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 effects of an instigator's and a respondent's disclosure on impressions of the revealing respondent were examined in a pair of experiments. The first experiment assessed the effects of both own and other's disclosure on a participant perceiver. After meeting a confederate partner, female undergraduate subjects (N=83) were induced to make an…

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…

An experiment was conducted in which perceptions of an individual responding to an initial disclosure were examined. Observer subjects (N=315) read a brief description of a first encounter between two women. During the meeting one of the women made either an intimate or a non-intimate disclosure (low vs. high initial intimacy). The other woman…