Investigating cultural differences in social support between Latino and Caucasian couples

The examination of stress and coping at a cross-cultural level is an emerging field of study, and previous research has found that Asian and Asian American couples seek social support from their partners when undergoing a stressful situation to a lesser extent than do European American couples. The current study sought to expand the research in this area by comparing Latino couples to Caucasian couples to determine if the same pattern of differences exists between these two cultures as well. Each couple (n=36) had one partner designated into a stressful situation (speech writer) and the other partner was designated as a puzzle player. Puzzle difficulty was manipulated in order to manipulate the potential resources available to provide support to the speech writer. The dependent variable of interest was the frequency of social support seeking behaviors initiated by the speech writer. Overall, there were no significant differences between Latino and Caucasian couples in their support seeking frequencies, but the data do demonstrate unexpected trends, contradicting the results of previous research in this area. Implications of these findings, limitations of the current study, and suggestions for future research are discussed.