Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Copyright 1990 by the American Psychological Association, Inc.

1990, Vol. 59, No. 2,337-343 0022-3514/9fyS00.75

Cognitive Processes in Perceived Social Support

Brian Lakey Patricia Bennett Cassady

Wayne State University University of North Carolina at Wilmington

This article describes 2 studies testing hypotheses that perceived social support operates in part as
a cognitive personality construct. Both studies found that perceived support manifested a pattern
of correlations more similar to cognitive variables than did support received from the environment
and that the relation between perceived support and psychological distress was reduced substan-
tially when the cognitive personality variables were controlled statistically. Study 2 also tested
hypotheses generated from schema theory that perceived support would be related to the interpre-
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tation and recall of novel supportive behaviors. As predicted, low-perceived-support students inter-
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preted novel supportive behaviors more negatively than high-support students and remembered a
lower proportion of behaviors perceived as helpful.

The inverse relation between perceived social support and
psychological distress is well documented, but how perceived
support has its effects is largely unknown (S. Cohen & Wills,
1985; Heller, Swindle, & Dusenbury, 1986). Yet understanding
these processes is critical if research on social support will ever
be translated into effective treatment and prevention programs
(Heller et al, 1986; Kiesler, 1985). Historically, it has been as-
sumed that significant others will provide supportive behaviors
(e.g., advice or reassurance) to a person under stress, increasing
the stressed individual's coping abilities and enabling him or
her to avoid stress-related symptomatology (e.g, S. Cohen &
Wills, 1985; Heller & Swindle, 1983; Thoits, 1985, 1986). Al-
though social support theory has emphasized the role of such
enacted or received support, most of the evidence for support
effects has been based on subjective self-report measures that
ask respondents to evaluate the quality of support available to
them (Heller & Lakey, 1985; Wetherington & Kessler, 1986).
Such measures of perceived social support are widely assumed
to reflect actual enacted support (Sarason, Sarason, & Shearin,
1986), but the notion that these components are distinct con-
structs that are only mildly related (Barrera, 1986; Heller &
Lakey, 1985; Heller etat, 1986; Wetherington & Kessler, 1986)
has become widely recognized. Thus, it appears that only a
portion of perceived support effects can be explained as result-
ing from the supportive behaviors of others. Consequently, ad-
ditional conceptions of perceived support mechanisms are
needed.
One alternative is that perceived support operates in part as a
cognitive personality variable in which stable, organized beliefs
about the quality of one's interpersonal relationships lead to
biased interpretation and recall of social interactions. In the
case of persons with low perceived support, prior beliefs in the
inadequacy of their social relations would (a) bias them toward
Ralph W Swindle and anonymous reviewers provided valuable
comments on drafts.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to
Brian Lakey, Department of Psychology, 71 West Warren Avenue,
Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan 48202.
judging the supportive attempts of others as unhelpful, (b) en-
hance the recall of past unhelpful received support, and (c)
inhibit the recall of past helpful received support. Such pro-
cesses would increase the frequency of negative judgments of
interpersonal relationships, leading directly to psychological
distress. This conception of perceived support was inspired by
Beck^ cognitive theory of depression (Beck, 1967, 1976). Ac-
cording to this theory; interrelated negative beliefs about the
self, the world, and the future are organized into depressive
schemas that lead to negatively biased information processing
and subsequent depression. Conceptualized as a cognitive vari-
able, low perceived support would be considered an aspect of
the negative view of the world.
If low perceived support operates similarly to depressive self-
schemas, then perceived support should be associated with the
same sort of cognitive content and processes that have been
found to covary with depression. Although the causal role of
negative cognition in depression is unclear, it is well established
that dysphoric and depressed people manifest negative
thoughts about themselves, their world, and their future (Coyne
& Gotlib, 1983; Segal & Shaw, 1986; Sweeney, Anderson, & Bai-
ley, 1986). Consistent with hypotheses that depressive self-sche-
mas influence information processing, studies have shown that
depressed people exhibit negative biases in interpreting hypo-
thetical stressful situations (Hammen & Krantz, 1976; Krantz
& Hammen, 1979), interpersonal feedback (Gotlib, 1983), and
a variety of laboratory tasks (Kuiper, 1978; Rizley, 1978;
Sweeney et al, 1986). Other researchers have found depressives
to show biases in recalling schema-congruent information (De-
Monbreun & Craighead, 1977; Derry & Kuiper, 1981; Gotlib,
1983; Segal & Shaw, 1986).
