How do you show up when someone has a bad day?

What this is

This is our own quiz, not a validated test. It sorts everyday comforting into four kinds of support that relationship researchers have used for decades: informational (advice), emotional (comfort and care), esteem (confidence in the person) and tangible (practical help). Most people use all four. The quiz picks out the one you reach for first.

The research behind it

The four kinds come from a coding system for support conversations. In a 1992 study, 60 married people told their spouse about something stressful, and the replies were coded into five types of support. Advice was given most often when the stressed person had a lot of control over the problem. The authors found only limited support for their idea that each kind of problem has a best-matching kind of help. A later study of newlyweds lists the same five dimensions: the four above plus “network” support, a sense of belonging to a group. That study dropped network support because its scores were unreliable, and we left it out too.

That newlywed study followed 103 couples five times over their first five years. Getting more support than you wanted was a bigger risk for falling marital satisfaction than getting too little, and advice was the type spouses most often said they got too much of. Too much esteem support, on the other hand, was not linked to decline. The couples were mostly white, fairly well educated and married, the data were self-reports, and the authors note they cannot say what caused what. A videotaped study of 59 married couples adds that when one spouse shared feelings and got emotional support back, they saw their partner as more sensitive, although the authors call their evidence partial.

What it cannot tell you

Your result is the style your answers picked most often; a tie goes to the one listed first. It does not say whether your support is good. That depends on what the other person wants on that day, and the simplest way to find out is to ask. The studies behind this quiz were about married couples, so friends and coworkers may work a little differently. Your individual answers stay in your browser; with your consent, the site only counts which result comes up.