Hindered Help: Barriers to Giving Social Support in Relationships and Organizations

Abstract: Psychological barriers often hinder our ability to give effective social support. This symposium presents the latest research on the nature and consequences of these barriers across five presentations. Our first two papers focus on when people decide to offer support. Ruttan et al. introduce the concept of experiential authority, revealing people’s strong preference for advisors with firsthand experience of hardships—delaying effective support. Kim et al. examine how people think about moral responsibility in friendship, showing that individuals feel less obligated to assist friends in achieving potential compared to other domains, leading to hesitation in impactful interventions. The next three papers highlight the kind of support people give and how. Fadayomi et al. investigate advising in career decisions, demonstrating how advisors may unintentionally deprioritize prestige in favor of identity-relevant attributes for marginalized individuals. Yeomans and Wood Brooks examine gaps in people’s ability to accurately detect others’ conversational topic preferences, highlighting how limited perspective-taking skills affect conversational enjoyment. Finally, Skowronek and Schaumberg explore the unintended consequences of how you frame tasks for students, finding that labeling tasks as “easy” can undermine resilience and learning when challenges arise. Together, these talks provide novel insights into different barriers to giving effective social support and propose strategies to foster more inclusive relationships and work environments, especially in the face of conflict.

Keywords: social support, advice, empathy, conversation