Recent research on person perception suggests that a link
exists between cognition about the self and cognition about
others. For example, people tend to rely on the same constructs
to describe other people that they use to describe themselves
(Higgins, King, & Mavin, 1982; Hirschberg & Jennings, 1980;
Lewicki, 1983). Consistent with the predictions of schema
theory, Higgins et al, (1982) found that people were more likely
to omit traits in reproducing descriptions of target people if

337
 338 BRIAN LAKEY AND PATRICIA BENNETT CASSADY
those traits were not used in describing the self. Similarly, Mar-
kus. Smith, and Moreland (1985) found that students with mas-
culinity self-schemas organized a schema-relevant film about a
target person into larger units and ascribed more masculine
traits to the person than did aschematics. Lewicki (1984) found
that positive trait ratings were made more quickly about stimu-
lus people if the trait was seen as characteristic of the self. Ex-
tending this research to perceived social support, it suggests
that the valence of one's thoughts about others should be closely
linked to the valence of thoughts about oneself. Furthermore,
social support schemas should guide memory for and interpre-
tation of actual supportive behaviors in the same way that self-
schemas are believed to influence thought about one^s own be-
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havior.
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Study 1
Study 1 was designed to test the viability of conceptualizing
perceived social support as a cognitive personality variable by
comparing the pattern of correlations among measures of per-
ceived support, cognitive personality constructs (self-esteem,
dysfunctional attitudes, and control beliefs), enacted support
received from the environment, and psychological distress. If
perceived support is more similar to cognitive variables than to
enacted support, then perceived support should behave more
like the former. Thus it was hypothesized that perceived sup-
port would be more strongly related to measures of cognitive
personality variables than would enacted support. Further-
more, if perceived support is related to distress in the same
manner as the cognitive personality variables, then perceived
support would be more strongly related to measures of psycho-
logical distress than would enacted support, and controlling for
individual differences in negative cognition should substan-
tially reduce the association between perceived support and
distress.
Method
Participants and Procedure
One hundred and one college students (70 women and 31 men) volun-
teered to participate as part of a class demonstration of construct valid-
ity procedures in the first author^ junior-level personality course. Stu-
dents completed measures in groups of 25-35. Participation was not
required; data were gathered early in the semester before any of the
constructs included in this study were discussed in class. Data for this
project were gathered across three semesters.
Measures
Social support. Students completed two measuresof social support:
One reflected perceived support, and the other reflected enacted sup-
port received from the environment. The measure of perceived sup-
port was the Interpersonal Support Evaluation List (S. Cohen & Ho-
berman, 1983; S, Cohen, Mermelstein, Kamarck, & Hoberman, 1985),
chosen for its wide use in social support research and its established
reliability and validity The scale consists of 48 items that ask respon-
dents to evaluate the adequacy of the social support available to them.
It was modified for the present study by providing a 4-point response
format with strongly agree and strongly disagree as extreme responses.
The reliability of the scale in the present sample was alpha =.91. The
measure of enacted support was the Index of Socially Supportive Be-
haviors (Barrera, Sandier, & Ramsey, 1981), a 40-item scale that asks
respondents to indicate the frequency with which they have received
various supportive behaviors from others in the past month. This is a
widely used measure of received support with established reliability
and validity (Sandier & Barrera, 1984).
Cognitive personality variables. Students completed measures of
three cognitive personality variables: self-esteem, dysfunctional atti-
tudes, and control beliefs. Self-esteem was chosen for study because of
the central role that cognition about the self plays both in Beck's cogni-
tive theory (1967,1976) and in the social cognition research relevant to
the present investigation (e.g., Markus et al, 1985). Dysfunctional atti-
tudes were studied because they have been hypothesized to reflect
negative self-schema content and to act as a vulnerability factor for
depression (Segal & Shaw, 1986). Control beliefs were included in the
present investigation because prior research had suggested that they
are involved in social support processes (Lefcourt, Martin, & Saleh,
1984; Sandier & Lakey, 1982). Participants completed the Rosenberg
(1979) self-esteem scale, Form A of the Dysfunctional Attitudes Scale
(Weissman & Beck, 1978; reviewed by Hammen & Krantz, 1985) and
the personal control items identified by Mirels (1970) in a factor ana-
lytic study of Rotter's (1966) locus of control scale.
