Stress and Affiliation in a Hospital Setting:

Preoperative Roommate Preferences

James A. Kulik
Heike I. M. Mahler
University of California, San Diego

This study examined stress and affiliation relationships in a natural setting by

assessing the preoperative raommate preferences of 70 patients facing major
(coronary bypass) surgery. No support was found for the notion, derived from
social comparison theory, that novel, fear-inducing situations produce selective
preferences for affiliation with others who are of similar emotional status {i.e.,
likewise facing threat). On the contrary, patients demonstrated a strong overall
preference before surgery for a roommate who was postoperative (dissimilar
emotional status) rather than preoperative (similar emotional status). The
preference for a postoperative roommate held regardless of patient fear level and,
with slight qualification, regardless of actual roommate assignment. Theoretical
implications for social comparison formulations that have been applied to stress
and affiliation research are discussed.

Social psychologists have long been interested in the tendency of people to

evaluate their abilities, opinions, and emotions by comparing themselves with
others (Goethals, 1986). Festinger (1954), for example, proposed in his theory of
social comparison that people will generally prefer to compare their opinions
and/or abilities with those of relatively similar others. Schachter (1959)
extended this work to the domain of emotion by proposing that people in novel,
threatening situations seek to determine the appropriateness of their emotions
and that this evaluative need is best served by comparison with others who are in
a relatively similar emotional state. Stated differently, desire for affiliation
under threat should be directly proportional to the perceived similarity of
potential comparison others (Firestone, Kaplan, & Russell, 1973). In line with
these notions, laboratory research has indicated that individuals made fearful by

AUTHORS’ NOTE: We wish to thank Rita Malone for preparation of this manuscript
and William Y. Moores, M.D., Colin Joyo, M.D., Lee Griffith, M.D., Thea Rehman,
Cathy Nielsen, R.N., and all the staff on the fifth floor at the San Diego Veterans
Hospital
for their help and cooperation. We also thank Michael J. Strube and two anonymous
reviewers for their helpful comments. Finally, we thank the patients whose
generosity
during a tremendously difficult time in their lives made the project possible. This
research
was supported by Academic Senate and Biomedical Research Funds from the University
of California, San Diego, and by a grant from the Maxicare Research and Education
Foundations. All correspondence regarding this article should be sent to James A.
Kulik,
Department of Psychology, C-009, University of California, San Diego, California
92093.

Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Vol. 15 No. 2, June 1989, 183-193
© 1989 by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.

183

Downloaded from http:/psp.sagepub.com by Dorin Nastas on November 6, 2007

© 1989 Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.. All rights reserved.
Not for commercial

from the SAGE Social Science Collections. All Rigtt®ebyepyiterized distribution.