Communcating emotional support and its relationship to feelings of being understood, trust, and self‐disclosure

The communicating of emotional support would seem to be an aspect of any successful relationship. Additionally, it would seem to reason that how one communicates emotional support would be an aspect of a relationship pertinent to communication research. Unfortunately, there is very little empirical evidence that illuminates how this is related to other relational outcomes such as trust. Weber and Patterson (1996) first developed a measure that taps into how much emotional support one receives from a specific other. In their initial scale development piece the authors validate the Communication Based Emotional Support Scale (CBESS) by finding positive correlations with both relationship solidarity and relationship satisfaction. This current study aimed to further validate the CBESS by exploring its relationship to trust, self‐disclosure, and feelings of being understood.