“Guys Can't SayThatto Guys”: Four Experiments Assessing the Normative Motivation Account for Deficiencies in the Emotional Support Provided by Men Preparation of this article was supported, in part, by a fellowship awarded to the first author by the Center for Behavioral and Social Sciences, College of Liberal Arts, Purdue University. Portions of Experiment 1 were presented on the Top Papers Panel of the Interpersonal Communication Division at the 2003 meeting of the National Communication Associati

Communication Channel, Sex, and the Immediate and Longitudinal Outcomes of Verbal Person-centered Support

“…Men view conversations in which a man provides HPC support as unrealistic; they dislike HPC comfort from men, and instead prefer avoidant support that neglects emotions from male support providers . Relative to women, Burleson et al (2005) found that men downplay the importance of HPC messages and prefer more LPC messages than expected when interacting with another man; notably, this avoidance of HPC messages disappears when men are paired with women.…”

Emotional Support and Physiological Stress Recovery: The Role of Support Matching, Adequacy, and Invisibility

“…Research on supportive communication has revealed both main effects for message qualities (see High & Dillard, 2012) and individual and situational differences in evaluations of support messages (e.g., Burleson, Holmstrom, & Gilstrap, 2005;Goldsmith, McDermott, & Alexander, 2000;Holmstrom, Burleson, & Jones, 2005). In previous research, three explanations have been offered to account for gaps between the support conveyed to an individual and the supportive benefits realized.…”

Explaining the Durable Effects of Verbal Person-Centered Supportive Communication: Indirect Effects or Invisible Support?

“…In fact, supportive messages attributed to women are rated as better than messages attributed to men, even when the messages convey the same content (Glynn, Christenfeld, & Gerin, 1999). People assume that men do not provide HPC messages because they try to avoid social behaviors that are stereotypically feminine and violate the expectations of their gender roles (Burleson, Holmstrom, & Gilstrap, 2005). Likewise, the dual process theory of supportive message outcomes suggests that support provider sex is a heuristic cue used by receivers, such that support from women must be good, whereas support from men is low quality (Burleson, 2009).…”