One-size-fits-all or friend-specific? A social relations model approach to social support in friendships

When providing support to a friend in need, do we tailor our support to the specific person and situation in front of us? Past work tends to assume that this is the case, but it’s possible that people have broader support-giving tendencies that persist regardless of the context. Here, we decomposed sources of social support using the Social Relations Model among close friend groups ( N = 328 participants, 87 groups, 522 dyads). We found consistent evidence that social support is both a general tendency and a dynamic process, which destabilizes theorizing of social support as an entirely relational (i.e., tailored) process. Overall, our results highlight the importance of accounting for different sources of variance in interpersonal processes.