Abstract
College-aged individuals report having difficulty deciding what and how much information to provide to friends, yet they often turn to one another for information when experiencing relational uncertainty in a romantic relationship. Given the central role friendships have in college-aged individuals’ lives, identifying ways to decrease the difficulty of providing information is necessary. By framing friends’ relational uncertainty conversations as an information management process, the information-provider’s cognitions and emotions are highlighted as factors likely influencing the information provided to friends requesting it to manage their relational uncertainty. In an online survey (N = 367), participants recalled their most recent conversation in which a friend requested information to help manage a romantic relational uncertainty. Results showed participants provided a greater amount, more accurate, and more positively valenced information to friends when participants had positive expected outcomes and greater efficacy assessments. However, anxiety had a small negative effect on expected outcomes, efficacy assessments, and the information provided. In addition to the theoretical contributions, results suggest that helping college-aged individuals focus on the positive outcomes of relational uncertainty conversations and improving their efficacy could help them be better information-providers to friends.
Highlights
College-aged individuals report having difficulty deciding what and how much information to provide to friends, yet they often turn to one another for information when experiencing relational uncertainty in a romantic relationship
This study will test the under-examined role of the information-provider explicated by the theory of motivated information management (TMIM), which can help identify ways to ease the difficulty college-aged individuals experience when having these conversations with friends
Friends talk with one another about their romantic relationships, including uncertainties about those relationships (e.g., Knobloch & Donovan-Kicken, 2006; Korobov & Thorne, 2007)
Summary
College-aged individuals report having difficulty deciding what and how much information to provide to friends, yet they often turn to one another for information when experiencing relational uncertainty in a romantic relationship. In addition to the theoretical contributions, results suggest that helping college-aged individuals focus on the positive outcomes of relational uncertainty conversations and improving their efficacy could help them be better information-providers to friends. The theory of motivated information management (TMIM) posits that information-providers’ outcome expectancies and efficacy assessments influence the information they share (Afifi & Morse, 2009; Afifi & Weiner, 2004) Emotional responses, such as anxiety, to a situation may affect informationprovision (e.g., Lazarus, 1991; Planalp & Fitness, 1999). When experiencing uncertainty (Brashers, Goldsmith, & Hsieh, 2002) or undesirable levels of uncertainty (Afifi & Weiner, 2004), individuals evaluate the information they have and decide whether to seek or avoid additional information or reevaluate it
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