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You deplete me: Impacts of providing positive and negative event support on self‐control
Author(s) -
GOSNELL COURTNEY L.,
GABLE SHELLY L.
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
personal relationships
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.81
H-Index - 83
eISSN - 1475-6811
pISSN - 1350-4126
DOI - 10.1111/pere.12200
Subject(s) - psychology , feeling , active listening , self control , ego depletion , control (management) , social psychology , social support , negative emotion , persistence (discontinuity) , variety (cybernetics) , developmental psychology , psychotherapist , computer science , geotechnical engineering , artificial intelligence , engineering
We examined how providing social support may reduce self‐control. Participants who reported greater effectiveness concerns and emotion regulation while providing daily support showed greater behavioral and subjective depletion; moreover, supporting partners' negative events tended to involve greater concerns and emotion regulation than partners' positive events (Study 1). It was the act of providing support (and not just listening to events) that led to depletion (Study 2), and manipulating individuals to have greater concerns about support effectiveness caused them to show less self‐control (Study 3). Overall, the results suggest that support provision can reduce self‐control in a variety of ways (influencing persistence, focus, and feelings of exhaustion), particularly when there are concerns about effectiveness and the need to regulate emotions.