Reciprocal self-disclosure in a dyad

Abstract

Male subjects randomly assigned to high and low intimacy experimental conditions were asked to talk about themselves with a confederate who used scripts controlling his intimacy level. Hypotheses were examined concerning: the reciprocity of intimacy in self-disclosure; the reciprocity of conversational topics; the effect of interpersonal attraction on self-disclosure; the accuracy with which persons perceived their self-disclosures; and the consistency of self-disclosure behavior across measures and over time. The findings indicated that subjects reciprocated the intimacy level of the confederate, and that their self-disclosing behavior displayed moderate consistency in the laboratory situation. Although subjects did not reciprocate topically, subjects in both conditions manifested the same pattern of topical disclosure. Two hypotheses were not confirmed: the level of disclosure was not related to interpersonal attraction and a scale measure of past self-disclosure was not related to four laboratory indicators of disclosing behavior.