Predictions that the assignment of intimate topics for self-disclosure in the presence of self-awareness-producing stimuli would lead to negative affect and attempts to avoid self-awareness, rather than a positive, cathartic experience, were investigated by conducting an experiment in which male and female subjects described themselves while alone…

The relationship between dispositional level of self-disclosure or disclosure flexibility--a measure of appropriateness of self-disclosure with respect to social-situational norms--and indices of effective interpersonal functioning were investigated in two experiments. Results of Study I revealed that when differences in social desirability were…

Many research efforts have focused on the effect of client and counselor sex on the process and outcome of counseling. It was hypothesized that same-sex counselor-client dyads would develop a more open, empathic relationship than would opposite-sex dyads, and that this would be reflected in the number of sessions the counseling dyad spent…

Self-disclosure to a therapist was investigated with 120 female subjects who viewed a video-taped vignette of a simulated psychotherapy session. Therapist self-disclosure was manipulated so that subjects saw a therapist exhibiting no disclosure, interpersonal disclosure, or intrapersonal disclosure. Subjects rated these therapists on a variety of…

The effects of first-session interviewer self-disclosures that differed in three levels of intimacy--low, medium and high--and three kinds of temporal focus--historical (past tense and external to the interview process), current (present tense and external to the interview process), and existential in which the interviewer disclosed immediate…

Several theoretical approaches have been offered to explain the phenomenon of reciprocity: trust-liking, social exchange, and modeling. The emphasis of previous research on self-disclosure reciprocity (descriptive reciprocation), the intimacy of the facts an individual reveals about him- or herself, stems largely from the fact that these…

The argument has been advanced that in intimate self-disclosure sex differences occur with males being less intimately disclosive than females--especially to other males. The argument posits that males who have homophobia (a fear of sexual contact with members of the same sex) might view intimate self-disclosure as a homosexual act and thus avoid…

Recent investigations of marital interaction have concentrated on the process of communication while discussing issues of conflict within the relationship. Few studies have been designed to assess emotional communication among married couples. To determine emotional interaction by examining the overall distribution and sequencing of emotional…

A study was conducted to examine self-disclosure as a relational control strategy in speech communication. Conversations of seven married couples were coded using L. E. Rogers-Millar's Relational Communication Control Coding Scheme and a self-disclosure coding system developed for the study. A message-by-message comparison of the codes from the…

In order to examine their willingness to disclose, subjects were given a questionnaire to test the relative contributions to such willingness of stimulus person (teacher, friend, parent, stranger), situation (home, college, public place, social situation), individual differences, and response mode (e.g., sexual behavior, voting preference). The…

The construct Interpersonal Orientation (IO) refers to the degree to which a person is responsive to the interpersonal aspects of his relationships with other people. A self-report measure of IO was devised whose construct validity was supported by correlational data. Two experiments were conducted to assess the potential usefulness of IO in…