Psychological distress. The Beck Depression Inventory (BDI)
(Beck, 1967) and the Trait form of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory
(Spielberger, Gorsuch, & Lushene, 1970) were administered. These
scales have substantial evidence for their reliability and validity and
are frequently used in studies of social support.
Results
Sex differences were examined as a preliminary step; no dif-
ferences on any variable were observed. In addition, multiple
regression analyses were conducted to test for the existence of
interactions (J. Cohen & Cohen, 1983) by sex for any of the
study findings. None of these interactions approached signifi-
cance, however; thus the results are reported for the combined
sample.
To determine whether perceived support exhibited a pattern
of relations more similar to the cognitive personality variables
than to enacted support, simple correlations among the study
variables were calculated. Unlike enacted support, both per-
ceived support and the cognitive personality variables were di-
rectly related to both dysphoria and anxiety (Table 1). In addi-
tion, although perceived support was significantly related to all
three cognitive personality variables, enacted support was not
significantly associated with any. Perceived support and en-
acted support did have some variance in common, however (r=
.29, p = .003). For more conservative tests of the hypotheses
that perceived support would be more strongly related to the
distress and cognitive variables than would enacted support,
the size of the correlations between the two support measures
and the criterion measures were compared using t tests (Walker
and Lev, 1953; p. 257). As displayed in Table 2, perceived sup-
port was significantly more strongly associated with all but one
of the distress and cognitive variables. The lone exception in-
volved the comparison in predicting control beliefs, which ap-
proached statistical significance (p <. 10).
To test the hypothesis that perceived support is related to
psychological distress in the same way as cognitive personality
variables, multiple regression analyses were conducted in
which perceived support was used to predict symptomatology
 COGNITION AND SOCIAL SUPPORT 339

Table 1
Intercorrelations, Means, and Standard Deviations (N'= 101)

Measure M SD alpha

1. BDI — .84" .47** -.52** -.43** -.45** -.11 9.3 7.0 .81
2. Trait Anxiety — .56** -.66** -.40** -.51" -.12 41.8 11.1 .92
3. Dysfunctional
Attitudes — -.48** -.17 -.48** .01 82.6 12.4 .90
4. Self-Esteem .28** .40** .07 30.5 4.2 .83
5. Control Beliefs .23* .02 5.4 2.0 .60
6. Perceived Support — .29" 95.6 16.9 .91
7. Enacted Support — 91.3 25.4 .96
—
Note. BDI = Beck Depression Inventory.
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after the effects of the cognitive personality variables had been
entered first. Perceived support continued to predict dysphoria
(R2 change = .025, p = .043) and anxiety (R2 change = .025, p =
.017) even when the cognitive variables had been controlled.1
Nonetheless, the strength of the association between perceived
support and both dysphoria and anxiety was reduced substan-
tially when the personality variables were controlled (r = .45
versus partial r - .20 for dysphoria and r = . 51 versus partial r=
.24 for anxiety). To determine whether enacted support could
account for the relation between perceived support and dis-
tress, multiple regression analyses were conducted in which the
effects of enacted support were partialed out. However, control-
ling for the effects of enacted support made little difference in
the relation between perceived support and dysphoria (r - .45
versus partial r = .44) or anxiety (r - .51 versus partial r = .50).
Given that the measures of perceived support, negative cog-
nition, and psychological distress were all highly intercorre-
lated, all of these measures may reflect the same underlying
construct. Watson and Clark (1984) have proposed that mea-
sures of psychological distress and negative cognition typically
reflect the meta-construct of negative affectivity. To determine
whether perceived social support might merely be a reflection
of negative affectivity, a maximum likelihood factor analysis
with varimax rotation was conducted on the study variables. As
displayed in Table 3, two factors with eigenvalues exceeding 1
were extracted, accounting for 29.8% and 23.9% of the vari-
ance, respectively. Factor 1 (eigenvalue = 2.09) appears to reflect
the negative affectivity construct, with dysphoria and trait anxi-
ety loading most highly on this factor and dysfunctional atti-
Table 2
Comparisons Between Perceived Support and Enacted Support
in Predicting Distress and Cognitive Variables (N= 101)
Perceived Enacted
Dependent variable support support /
tudes and self-esteem loading less highly. However, Factor 2
(eigenvalue = 1.67) appears to reflect primarily perceived social
support. A number of additional factor analyses were run with
various methods of extraction, rotation, and factor numbers in
an attempt to force the perceived support variable into the Nega-
tive Affectivity factor. However in none of these analyses did
perceived support load on such a factor.
