The role of relational closeness, self-construal, empathy styles, and interpersonal emotion management strategies in predicting social acceptance towards persons expressing suicidal ideation

Attitudes towards suicidal persons differ by culture. Compared to individualism, collectivism is associated with lower levels of permissive attitudes towards the concept of suicide but greater levels social acceptance for suicidal persons. The present study investigated a possible mechanism at the individual level by building a new model. The model posited that an individual's social acceptance of a hypothetical person expressing suicidal ideation would depend mainly on how close the hypothetical person is to the individual (relational closeness) and the extent to which the individual includes other people in their definition of the self (self-construal). Additionally, the model took into account the empathy style and preferred interpersonal emotion management (IEM) strategies of the individual. The study tested the model by using an experimental design that manipulated relational closeness (hypothetical person as best friend or acquaintance) and self-construal (independent or interdependent). Data was collected from 180 undergraduate students from Koç University in 2020 and 2021. Results showed that the experimental manipulation of relational closeness was successful and had a significant effect on social acceptance attitudes. While the self-construal manipulation was not successful, self-reported self-construal was found to be significantly related to social acceptance attitudes as well. The exact role of empathy styles and IEM could not be clarified, but the results suggested that empathic concern (an empathy style) might be more involved in the mechanism compared to experience sharing (the other empathy style) and any IEM strategy. Possible reasons, implications, and avenues for future research are discussed. Keywords: suicide, self-construal, empathy, interpersonal emotion management