Amanda J. Holmstrom

• PhD
• Professor at Michigan State University

Sibling relationships are among the longest-lasting relationships in people’s lives. Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), including voice calls, texting, and social media, help adult siblings keep in touch. The present study tests media multiplexity theory (MMT) in the context of adult sibling relationships. In the first study, a quot...

Friendship is critical for individuals’ well-being, but recent efforts to characterize Americans’ friendship have suggested that these relationships are in peril. The present study is a report on the methods and results of three surveys from the American Friendship Project (AFP). The goal of the AFP is to be the most accurate and most complete acco...

The present study examines how supportive touch impacts evaluations of esteem support content containing high emotion-focused (HEF) or high problem-focused (HPF) messages during observed esteem support interactions. A 2 (verbal content; i.e., HEF or HPF) by 2 (nonverbal content; i.e., presence or absence of supportive tactile communication) experim...

Research indicates that receiving esteem support has multiple benefits, however, less is known about the factors that influence the production of esteem support messages of varying quality. We examine how characteristics of potential recipients shape esteem support message production, specifically, how recipients’ effort to help themselves may alte...

This study analyzes how an instructor's accommodation tactic, in response to a student using a swear word, affects students' perceptions of the instructor's similarity and credibility, and how perceptions of similarity and credibility affect students' intrinsic motivation to learn. Sex of the instructor was also manipulated in this study based on l...

Objectives: Chronic stress is associated with a variety of negative outcomes for farmers in the United States (U.S) and worldwide, who face near-constant exposure to internal (e.g. family conflict) and external (e.g. weather) stressors. Research indicates that farmers' stress may be reduced by engaging in adaptive coping strategies and avoiding ma...

Esteem support refers to verbal and nonverbal aid provided to another individual to enhance how they feel about themselves and their attributes, abilities, and accomplishments. Esteem support is often exchanged in the context of close relationships (e.g., marriage, family, friendship), and may be a behavioral indicator of perceived partner responsi...

Most people in the United States do not engage in sufficient physical activity (PA). However, certain communication behaviors from romantic partners can motivate PA. Research indicates that confirming communication and communal coping (CC) in romantic relationships can increase PA efforts, but less research has examined the role of explicitly disco...

The associations among the frequency and quality of social interactions and in-the-moment and global well-being have been well-documented. Fewer studies explore whether the content of social interactions is associated with well-being using experimental methods. Drawing from the communicate bond belong theory, seven candidate communication episodes...

Background Past research has demonstrated that adolescents with Type 1 diabetes (T1D) typically have a decline in health outcomes as they begin to assume more self-management activities. Mobile app interventions have been suggested as one possible way to improve this behavior. Purpose The primary aim of this study was to address declines in health...

The concept of invisible support (Bolger et al., 2000) has sparked interest among social support researchers. Theoretically, invisible support avoids negative support outcomes related to face threats and, therefore, should lead to better outcomes than traditional support. Unfortunately, empirical tests of invisible support have yielded inconsistent...

Experts warned of increased stress for people confined at home during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, increased time spent communicating with loved ones may have had benefits, depending on the type of interactions and social energy they required. Using communicate bond belong (CBB) theory, we examined relationships between socia...

Most adults in the United States (U.S.) fail to meet guidelines for physical activity (PA) and nutrition outlined by the Centers for Disease Control. One important predictor of engagement in healthy behavior is support from one’s romantic partner. However, messages from partners may fail to motivate healthy behavior if they threaten recipients’ fac...

The present study examines how supportive tactile communication impacts evaluations of esteem support messages containing high emotion-focused (HEF) or high problem-focused (HPF) content. A 2 (verbal content; i.e., HEF or HPF) by 2 (nonverbal content; i.e., presence or absence of supportive tactile communication) quasi-experiment was conducted to t...

Drawing from a quota sample of adult Americans (N = 540), this survey explored how individuals who worked from home (WFH) during the COVID-19 pandemic used information communication technologies (ICTs), and the relationship use had with perceived stress. Results suggested that increased use of work-related video chat and text messaging were related...

During times of stress, supportive communication can buffer individuals from experiencing negative outcomes. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has substantially altered the interactions people rely on for support, which may influence the supportive messages they desire and receive. When people receive quantities of support that differ from what they d...

