The other side of emotional support: The moderating role of personality in the relations between emotionally-valenced support elicitation experiences and strain

Abstract

Recent organizational research has begun focusing on alternative perspectives of the social support dynamic. One of these perspectives is the potential support provider perspective, which captures the social support dynamic from the view of employees put in position to potentially provide social support. Empirical findings concerning this perspective are scant and thus warrant additional research. The present study, using a large, occupationally heterogenous two-wave sample (N = 447), further explored relations between strain and support elicitation experiences that are emotionally-valenced, or SEE-E, from the potential support provider perspective. The role of individual differences in influencing these relations was also investigated. Using hierarchical regression, we found that SEE-E was related to key forms of psychological (work-related burnout), behavioral (hostility), and physiological (the presence of physical symptoms) strain. Furthermore, we found that higher levels of agreeableness strengthened the relations between SEE-E and work-related burnout, and higher levels of conscientiousness weakened the relations between SEE-E and hostility. Results from this study contribute to the nascent findings surrounding the potential support provider perspective of the workplace social support dynamic and further demonstrate the importance of individual differences to stressor-strain dynamics.