Factors affecting attraction: self disclosure Flashcards
What is self disclosure?
Revealing personal information about yourself.
Romantic partners reveal more about their true selves as their relationship develops.
Who came up with the social penetration theory?
Altman and Taylor
What is the social penetration theory?
A theory of how relationships develop.
It is the gradual process of revealing your inner self to someone else, of giving away your deepest thoughts and feelings.
As they increasingly disclose more and more, romantic partners gain a deeper understanding of each other.
What are the two elements of self disclosure?
Breadth and depth
Explain breadth and depth of self disclosure
As both of these increase, romantic partners become more committed to each other.
In the early stage of a relationship the breadth of disclosure is likely to be narrow. If we reveal too much information too quickly we mat get a TMI response, possibly threatening the relationship.
As relationships develop what happens to self disclosure?
Self-disclosure becomes deeper, progressively removing more and more layers to reveal our true selves and eventually we could be able to disclose intimate and high risk information.
What is depenetration?
Describes how dissatisfied partners self-disclose less as they gradually disengage from the relationship.
Who pointed out reciprocity of self disclosure?
Reis and Shaver
What is reciprocity of self disclosure?
Reis and Shaver pointed out, for a relationship to develop, there needs to be reciprocal elements to disclosure.
So there is a balance of self disclosure between both partners in a successful romantic relationship, which increases feelings of intimacy and deepens the relationship.
Evaluation: Research support for social penetration theory. Sprecher and Hendrick
Sprecher and Hendrick (2004) studies heterosexual dating couples and found strong correlations between several measures of satisfaction and self-disclosure for both partners.
Men and women who used self-disclosure were more satisfied with and committed to their romantic relationship.
These findings increase the validity of the theory.
Evaluation: Real world application
Research into self-disclosure can help people who want to improve communication in their relationships.
Haas and Stafford found that 57% of homosexual men and women said that open and honest self disclosure was the main way they maintained and deepened their relationship.
This shows how it can help people in relationships.
Evaluation: cultural differences
One limitation is that it is not true for all cultures that increasing depth and breadth of self-disclosures leads to a more satisfying and intimate romantic relationship.
Tang (2013) reviewed research into sexual self-disclosure. They concluded that men and women in the US disclose significantly more sexual thoughts and feelings than men and women in China.
Therefore self-disclosure theory is a limited explanation or romantic relationships because it is based on findings from individualistic cultures which are not necessarily generalisable to other cultures.
