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 of / Psychology, Department of / Graduate
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UBC/oai:circle.library.ubc.ca:2429/18547 |
| Date | 05 1900 |
| Creators | Habra, Martine E. |
| Source Sets | University of British Columbia |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, Thesis/Dissertation |
| Rights | For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use. |
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