Abstract

The study examined women’s preferences for different types of social support when seeking help in the context of intimate partner violence (IPV). Results from 400 participants in South Korea and the United States showed that individuals from both cultures significantly preferred informal support over formal support. An exploratory correlational analyses also revealed that regardless of culture, higher levels of approach motivation and emotional expressivity were associated with a greater preference for informal support. However, these variables were not significantly related to the preference for formal support. The findings contribute to the literature by suggesting different subtypes of social support-formal, informal, emotional, and material-and highlight the drawbacks of solely investing in modifying individual traits to promote the use of formal support systems among those vulnerable to IPV.