Discussion
The results of Study 1 support the utility of conceptualizing
perceived support as a cognitive personality variable, as per-
ceived support acted more similarly to such variables than to
enacted support received from the environment. Unlike en-
acted support, perceived support displayed substantial associa-
tions with high self-esteem and low dysfunctional attitudes. In
addition, similar to the cognitive variables, perceived support
was associated with psychological distress, but enacted support
was not. Moreover, factor analyses revealed that perceived sup-
port was not a mere reflection of the negative affectivity con-
struct. The most compelling finding was that much of the asso-
ciation between low perceived support and psychological dis-
tress could be accounted for by individual differences in
negative cognition. This suggests that perceived support and
cognitive personality variables are linked to psychological dis-
tress by similar processes. Nonetheless, these results do not
reveal what these processes might be.
A cognitive conceptualization of perceived social support
would predict that support schemas operate through influenc-
ing attention to, judgment of, and memory for support transac-
tions. Thus, much stronger evidence for a cognitive model of
perceived support would be obtained if support appraisals were
shown to be related to such cognitive mechanisms. Study 2 was
conducted to test such hypotheses. Specifically, compared to
high-perceived-support students, low-perceived-support sub-
jects were predicted to (a) evaluate novel supportive behaviors

Dysphoria -.45** -.11 3.14" 1

The p values for the effects of perceived support differed in the
Trait anxiety -.51" -.12 3.97"
Self-esteem .07 2.97"
equations predicting dysphoria and anxiety, even though the R2 change
.40"
Dysfunctional attitudes -.48" .01 4.69** values were identical, because the personality variables accounted for
Control beliefs .23* .02 1.81 more variance in anxiety (R2 = .56) than dysphoria (R2 = .41). Thus, the
error variance in anxiety was lower than that of dysphoria when the
*/><.05. *"p<.0l. perceived support-variable was entered.
 340 BRIAN LAKEY AND PATRICIA BENNETT CASSADY
Table 3
Maximum Likelihood factor Analysis With Varimax Rotation
Variable Factor 1 Factor 2
1. Trait anxiety .97 -.21
2. Dysphoria .82 -.20
3. Dysfunctional attitudes .51 -.32
-.64 .20
4. Self-esteem
5. Control beliefs .39 .11
6. Perceived support -.33 .94
7. Enacted support -.06 .29
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as less helpful, (b) recall a higher percentage of negatively rated
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supportive behaviors, and (c) recall a lower percentage of posi-
tively rated behaviors.
In addition, this study attempted to replicate the results of
Study 1, using a different measure of perceived social support.
Study 2
Method
Participants
One hundred and one introductory psychology students volunteered
to participate in the study in exchange for course credit. Fifty-nine
students were women; and 41 were men. One student did not report his
or her sex. Students participated in the study in small groups of 3-15.
Measures
Development of the Social Support Evaluation and Recall Task
(SSERT). The SSERT was constructed specifically for the present study
to assess individual differences in the evaluation and recall of support-
ive behaviors. We modeled this measure after the Self-referent encod-
ing task (Davis, 1979; Derry & Kuiper, 1981; Rogers, Kuiper, & Kirker
1977) and the Cognitive Bias Questionnaire (Hammen & Krantz, 1976;
Krantz & Hammen, 1979), both of which have been successfully ap-
plied to the study of cognitive processes in depression. The SSERT con-
sists of six paragraphs, each requesting the reader to imagine that he or
she is describing a personal or academic problem to a friend or relative.
