experiences (Bauminger, Finzi-Dottan, Chason, & Har-Even, 2008). In one
demonstration of this difference, researchers recorded (with permission) thetelephone conversations of female college students (Hornstein & Truesdell,
1988). The students talked about significantly more intimate information
when they interacted with friends than when they spoke on the phone with
someone they identified as only an acquaintance. Conversations among good
friends also include many noticeable signs of intimacy that are lacking in con-
versations with strangers (Hornstein, 1985). These signs include the use of fa-miliar terms, laughing at similar points, and understanding when to speak
and when the conversation is coming to an end.
Willingness to self-disclose is also related to how easily one makes
friends. One team of researchers asked incoming college freshmen how will-ing they were to reveal negative emotions like anxiety, fear, and sadness to
others (Graham, Huang, Clark, & Helgeson, 2008). Students who were rela-tively willing to disclose their emotions to others developed more and more
intimate social relationships during their first semester on campus than stu-
dents who were reluctant to reveal this information about themselves.
Studies with couples in long-term romantic relationships find similar pat-
terns. The amount of self-disclosure in a marriage is a strong predictor of re-
lationship satisfaction (Farber & Sohn, 2007; Harvey & Omarzu, 1997;
Sprecher & Hendrick, 2004). The more couples talk to one another about
what’s personal and important to them, the better each of them feels about
the marriage. Of course, it also may be that couples disclose because they
feel good about each other. However, it is not the case that people who dis-
close a lot necessarily have more success at romance. Rather, researchers find
that couples in good relationships have selectively chosen one another to dis-
close to rather than being high disclosers generally (Prager, 1986). And, as
with good friends, married couples do not feel the need to reciprocate their
partner ’s disclosure during every conversation (Morton, 1978).
Disclosing Men and Disclosing Women
Not long ago, my wife made an interesting observation about one of my male
friends. “He interacts with people like a woman, ”she said. I immediately un-
derstood her point. My friend ’s voice is deep and masculine, and he doesn ’t
use feminine hand gestures. But he often fills our conversations with fairly re-vealing information about his thoughts and feelings. This behavior would be
appropriate, my wife continued, if my friend were a woman. But high levelsof self-disclosure struck her as unusual for a man.
Consistent with these observations, investigators find that women typi-
cally disclose more intimately and to more people than do men (Dindia &Allen, 1992). Some psychologists argue that men learn as they grow up to
limit personal disclosures (Jourard, 1971). They avoid talking about their
true feelings out of fear of being ridiculed or rejected. Participants in onestudy read about someone who was either highly disclosing or not very dis-
closing about personal problems (Derlega & Chaikin, 1976). Half the partici-
pants thought they were reading about a man, and half thought the person
was a woman. The participants who thought they were reading about a312 CHAPTER 12 The Humanistic Approach