Consequently, much more work should be conducted that attempts to understand persuasion and support as it occurs in everyday life and within important relationships of various types. Although simple survey studies might still usefully answer some remaining questions, the more arduous (and potentially rewarding) work of assessing patterns of interaction and how these patterns develop and change over the course of a relationship is needed. This work will necessarily entail going beyond investigating individual perceptions and looking at how individuals within relationships act, react, and interact to co-create meaning.
Broader Future Research Potential
This chapter set out to highlight important associations among persuasion and social support research. In service of these goals I defined supportive communication and its focus on messages, interactions, and relationships, then reviewed the extant literature that illustrates connections to work in persuasion in these areas of emphasis. A key to understanding how and why I chose the connections I did lies in the fact that this chapter is framed within a message-centered approach to interpersonal communication, which assumes “there is one underlying nature of communication” (Burleson, 2010, p. 158). Both persuasive and supportive communication are aimed at instilling change in one or more inter-locutors, though social support and influence interactions each represent a unique context within which to discover the nature of change and the nature of communication that can promote change.
But, if persuasion and social support constitute unique contexts, what makes them different? And, perhaps more important, what makes them similar? Answering these questions should go a long way toward uncovering essential aspects of how the supportive and persuasive messages we produce and process have the effects they do within particular interactions and relationships. Certainly, several scholars have noted that, for instance, advice is one of “the many reasons people seek compliance from others” (Wilson, 2010, p. 219); thus, at least one form of supportive communication (advice) is perceived as conceptually similar to one form of persuasive communication (compliance gaining). But what fundamental dimensions underlie any differences and similarities? One possible answer comes from the work of Dillard and Solomon (2000) who assert that influence episodes can be described as “those in which self-benefit is high while other-benefit is low” (p. 170). To the extent that supportive episodes constitute a “natural antipode” of this conceptual space (i.e., these episodes are high on other-benefit and low on self-benefit), we might glean greater insight into one potential dimension that can explain variation in message quality, message production, message processing, and how communication contributes to change. Certainly future work should begin to answer these broader questions toward a fuller understanding of what makes human communication possible, and I hope this chapter contributes in some small way toward that goal.
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