The origins and maintenance of social support are examined as critical, but neglected, aspects of this critical component of life. Social support can no longer be considered strictly an external force impinging upon the individual; rather, it must be viewed as an evolving developmental and interactive process between an individual and his or her social environment. A social support network is constructed throughout life in a reciprocal developmental manner between personal characteristics and social contacts. It is maintained or adjusted via immediate transactions between an individual and his or her support network. Appreciation of social support as an interactive process represents one of several important, new directions in the study of social support. Using longitudinal data from a community sample of adolescents, several predictions from this reciprocal model of social support were confirmed. Family and parent supports were more stable over time than support from peers and adults. Certain personal traits generated changes in social support over a 1-year period. Finally, in latent-variable models, early self-esteem increased later support from peers for both sexes and support from adults for girls.
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Michael D. Newcomb (1990) studied this question.