Chapter
10. Communication Climate
27 November 2012
Intimacy
comes in many forms including physical, emotional, intellectual, and shared
activities.
The
most common strategies for creating distance are withdrawal and avoidance. Other
common avoidance tactics include being reserved, shortening, interaction,
restricting topics, restraint, and deception.
The
notion of intimacy varies from one culture to another. An important determinant
of intimacy although not the only determinant is self-disclosure.
Self-disclosure
consists of honestly revealing messages about the self that are intentionally
directed toward others.
Disclosing
communication contains information that
is generally unavailable via other sources.
The
social penetration model describes two dimensions of self-disclosure: breadth
and depth.
In
a casual relationship, the breadth may be great, but not the depth.
Gender
and culture exerts a strong influence on both the amount of intimacy in a
relationship and how that intimacy is communicated.
Communicators
disclose personal information for a variety of reasons. Benefits include
catharsis, self-clarification, self-validation, reciprocity, impression
formation, relationship maintenance and enhancement, moral obligation, social
influence, and self-defense.
Four
alternatives to revealing self-disclosure are silence, lies, equivocations, and
hints.
Silence,
lies, equivocations, and hints may be ethical alternatives to self-disclosure,
however, whether they are or not depends on the speaker’s motives and the effects of the
deception.
Reasons
people cite for lying include: to save face, to avoid tension or conflict, to
guide social interaction, to manage relationships, to gain power, and to
protect other relationships.
Risks
of self-disclosure include: rejection, negative impression, decrease in
relational satisfaction, loss of influence, loss of control, hurt the other
person, and increased awareness.
In
order for an act of communication to be considered self-disclosing, it must
meet the following criteria:
1.
It must contain personal information about the sender.
2.
The sender must communicate this information verbally.
3.
Another person must be the target.
The
subject of self-disclosing communication is the self, and information about the
self is purposefully communicated to another person.
We
can summarize the self-disclosure concept by saying that it:
1.
Has the self as subject
2.
Is intentional
3.
Is directed at another person.
4.
Is honest.
5.
Is revealing.
6.
Contains information generally unavailable from other sources, and
7.
Gains much of its intimate nature from the context and culture in which is it
expressed.
Self-disclosing
messages must contain information that the other person is not likely to know
at the time or be able to obtain from another source without a great deal of
effort.
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