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group known to be disproportionate users of both face-to-face and online support groups
(Davison, et al., 2000). Disclosure dimensions are then used to provide clues about the
likely communication and relational processes occurring within this context.
Role of disclosure in relationships
In early work on disclosure, Jourard (1971) noted individuals could neither love
nor be loved in the absence of disclosure. However, sharing personal information also
rendered communicators vulnerable to their targets. The idea that disclosure could be
either personally beneficial or costly was also integral to Social Penetration Theory
(Altman & Taylor, 1973), which postulated that relationships only deepen if both people
take repeated risks and gradually increase the intimacy level and breadth of topics they
disclose to one another.
While many tenets of this proposed role of disclosure in relationship development
have been supported over the years, the theory has been repeatedly qualified. The
levels of both shared emotions and intimate facts do appear to increase between
interaction partners over time (Cozby, 1973; Dindia, 1994). Both marital partners and
friends typically exchange a higher level of private facts and emotions compared with
strangers (Morton, 1978; Dindia et al., 1997). Also, expressing strong feelings in the
absence of a highly private topic may not necessarily convey a high level of intimacy, but
these disclosures may provide a safer, intermediate step to intimacy in developing
relationships (Morton, 1978).
It appears that relationship development may be partly driven by an observed
social norm to reciprocate the depth (Dindia, 2000) and possibly also the level of
emotion (Bradac et al., 1978) contained in disclosures. In addition, disclosure generally
also promote liking. People report being more attracted to strangers who use more
intimate levels of disclosure with them (Berg & Archer, 1983; Collins & Miller, 1994).
Also, subjects disclose more intimate details of their lives to strangers who they like
Convention