Social Support and Help-Seeking Worldwide

Abstract

Social support has long been associated with positive physical, behavioral, and mental health outcomes. However, contextual factors such as subjective social status and an individual's cultural values, heavily influence social support behaviors (e.g., perceive available social support, accept support, seek support, provide support). We sought to determine the current state of social support behaviors and the association between these behaviors, cultural values, and subjective social support across regions of the world. Data from 6,366 participants were collected by collaborators from over 50 worldwide sites (67.4% or n = 4292, assigned female at birth; average age of 30.76). Our results show that individuals cultural values and subjective social status varied across world regions and were differentially associated with social support behaviors. For example, individuals with higher subjective social status were more likely to indicate more perceived and received social support and help-seeking behaviors; they also indicated more provision of social support to others than individuals with lower subjective social status. Further, horizontal, and vertical collectivism were related to higher help-seeking behavior, perceived support, received support, and provision of support, whereas horizontal individualism was associated with less perceived support and less help-seeking and vertical individualism was associated with less perceived and received support, but more help-seeking behavior. However, these effects were not consistently moderated by region. These findings highlight and advance the understanding of how cross-cultural complexities and contextual distinctions influence an individual's perception, processing, and practice of social support embedded in the changing social landscape.