What’s the best way to help a friend?

There are many ways in which the provision of social support can be ineffective. Recent research suggests that the benefits of support may be maximized when it is provided invisibly. What remains unknown, however, is whether invisible support reflects the skillful behavior of support providers or recipientsâ blissful unawareness, as well as how invisible support is delivered during spontaneous social interactions. We hypothesized that both providersâ skillful behavior and recipientsâ unawareness are necessary for invisible support to be effective, and we sought to document what effective invisible support looks like. Eighty-five couples engaged in a videotaped support interaction in the lab. Support recipients whose partners provided more invisible practical and emotional support (coded by observers) but who reported receiving less support experienced the largest preinteraction-to-postinteraction declines in negative emotions. In the case of practical invisible support, the combination of more support and less awareness of that support also predicted increases in self-efficacy. These results indicate that invisible support is a dyadic phenomenon.

Source: “Getting in Under the Radar,Â A Dyadic View of Invisible Support” fromÂ Psychological Science

That’s a little vague. They don’t mean unseen support like in theÂ Inspector Gadget/Penny/Brain way.

What they’re getting at is providing a suggestion for how to feel better without ordering someone to do something:

“When I’ve had that problem in the past what I’ve done is…” vs “You should do this…”

The authors of the study explain it pretty clearly in this video: