Self-disclosure in an acquaintance exercise: Responsibility for level of intimacy.

Abstract

In an acquaintance exercise designed to permit investigation of the process through which members of a dyad negotiate the level of intimacy of their exchanges, like-sex partners disclosed alternately, selecting on each turn from an intimacy-scal ed list of topics. The main findings were as follows: (a) Intimacy increased linearly as encounters progressed, (b) Partners matched their rates of increase in intimacy as well as their average intimacy levels during the exercise, (c) Matching was achieved not as a result of mutual reciprocity but through a process of role differentiation whereby one partner assumed major responsibility for prescribing levels of intimacy and the other largely reciprocated, (d) Role allocation was unrelated to order of starting but was related to partners' relative disclosure levels; responsibility for intimacy level was generally assumed by the more disclosing partner, whereas the less disclosing partner assumed the reciprocating role, (e) Role allocation could not be predicted on the basis of absolute disclosure scores. The findings are discussed in relation to the more general question of how people contrive to structure and define their encounters or relationships . Altman and Taylor (1973) have described the development of interpersonal relationships in terms of a social penetration model, which proposes a monotonic increase with time in both the breadth and depth of the participants' self-disclosure. The process is assumed to be reciprocal, to be associated with rewards and costs experienced in the course of mutual transactions, and to become asymptotic once the costs of further penetration have exceeded the rewards. Although there is some evidence