This manuscript examines the patterns of information communication technology (ICT) use with friends and family outside of the home during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the associations among ICT use and psychological (i.e., loneliness; stress) and social (i.e., social needs; relationship maintenance) wellbeing. In early May 2020, a representative pan...

The cognitive–emotional theory of esteem support messages predicts that message style will affect the outcomes of esteem support interactions. However, little research has focused on the effects of message style; that is, how esteem support messages are delivered. The present experiment addresses this lacuna by manipulating message style in a labor...

This experiment examines state shame and guilt responses to esteem support messages, testing predictions derived from the cognitive-emotional theory of esteem support messages (CETESM). Participants (N = 852) chose one of eight hypothetical scenarios designed to induce shame and/or guilt. Next, participants were directed to a randomization of emoti...

Humans are inherently social, driven to communicate and build relationships with one another. The question of how messages between people create shared understanding lies at the core of interpersonal communication. Relatedly, neuroscience scholars are beginning to investigate how dyads, i.e. two socially interacting brains, produce this shared unde...

The majority of research among individuals with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) focuses on perceived social support. A gap exists regarding the role of received social support in self-management enhancement. The purpose of this study was to examine specific contextual factors (individual, condition-specific, and emerging adulthood factors) that in...

BACKGROUND Type 1 diabetes (T1D) impacts more than 165,000 individuals under the age of 20 in the United States. The transition from parent management to parent-child team management, with the child taking on increased levels of self-care, can be stressful and is associated with a deterioration in self-management behaviors. A mobile app interventio...

Background Type 1 diabetes (T1D) affects more than 165,000 individuals younger than 20 years in the United States of America. The transition from parent management to parent-child team management, with the child taking on increased levels of self-care, can be stressful and is associated with a deterioration in self-management behaviors. Therefore,...

Objective The transition from parent management to teen self-management of type 1 diabetes (T1D) is a stressful, but important, time with substantial long-term health consequences. The purpose of this study was to describe and explore teens’ and their parents’ perspectives on the transition through the transactional model of stress and coping (TMSC...

Research suggests that sex and gender differences in self-esteem, emotional reactions to esteem threats, and ways of coping with esteem threats may impact the likelihood of using esteem support messages of varying quality. The present experiment grounded in the CETESM, examines how provider gender, provider sex, and recipient sex influence the like...

Purpose: The purpose was to determine the relationship between social support, psychological symptoms and self-management behaviors among adults with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and examine the influence of types of social support and patient age. Design: This was a systematic review. PubMed, Web of Science, Cumulative Index to Nursing and...

Supervising agents serve as sources of social support for over one million women in the US on probation and parole who strive to avoid recidivism. Little is known about the supportive messages agents intend to provide their female clients or their precursors. The optimal matching model of social support is used in an investigation of the precursors...

Two experiments were conducted to extend research on the Cognitive-Emotional Theory of Esteem Support Messages by examining order, interaction, and absolute effects of emotion- and problem-focused esteem support in the context of the job search. Participants were presented with an esteem support message and rated its perceived effects on their job-...

Background Emerging adulthood is a unique developmental stage, which may affect individuals’ self-management behaviors, social support, and the relationship between these two constructs. Among older adults, social support has been shown to improve self-management behaviors for individuals with chronic conditions; however, this relationship has not...

Using semistructured interviews with 388 women under supervision, this study integrates criminal justice and communication theories by investigating gender responsivity and type of support in messages women receive about employment from supervision agents. Informational support was the most frequent form of supportive communication clients received...

Background: Type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) afflicts approximately 154,000 people under the age of 20 in the United States. Most people with T1DM are diagnosed at a young age, and parents have to take on the responsibility of T1DM management. Eventually, the child must begin to transition to self-management. Adolescents often struggle to take on r...

BACKGROUND Type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) afflicts approximately 154,000 people under the age of 20 in the United States. Most people with T1DM are diagnosed at a young age, and parents have to take on the responsibility of T1DM management. Eventually, the child must begin to transition to self-management. Adolescents often struggle to take on res...

Substance use is a key reason for initial offending and recidivism for the over one million women on probation and parole in the United States. Social support protects against both recidivism and relapse to substance use. However, many women supervised in the community with a history of substance abuse lack social support from family and friends. P...

