When Help Is Draining: Investigating the Importance of Various Unhelpful Workplace Social Support Exchanges to Psychological Strain

Organizational researchers have begun investigating the effects of unhelpful workplace social support (UWSS), which refers to social support that recipients believe was intended to be helpful but is perceived as unhelpful or harmful. UWSS has been associated with various negative outcomes, including frustration and burnout. However, existing research has primarily treated UWSS as a unidimensional variable. Thus, the field lacks an understanding of how various kinds of UWSS exchanges differentially relate to outcomes. By conducting multiple linear regression and dominance analyses on data from three occupationally heterogeneous samples of employees (N_total = 826, N₁ = 176, N₂ = 447, N₃ = 203), we investigated how seven forms of UWSS (critical, partial, conflicting, undependable, uncomforting, imposing, short-sighted) related to both proximal (negative mood) and distal (burnout) forms of psychological strain. In Sample 1, critical and uncomforting social support accounted for the most variance in negative mood. In Sample 2, partial and undependable social support accounted for the most variance in burnout. The results regarding partial support and burnout replicated in Sample 3, but the results regarding undependable support and burnout did not replicate (i.e., undependable support did not account for significant variance in burnout when burnout was regressed on the different forms of UWSS). Implications for research and practice are discussed, and future research directions are offered.