Two important issues in social support research are (a) the characteristics of support providers (e.g., enacted support and provider personality) that perceivers use to judge supportiveness and (b) the extent to which correlations between supportiveness and other constructs reflect the idiosyncratic perceptions of perceivers as well as the social consensus among observers. One-hundred daughter caregivers of parents with probable Alzheimer’s disease and their most important support providers completed measures of perceived and enacted support, dyad similarity, the personality characteristics of providers, and caregivers’ depressive symptoms. A number of different provider characteristics were linked to provider supportiveness. However, these links varied depending on whether they reflected the idiosyncratic perceptions of caregivers or the shared views of caregivers and providers. The link between perceived and enacted support was composed of both idiosyncratic and shared components, whereas the link between support and few depressive symptoms was composed only of idiosyncratic perception.
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