A Social-Cognitive Perspective on Social Support

We hope that you were able to answer “yes” to this question from Procidano and Heller’s (1983) perceived social support scale, because “yes” answers across a number of similar items are associated with a wide range of positive outcomes. But consider for a moment how you arrived at your answer. From one perspective, you could have made your answer as a “good scientist” would. You carefully recalled and summed all the instances of emotional support that you had received and compared them to the amount that you believe most people get. If your score was a standard deviation above the mean, you answered “Yes,” a standard deviation below, you answered “No,” and within a standard deviation from the mean produced a “Don’t know.”