University students with different perceptions of the social support available to them read about social interactions in which they imagined themselves as either the potential recipient of support, the provider of support, or an uninvolved third party. When they took the perspective of either the provider or a third party, their judgments of the provider's supportiveness increased with the support they perceived to be available to them personally. This difference was absent, however, when they imagined themselves as the recipient. Participants with a recipient's perspective had relatively better recall of behaviors that were inconsistent with their perception of the support available to them outside the laboratory, whereas those who took other perspectives did not. The cognitive processes that mediate these and other effects are discussed, and their implications for the stability of perceived support availability are evaluated.
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