Purpose: To determine the effects of a home-based reflexology intervention delivered by a friend/family caregiver compared to attention control on health-related quality of life of women with advanced breast cancer undergoing chemotherapy, targeted and/or hormonal therapy. Methods: Patient-caregiver dyads (N=256) were randomized to 4 weekly refl...

Background Type 1 diabetes (T1D) afflicts approximately 154,000 people under 20 years of age. Three-quarters of adolescents are not achieving glycosylated hemoglobin (HbA1c) targets, which leads to negative health outcomes. Mobile health (mHealth), the use of technology in health, has been used successfully to improve health in many chronic conditi...

The article presents a narrative review of scholarship on social support through social networking sites (SNSs) published from 2004 to 2015. By searching keywords related to social support and SNSs in major databases for social sciences, we identified and content analyzed directly relevant articles (N = 88). The article summarizes the prevalence of...

Background: Type 1 diabetes (T1D) afflicts approximately 154,000 people under the age of 20. T1D care is complex, which is why parents often manage their child’s disease. Once the child reaches adolescence, they must begin to transition from parent care to self-care. As a result of the inherent complexity of managing T1D, this transition is often d...

Capitalization attempts, or the sharing of personal good news, can have positive outcomes for disclosers when met with a skillful response. This study reports on a test of an attribution-based theoretical framework for capitalization response messages. Participants (N = 314) read capitalization response messages created by crossing the causal attri...

Emotional appraisal refers to processes by which individuals’ cognitions about events predict their emotional reactions to those events. Reappraisal refers to changing the way that one thinks about events and their relationship to the self, which may then alter emotional reactions. Based on appraisal theories, social support scholars forward a theo...

Purpose: As home-based care continues to be a growing trend in health care, involvement of friend and family caregivers in the management of illness becomes essential. However, before nurses can prepare caregivers to engage in various types of care, an evidence base needs to be established via randomized controlled trials (RCTs). Research suggests...

Two studies are reported that test a model in which job-search self-efficacy mediates the relationship between received esteem support and job-search behavior. Esteem support refers to messages intended to enhance how recipients feel about themselves and their attributes, abilities, and/or accomplishments. New-entrant job seekers (N = 208, Study 1)...

The current study examines how the receipt of different types of supportive communication affects the job search. New entrant job seekers (N = 175) reported on their receipt of four types of social support (informational, instrumental, emotional, and companionship support) and their perceptions of job search self-efficacy and job search behavior. E...

The Cognitive-Emotional Theory of Esteem Support Messages posits that messages intended to enhance recipients' state self-esteem focus on cognitions and/or behaviors. In the current studies, problem-focused message content (i.e., content focused on enacting behavior to alleviate the esteem threat) was of particular interest. College students (Study...

Without physical appearance, identification in computer-mediated communication is relatively ambiguous and may depend on verbal cues such as usernames, content, and/or style. This is important when gender-linked differences exist in the effects of messages, as in emotional support. This study examined gender attribution for online support providers...

The current study extends research on the Cognitive-Emotional Theory of Esteem Support Messages (CETESM) and examines the role of esteem support during the job search. Unemployed, underemployed, and/or displaced job seekers (N=197) recalled an esteem support message they had received during their job search. Messages were coded using a scheme deriv...

To test a recently proposed dual-process theory of supportive communication outcomes, participants (N = 328) assumed they had experienced a mildly or moderately problematic situation. They then evaluated supportive messages varying in person centeredness, purportedly provided by either an acquaintance or a friend. Participants’ perceived support av...

Abstract As the movement to capitalize on unique affordances of video games for learning continues to grow, relatively, little research in that area has examined how formal features, such as genre and game mechanics, draw and hold children's attention. This study examines which genres children prefer and the reasons why children prefer those genres...

The relationship between attachment, situational factors (type of esteem threat, target responsibility, and problem severity), and ratings of the helpfulness of esteem support messages was examined in two studies (Study 1, N = 196; Study 2, N = 506). Esteem support is a particular form of emotional support intended to improve how the recipient feel...

