Abstract

Social support refers to a set of helping behaviors held in relatively broader daily-life areas and for longer period, compared with altruistic behaviors. It is generally accepted that social support is the process consisting of three subconcepts(support network, support behaviors, and support effects), and that there are several differences between two genders in various aspects of social support. Specifically, women are tend to have more intensive network, and to participate more actively in giving and receiving social support, relative to men. Although the effects of social support experienced by two genders have been reported to be inconsistent, women tend to be exposed more often to several negative aspects in social support process. The negative experiences are observed especially in the phenomena of 'contagion of stress' and 'support gap.' The differences of gender in social support process can be explained by the differences of dispositional traits, different social status, or different socializational pressure between men and women. In the current paper, the impacts of socialization on gender differences in social support process were specially stressed and meanings of the differences were discussed.