Each paragraph is accompanied by descriptions of eight hypothetical
supportive behaviors made by the friend or relative. We chose support-
ive responses to be neither clearly supportive nor nonsupportive, to
allow for greater latitude in individual interpretation. For example, in
response to the situation in which the student experiences the breakup
of a romantic relationship, two supportive behaviors provided by a
parent are "Would you like to come home this weekend?" and "You'll
find someone else soon." After reading each paragraph, respondents
rate each supportive behavior for its helpfulness on a 5-point scale,
ranging from very helpful to very unhelpful. Following these ratings, a
60-s word association task is administered to prevent rehearsal of the
responses. Experimenters present students with a tape-recorded list of
30 nouns and adjectives and permit students to take 2 s to write down
the first word that comes to mind. On completion of the distractor
task, the hypothetical situation is presented again; students are asked
to recall as many of the previously rated supportive behaviors as they
can. The paragraphs describing the stressful situation (but not the sup-
portive behaviors) are presented again prior to recall because previous
research has shown that presentation of a thematic title facilitates
schema activation in prose recall tasks(Dooling&Mullet,1973;Town-
send, 1980). This procedure is repeated six times, once for each hypo-
thetical stressful situation.
The SSERT provides three variables hypothesized to reflect cognitive
social support processes. The first variable reflects respondents' per-
ceptions of the helpfulness of the supportive behaviors and represents
the sum of the helpfulness ratings across the 48 hems. The reliability of
the helpfulness ratings in the present sample was alpha = 75. The other
two variables represent recall processes and consist of the proportion
of participants' negatively rated and positively rated supportive behav-
iors that are recalled.2
Other measures. In addition to the SSERT, participants completed
the same measures of dysphoria, self-esteem, and dysfunctional atti-
tudes described in Study 1. However, a different measure of perceived
support was used to enhance the generalizability of the results. This
was the Procidano and Heller (1983) scale, consisting of 40 items re-
flecting perceptions of the supportiveness of both family and friends.3
It was modified for the present research by including a 5-point scale
with strongly agree and strongly disagreeas extreme responses. This is a
widely used measure of perceived support with substantial evidence
for its reliability and validity (Procidano & Heller, 1983).
To control for individual differences in memory ability, participants
were first administered a series of free-recall tasks. Each audiotaped
list consisted of 20 nouns followed by a distractor task designed to
facilitate memory consolidation and to prevent rehearsal of the word
lists. The distractor task required students to read a short prose para-
graph and to mark each long e with a circle and each short e with a
slash. After 60 s, students were signaled to stop reading and to recall as
many words from the audiotaped list as possible. The procedure was
repeated three times with different lists and paragraphs. The first two
presentations were intended to familiarize the students with the task.
We calculated memory scores from the number of words recalled from
the third list.
Results
To replicate the results of Study 1, the intercorrelations
among measures of dysphoria, self-esteem, dysfunctional atti-
tudes, and perceived support were examined. As in Study 1,
high perceived support was associated with fewer dysfunctional
attitudes (r = -.49, p < .001), higher self-esteem (r = .21, p =
.037) and less dysphoria (r = -.26, p = .008). As expected, peo-
ple with low self-esteem and many dysfunctional attitudes expe-
rienced more dysphoria (r = -.36, p < .001 and r= .35, p < .001,
respectively). To determine whether the relation between per-
ceived support and dysphoria overlapped with the relation be-
tween negative cognition and symptoms, a hierarchical multi-
2
Alpha was not computed for these scales because recall scores were
based on different samples of supportive responses for each person.
This is because the particular recall score in which a given Hem is
included depends on the helpfulness rating provided by individual
participants. Thus, recall scores of positively- and negatively-rated sup-
portive behaviors are based on different items and are not mere in-
verses of each other. The correlation between the two recall scores was
r=-.02.
3
Consistent with Study 1, analyses that were based on subscales are
not reported because there were no specific hypotheses concerning
these scales. However, all of the findings reported in Study 2 hold for
both the Family and Friend subscales of the Procidano and Heller
scales.
 COGNITION AND SOCIAL SUPPORT
pie regression analysis was conducted in which BDI scores were
predicted from self-esteem, dysphoria, and perceived support,
respectively. Although self-esteem and dysfunctional attitudes
each made independent contributions to dysphoria (R = .45,
F= 12.06, p < .001), the relation between perceived support
and dysphoria was completely eliminated when the cognitive
personality variables were controlled (r = -.26 versus partial
r=.02).