The recently proposed cognitive-emotional theory of esteem support messages (CETESM) posits that sophisticated esteem support messages enhance state self-esteem by promoting cognitive reattribution and reappraisal of esteem-threatening situations and their effects on the self. To test this hypothesis, participants (N = 234) read a hypothetical situ...

Esteem support is a particular form of social support that is provided with the intent of enhancing how others feel about themselves and their attributes, abilities, and accomplishments. This study examines the association between perceptions of esteem support message helpfulness and (a) characteristics of the esteem support situation, (b) the rela...

We report tests of hypotheses derived from a theory of supportive communication outcomes that maintains the effects of supportive messages are moderated by factors influencing the motivation and ability to process these messages. Participants in two studies completed a measure of cognitive complexity, which provided an assessment of processing abil...

Perceived support availability (PSA), a general belief about the likelihood that social support will be available when needed, is associated with numerous processes and outcomes of supportive communication. Currently, however, there is little understanding of the factors that contribute to this belief. Numerous studies have reported gender differen...

Esteem support is a form of social support that is provided to others with the intent of enhancing how they feel about themselves. This article outlines and assesses empirically a cognitive-emotional theory of esteem support messages (CETESM), which identifies (a) dimensions along which esteem support messages can be scaled, (b) mechanisms through...

This article reports tests of hypotheses derived from a theory of supportive message outcomes that maintains that the effects of supportive messages are moderated by factors influencing the motivation and ability to process these messages. Participants (N = 331) completed measures of attachment style, which provided individual-level assessments of...

Women process information about support situations and messages more extensively than men, but little is known about whether these gender differences reflect underlying differences in processing ability, motivation, or both. Two studies examined information processing by men and women in both relatively less serious and more serious situations. Par...

Questionnaires were completed by 5th-, 8th-, and 11th-grade public schools students in rural and suburban school districts and by undergraduates at two universities in the United States (n = 1,242). They were asked about their orientation to video games—the amount of time they played, their motives for doing so, and the game types they preferred—to...

We propose a comprehensive explanation for gender differences in responses to supportive communication grounded in a dual-process theory of communication outcomes. Two studies confirmed consistent gender differences in responses by US college students to supportive communication and assessed the mediating effects of an ability factor (cognitive com...

This study extends research on sex differences and similarities in communication values by examining (a) the influence of sex of friend on ratings of functional communication skills in same-sex and cross-sex friendships, (b) the moderating role of friend's sex in sex differences in evaluations, and (c) the mediating role of psychological gender in...

Comforting communication encompasses the verbal and nonverbal messages that people use when trying to reduce others' emotional anguish. Thus, comforting represents a strategic communication activity that has the primary goal of alleviating another's emotional distress; it may also aim to enhance the other's self‐esteem, facilitate the other's copin...

This study identifies grief management strategies that bereaved adults evaluate as more and less helpful, assesses whether the person centeredness of these strategies explains their helpfulness, and determines whether strategy helpfulness varies as a function of demographic, personality, and situational factors. Participants (105 bereaved young adu...

Men are less likely than women to provide sensitive emotional support when attempting to comfort others. This paper reports four experiments that tested a normative motivation account for this sex difference, which maintains that men employ less sensitive messages because they desire to avoid acting in what they view as a feminine manner. We propos...

Two experiments were conducted to assess whether responses to helpers who used insensitive emotional support vary as a function of the interaction between sex of participant and helper. We hypothesized that women would evaluate an insensitive female helper and her behavior more negatively than they would an insensitive male helper. In Experiment 1,...

This article responds critically to a recent article by Lemieux and Tighe (Communication Research Reports, 21, 144–153, 2004) in which the authors conclude that recipients of comforting efforts prefer messages that exhibit a moderate rather than high level of person centeredness. It is argued that an erroneous assumption made by Lemieux and Tighe a...

The media have been criticized for depicting the thin woman as ideal. Some argue these images create unrealistic expectations for young women and cause body dissatisfaction and disordered eating. This study cumulates findings of empirical studies that examine the effects of media on body image. An estimate of overall effect size, trends in the rese...

This dissertation develops and assesses empirically a Cognitive-Emotional Theory of Esteem Support Messages. Esteem support may be best understood as a particular form of social support that is provided to others with the intent of enhancing how they feel about themselves and their attributes, abilities, and accomplishments. Limited research indica...