his or her life. During a recent plane trip, the woman next to me described
her relationship with her husband, problems in raising her child, her opinionson drugs, sex education, and abortion —all without a single bit of encourage-
ment or comparable disclosure from me.
What is notable about this “stranger on the bus ”phenomenon is that it
violates society’ s rules for the way social interaction is supposed to progress.
Like many social behaviors, the way we reveal information about ourselves isgoverned by a set of unstated but understood rules. Occasionally, parents teachus these rules directly ( “Don’t stare at people ”), but more often we can ’t say
how we learned what is expected and what is inappropriate when interactingwith others. One of these social rules is known as disclosure reciprocity .
According to this rule, people involved in a get-acquainted conversation reveal
information about themselves at roughly the same level of intimacy: I reveal
personal information to you as long as you continue to match that level of inti-macy with personal information about yourself.
Investigators have demonstrated the rule of disclosure reciprocity in labo-
ratory research (Davis, 1977; Taylor & Belgrave, 1986). Undergraduate stu-
dents in one study were randomly paired with a member of the same gender
whom they did not know (Davis, 1976). The students took turns getting to
know one another by volunteering information about themselves. They were
given a list of 72 discussion topics, previously ranked for level of intimacy,
ranging from fairly trivial to extremely revealing. The winner of a coin toss
began by talking for 1 minute on any one of the topics. The partner then
talked for 1 minute on any one of the remaining topics. This procedure con-
tinued until both partners had spoken 12 times. As shown in Figure 12.1,
the students selected increasingly intimate topics as the interaction progressed.
They typically began with something safe, perhaps discussing their favorite
movies or foods. But they soon moved to more personal areas, such as pro-
blems with their parents or ways in which they felt personally inadequate.Moreover, participants tended to match their partners ’intimacy levels. That
is, if one person chose an intimate topic, the partner usually responded by se-lecting a similarly intimate topic. In other words, the students in this experi-ment followed the rule of disclosure reciprocity. Other studies show that
children as young as 8 years of age seem to understand and follow the reci-
procity rule (Cohn & Strassberg, 1983).
Why do we reciprocate disclosure intimacy? One reason is that self-
disclosure leads to feelings of attraction and trust (Derlega, Winstead, &Greene, 2008). When people disclose information about themselves to us, weare attracted to them, and feelings of trust follow. We respond by disclosing
personal information back, thus creating the reciprocity effect. Consistent with
this explanation, studies find that we disclose to people we like and we likethose who disclose to us (Collins & Miller, 1994). But disclosure alone does
not lead to intimacy and liking. Relationships also require a responsive partner
(Laurenceau, Feldman Barrett, & Pietromonaco, 1998; Reis & Patrick, 1996).When partners respond to personal disclosure with signs of caring and by
revealing their own feelings, intimacy develops. Failure to respond appropri-
ately likely ends the chance that the relationship will blossom.310 CHAPTER 12 The Humanistic Approach