Week 9-3 Social Support

Chapter 10 page 300 takes about various functions of social support. Emotional Support Involves the provision of messages of care and regard for the other person. Informational support involves offering facts, opinions, and advice on matters of concern. Instrumental and material support involves the provision of tangible resources. Appraisal support involves evaluative message that encourage an individual to continue performing well.

From my work experiences I feel that I always had good emotional support from other people at work and are good at this. Instrumental and material support is also acceptable and is provided if asked for. One thing that clearly lacks is informational support. When I started working I was really surprised to see in meeting etc when someone raised concerns about issues they were facing with certain things, people would just keep quiet and do not say anything. But when my manager assigned some one to help me or anyone with that then i could clearly see that they knew the problem and the solution but were just not trying to help on their own unless they are asked for. When I was in school doing my undergrad this never used to be case, people around you would always volunteer to share information if they knew the solution. Even when asked for feedback unless managers force people to do it with in a certain time normally no one would really care about providing feedback which is really important.