Impact of initial trust on video-mediated social support.

This study 1 explores how initial trust in a provider of social support and person-centeredness in supportive messages affect outcomes in video-mediated social support interactions. A controlled study was conducted with 240 participants who were randomly assigned to a condition in a 3 (initial trust in the support provider: affective, cognitive, and neutral) x 2 (person-centeredness of the support message: high or low) experimental setup. Results show that the effects of person-centeredness in support messages are the same as reported elsewhere for Face-to-Face (FtF) or text-based computer-mediated scenarios: high person-centered messages led to higher perceptions of support quality than low person-centered messages regardless of perceptions of initial trust in the support provider. Results also show that participants perceived the support provideru0027s quality to be higher if personal information (affective trust) about the support provider was available over expertise information (cognitive trust). Ethnicity of participants also had a significant effect on perceptions of support provideru0027s quality. Caucasians reacted much more positively to the message with high person-centeredness and much more negatively to the message with low person-centeredness than other ethnic groups. Asians perceived support provideru0027s quality highly regardless of person-centeredness. Hispanics and African Americans fell somewhere in between. This study demonstrates important implications in message delivery for video-mediated social support.