The roles of different sources of social support on emotional well-being among Chinese elderly.

Haifeng Li,Yang Ji,Tianyong Chen,Bert N Uchino

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0090051

Abstract

BackgroundSocial support has been widely known as a protective factor for the emotional well-being (EWB) of older adults, but less studies have investigated the roles of different sources of social support (i.e., family and friend support) on different facets of EWB (i.e., positive affect and negative affect) simultaneously.Methodology and FindingsIn this study, the associations between family/friend support and positive/negative affect were investigated in a sample of 700 Chinese elderly. The EWB and social support were measured with a 12-item affective wordlist (Kahneman et al., 2004) and a self-prepared questionnaire. The results showed that (1) the order of contact frequency and mutual support followed a hierarchical order from spouse, children, to friends; (2) zero-order correlations of both family support and friend support were associated with more positive affect and less negative affect; and when compared with the relative role of family and friend support, (3) spouse (children if spouse is not available) support had greater contribution on decreasing negative affect, while friend support had greater influence on increasing positive affect, even after controlling the demographic, self-rated health and life events variables.ConclusionFamily and friend support play different roles on the two facets of EWB of the elderly. These results were better explained in light of the task specificity model rather than the hierarchical compensatory model. Moreover, positive affect may be enhanced by friend support (based on personal interests and selectable) rather than family support (bonded by kinship and not selectable), which added evidences to the socioemotional selectivity theory.

Highlights

It is well-known that social support has beneficial effects on subjective well-being of older adults among domains of enjoyment, morale, depression and loneliness [1,2,3,4,5]
Friend support is generally considered as great sources for those aspects of emotional well-being (EWB) related to current state of enjoyment [2]
As birds of a feather flocked together [45,46,47], friends may be more open to leisure activities and conversations of mutual interests, which are oriented towards the enhancement of positive affect [14,48]

Summary

Introduction

It is well-known that social support has beneficial effects on subjective well-being of older adults among domains of enjoyment, morale, depression and loneliness [1,2,3,4,5]. Emotional well-being (EWB) refers to the emotional quality of an individual’s everyday experience, that is, the frequency and intensity of experiences of joy, fascination, anxiety, sadness, anger, or the affections that would make one’s life pleasant or unpleasant. After reviewing the literature, we found very few studies investigated the influences of different sources of social support on positive and negative affect simultaneously. Social support has been widely known as a protective factor for the emotional well-being (EWB) of older adults, but less studies have investigated the roles of different sources of social support (i.e., family and friend support) on different facets of EWB (i.e., positive affect and negative affect) simultaneously

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Discussion

Conclusion