To determine the variables associated with biased interpreta-
tion of novel supportive behaviors, we calculated correlations
between helpfulness ratings of the SSERT behaviors and dys-
phoria, perceived support, and the cognitive variables. Both
low perceived support and high dysphoria were associated with
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judging the SSERT supportive behaviors as less helpful (r = .29,
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p = .003 and r = —.27, p = .007, respectively), although neither
self-esteem (/•=—. 17, p = .097) nor dysfunctional attitudes (r =
.11, p = .299) predicted helpfulness ratings. To test whether
perceived support predicted the perception of supportive be-
haviors independently of dysphoria, a multiple regression analy-
sis was conducted in which helpfulness was predicted by dys-
phoria and then by perceived support. The results indicated
that perceived support scores predicted helpfulness ratings
beyond dysphoria (R2 change = .053, F change (2, 98) = 5.82,
p=.018).
Multiple regression analyses also were conducted to deter-
mine whether perceived support would predict the recall of
positively and negatively perceived supportive behaviors. On
the basis of schema theory, we predicted that low-perceived-
support students would recall a greater proportion of negatively
rated behaviors and a smaller proportion of positively rated
behaviors as compared to high-support students. Because these
predictions were made a priori, one-tailed tests of significance
were used. The memory-for-words variable was entered as the
first step, to control for individual differences in memory abil-
ity or performance motivation. This variable successfully pre-
dicted recall of positive (R = .20; F(l, 99) =4.16, p= .022) but
not negative (R - .10, F < 1) supportive behaviors. Perceived
support scores were entered as the second step and successfully
predicted recall for positive supportive behaviors (R2 change =
.048, Fchange (2,98) = 5.08, p = .013) but not negative behav-
iors (/•"= 1.18, m), indicating that persons with low-perceived-
support scores recalled fewer positive supportive behaviors
than those with high-support scores.11 To determine whether
the relation between perceived support and recall could be ac-
counted for by dysphoria or the cognitive variables, parallel
regression analyses were conducted with these variables en-
tered as the second step. However, neither dysphoria, F(2,98) <
1, p = .35, dysfunctional attitudes, F(2,98) = 1.04, p = .31, nor
self-esteem, F(2, 98) = 2.56, p = .11, significantly predicted
recall of positively rated supportive behaviors. None of the vari-
ables in this study predicted recall of negatively rated support-
ive behaviors.
Finally, to determine whether the effects observed in these
data were conditional upon sex, multiple regression analyses
were conducted to test for Sex x Perceived Support interactions
in predicting both the evaluation and recall of supportive behav-
iors (J. Cohen & Cohen, 1983). Neither of the interaction terms
approached statistical significance (both Fs < 1), indicating
341
that the slope of the relation between perceived support and
evaluations and recall did not differ as a function of sex.
General Discussion
The main findings of these studies were that (a) perceived
support demonstrates a pattern of correlations more similar to
cognitive personality variables than to enacted support, (b)
much of the association between perceived support and psycho-
logical distress can be accounted for by individual differences
in negative cognition, (c) low perceived support is associated
with a bias toward perceiving supportive attempts as unhelpful,
and (d) low perceived support is associated with a bias toward
recalling fewer instances of helpful supportive behavior. These
last two findings could not be attributed to the effects of dys-
phoria, as the relation between perceived support and helpful-
ness held when BDI scores were controlled statistically and dys-
phoria itself was unrelated to the recall of supportive behaviors.
Neither could self-esteem nor dysfunctional attitudes account
for these effects, as these variables did not predict support per-
ceptions or recall. Finally, the effects of perceived support could
not be explained as a mere reflection of negative affectivity
because of Study 1's finding that perceived support did not load
highly on the Negative Affectivity factor.
Although numerous investigations have demonstrated links
between support and distress, "social support research has not
been theory driven, and so we still lack a basic understanding
of how social ties are health protective" (Heller, Swindle, &
Dusenbury, 1986, p. 466). The most important contribution of
the present studies is that they provide clues as to how per-
ceived support may influence psychological distress. These
studies support the hypothesis that perceived social support
operates in part as a cognitive personality variable that influ-
ences how supportive transactions with others will be inter-
preted and remembered. As such, this research creates a link
between social support research and work on cognitive pro-
cesses in emotional disorders (e.g. Beck, 1967,1976; Derry &
Kuiper, 1981; Gotlib, 1983; Krantz & Hammen, 1979). In the
same way that negative beliefs about the self may lead to dis-
tress by negatively biasing information processing, persons
with low perceived support may be more distressed because of
negative biases in evaluating and remembering the support that
they do receive. Of course, this does not mean that enacted
support does not play a role in the link between perceived sup-
port and disorder. Both Study 1 and previous research (e.g.
