s evaluation of advice quality (Feng & MacGeorge, 2010). A similar relationship might also be observed between esteem support messages and coping efficacy. For example, esteem support from someone with expertise about a problem might be more effective in enhancing the recipient’s confidence than esteem support from a nonexpert. A second research direction is the examination of personality factors that moderate the effects of esteem messages on advice outcomes. For example, compared with individuals with independent self-concept, those with interdependent self-concept may value others’ opinions more and thus have responses to advice that are more affected by esteem support messages (Torelli, 2006).