Self-Disclosure

Decision to Self-Disclose

Although some instances of self-disclosure may be unintentional, theories used to predict its occurrence often reflect a conscious decision process. Initial perspectives focused on the degree to which self-disclosure was related to individual difference variables such as neuroticism, extroversion, need for approval, and gender. The frameworks that guide this research are tied to specific constructs, and there is little overarching theory.

Subsequent frameworks have focused on the degree to which self-disclosure results from projected outcomes. In 1979, Valerian Derlega and Janusz Grzelak proposed the functional model of disclosure that assumes that self-disclosure is enacted to achieve an individual's social goals such as self-expression, self-clarification, relational development, social validation, and social control.

In 2000, Julia Omarzu provided a more elaborate description of goals in her disclosure decision model. Individuals engage in a sequential decision-making process in which they first enter a situation with a disclosure goal, after which they determine whether an appropriate target is available and whether disclosure appears to be the best strategy for achieving the goal. A person's assessment of the likely rewards arising from disclosure influences the breadth and duration of disclosure, while the assessment of risk influences the depth of disclosure.

Since the 1980s, Sandra Petronio has been developing communication privacy management theory that broadens the study of self-disclosure by embedding it within the processes by which partners manage private information within their relationship. Hers is a dialectic approach in which individuals balance the need to disclose private information with the desire to maintain privacy. To deal with the dialectic, individuals follow privacy rules that control access to private information. The origins of these rules include culture, gender, privacy motivations, contextual constraints, and reward-cost ratio.

Self-Disclosure Patterns

Research in the 1960s and 1970s conducted by Sydney Jourard identified a dyadic effect in which individuals often reciprocated self-disclosure. Reciprocity has been operationalized in a variety of ways, including the degree to which (a) two individuals engaged in an equivalent degree of self-disclosure over the course of a conversation, (b) their self-disclosures were correlated, or (c) the speaking turns in which a self-disclosure occurred prompted self-disclosure on subsequent turns. Social exchange theory has been used to explain such patterns, positing that they reflected the norm of reciprocity or an equitable distribution of rewards.

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