Southern Comfort

Social support is not always perceived as supportive. Specifically, I focused on understanding the developmental and contextual factors that influence social support. My research focused on how family dynamics and communication patterns differentially affect emerging adults’ perception and reception of support across different genders, races, and cultural backgrounds (e.g., Szkody et al., 2021).

In one study, we examined some of the contextual factors that influence supportive message perception. We asked college students to provide supportive messages to a friend, their father figure, and their mother figure in response to vignettes detailing stressful events that many experience in their lifetimes. I examined the linguistic differences between messages of support provided to different sources (Szkody & McKinney, 2021).

We furthered this study with a quasi-experimental design that examined the interpretation of supportive messaging from different sources. We asked research confederates of different genders, races, and ages to provide scripted supportive messages in response to interactions with participants who shared a stressful time.

Read more about our results below:

Szkody, E., & McKinney, C. (2021). Evaluating comforting messages with the Sentiment Analysis and Social Cognition Engine (SEANCE). Applied Psychology: Health and Well-Being. http://doi.org/10.1111/aphw.12324

Research should examine the individual differences of support provider and recipient when evaluating message content

Szkody, E. & McKinney, C. (2019, May). Southern Comfort: Feelings of support by individuals with psychological problems. Poster presented at the 31st APS Annual Convention, Washington, D.C.  

Wicks, S.*, Szkody, E., & McKinney, C. (2020, October). The influence of supportive messages on the interpretation of personality traits among emerging adults. Poster presented at the 2020 Society of Southeastern Social Psychologists Conference, Virtual Conference.

Individuals with specific gender and racial presentations are perceived to have specific personality profiles

Szkody, E., & McKinney, C. (2020, February). Racial matching: A comparison of supportive message perception among racial minorities. Poster presented at the 2020 SPSP Annual Convention, New Orleans, LA.

Racial and gender matching alone is not enough to show differences in how supportive communication is perceived