When Boy Meets Girl (Revisited): Gender, Gender-Role Orientation, and Prospect of Future Interaction as Determinants of Seff-Disclosure among Same- and Opposite-Sex Acquaintances

Abstract

Male and female research participants self-disclosed to a male or a female confederate with whom they anticipated or did not anticipate further interaction. Women disclosed more intimately, with increasing emotion, and displayed more topical responsiveness with female than with male targets. But as anticipated by gender socialization theory, only the highly masculine men reliably disclosed more to female than to male targets, and then only when they expected further interaction with their partners and could foresee the possibility of cultivating a deeper heterosexual relationship. Moreover; highly masculine men who anticipated further interaction with female targets expressed several of the relationship concerns that gender socialization theory anticipates in their postdisclosure impressions. Neither dispositional masculinity nor femininity reliably predicted the disclosures of women, who may have favored female targets due, in part, to a belief that other women are more appropriate outlets for intimate self-disclosure.