Barrera, 1986) have documented relations between perceived
support and recalled enacted support, although Study 1 indi-
cated that enacted support did not mediate the support-symp-
tom relation. Instead, enacted support may operate indirectly
by contributing to the perception of support availability or by
influencing coping behavior (Lakey & Heller, 1988).
Although perceived support showed important similarities
to the cognitive personality variables, there were sufficient dif-
ferences to support the discriminant validity of the perceived-
4
Perceived-support scores were significant predictors of recall of
positively rated support behaviors regardless of whether memory
scores were entered in the analysis.
 342 BRIAN LAKEY AND PATRICIA BENNETT CASSADY
support construct. Unlike the cognitive personality variables,
perceived support (a) was related to enacted support, (b) formed
its own factor apart from distress, and (c) predicted specific
biases in processing support-related information. Thus, mea-
sures of perceived support appear to reflect processes unique to
cognition about social relations that are not shared with other
measures of negative cognition.
The possibility that perceived support operates akin to cog-
nitive personality variables has implications for prevention pro-
grams designed to enhance social support. Most programs of
this kind are oriented toward providing enacted support to peo-
ple with low support levels. Perhaps such programs could en-
hance their effectiveness by including components to address
the cognitive processes identified in the current research. As
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observed by Heller, Swindle, and Dusenbury (1986), "providing
support groups is not quite on target if the meaning of social
activity to the individual is not considered" (p. 468).
The results of the present research also mesh with recent
findings in social cognition. The finding that self-esteem and
dysfunctional attitudes are closely related to perceived support
is consistent with recent work suggesting that self-schemas are
involved in the judgment of others (Higgins, King, & Mavin,
1982; Lewicki, 1983; Markus, Smith, & Moreland, 1985). Simi-
larly, the finding that perceived support is associated with the
differential evaluation and recall of supportive behavior is con-
gruent with research suggesting that schemas influence how
others are perceived, evaluated, and remembered (Bern, 1981;
C. E. Cohen, 1980; Duncan, 1976; Howard & Rothbart, 1980;
Lewicki, 1984; Lingle. Geva, Ostrom, Leippe, & Baumgardner,
1979; Markus & Zajonc, 1985; Taylor, Fiske, Etcoff, & Ruder-
man, 1978). The similarity between the perceived support ef-
fects observed in the present study and the findings of recent
social cognition research supports the utility of further cross-
fertilization between these areas.
Finally, some important limitations of this research should
be noted. Although the identification of biases in the interpre-
tation and recall of social support was generated from a schema
model of perceived social support, these data do not provide
strong evidence that thought about social support is organized
into cognitive structures or that these structures caused the ob-
served effects (Higgins & Bargh, 1987; Segal, 1988). High- and
low-perceived-support people may differ simply in the accessi-
bility of positive versus negative support information, without
these elements necessarily being linked. In addition, although a
major goal of this research was to help understand the pro-
cesses by which perceived support is linked to psychological
distress, the correlational design of the present studies prohibit
any conclusions about causality. Establishing that the cognitive
mechanisms identified in this research play a causal role in
symptom development would require both prospective studies
showing that measures of these processes predict the develop-
ment of future symptomatology and laboratory stress experi-
ments in which priming support schemas lead to differential
perceptions of support and stress. Another limitation of the
present research was the use of hypothetical, as opposed to real,
stressful situations and social support. Although investigators
of social cognition often choose situations of lower external
validity to enhance experimental control, future research could
enhance this validity somewhat by placing participants in stan-
dardized laboratory stressful situations and providing them
with standardized supportive behaviors from confederates.
Differences in how these supportive behaviors are interpreted
and remembered could then be assessed.
In summary, this research investigated whether perceived
support operates in part as a cognitive personality variable.
Unlike enacted support, perceived support correlated substan-
tially with traditional cognitive personality variables, and much
of the relation between perceived support and distress could be
accounted for by perceived support's similarity to these cogni-
tive variables. Furthermore, low levels of perceived support
were associated with negative biases in the evaluation of and
memory for supportive behaviors. This research suggests the
utility of further cross-fertilization between social support and
social cognition research.
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Received February 26,1988
Revision received November 16,1989
Accepted December 21,1989 •