The Impact of Counselor and Participant Gender on Willingness to Discuss Relational Topics: Development of the Relationship Disclosure Scale

Abstract

The current investigation examined people's willingness to disclose personal information about their intimate relationships to counselors. This was accomplished by asking 431 students to indicate how willing they would be to discuss 25 relationship topics, as measured by the newly developed Relationship Disclosure Scale (RDS), with female and male counselors. The results indicated that people's willingness to disclose their intimate relationships to counselors depended on their own gender, the gender of the counselor, and the particular relationship topics assessed by the RDS. In addition, several personality variables associated with relational‐esteem and relational‐consciousness were found to be associated with women's willingness to engage in relationship disclosure with male and female counselors. These findings underscore the impact of gender and personality on counseling disclosure tendencies. The discussion focuses on gender and the use of the RDS in research and counseling settings.