| Description |
Previous research has demonstrated that perceived social support influences physical health outcomes. However, prior work has focused on activating general support perceptions and as a result, the influence of specific relationship schemata is less clear. Additionally, although the link between perceived social support and physical health outcomes have been established, less is known on how perceived social support impacts specific health behavior that may contribute to the development of chronic diseases. In this study, we supraliminally activated the perception of support by having participants write about a close friend, a parent, or an acquaintance (control group). Participants then completed a stress test while cardiovascular measures were simultaneously collected. After completing the stress test, participants were then given the choice between healthy and unhealthy snack choices and their responses were recorded. It was hypothesized that activating support schemas across the parent and friend conditions would result in lower cardiovascular reactivity and the healthiest dietary choices (compared to the control group). It was also hypothesized that the perception of support within the parental condition specifically would result in the lowest cardiovascular reactivity and the healthiest dietary choices. Data were collected from 62 men and 62 women enrolled at a large university. Contrary to the aforementioned hypotheses, there were no significant differences in cardiovascular reactivity or health behavior as a result of the support condition. Implications for how our methods differed from other studies in this area that found opposite results, as well as how we define healthy dietary choices, will be discussed. |
