Full length articleSelf-disclosure and liking in computer-mediated communication
Introduction
Friends and strangers use the Internet to affiliate with others (McKenna et al., 2002, Ramirez and Broneck, 2009). Of the 88% of American adults that are online, 79% use social networking sites such as Facebook and Instagram (32%), 22% interact in chat rooms, 24% share updates about themselves or view updates about others using Twitter, 16% belong to online discussion groups, and 15% date online (Greenwood et al., 2016, Pew Internet and American Life Project, 2014, Pew Research Center, 2016, Smith, 2016, February 11). An integral part of affiliating with others is self-disclosure, or revealing personal information about the self (Altman & Taylor, 1973).
Computer-mediated communication (CMC) promotes self-disclosure. People disclose their feelings, fears, and thoughts in Facebook posts and private messages (Bazarova, 2012). Adolescents reveal intimate information about themselves instant messaging with their friends (Valkenburg & Peter, 2009). Potential suitors disclose as they get acquainted online dating (Whitty, 2008). Individuals reveal their true selves in online discussion groups (McKenna et al., 2002). Bloggers publish their personal experiences online (Lenhart & Fox, 2006). And individuals display relatively personal information on dating and Facebook profiles like political and religious views, work history, hobbies, and their age (Baker, 2008, Nosko et al., 2010).
Different types of communication media influence self-disclosure in different ways. Dyads who get acquainted online generate a greater proportion (Tidwell & Walther, 2002) and frequency (Schouten, Valkenburg, & Peter, 2009) of questions and self-disclosure than do dyads who use face-to-face communication (FtF). Strangers reduce uncertainty about partners by using interactive (asking questions), active (inquiring about the other person), and passive information-seeking strategies (unobtrusive observation of targets), according to uncertainty reduction theory (Berger, 1979). For several reasons, CMC users use more interactive strategies—self-disclosure and question-asking—to reduce uncertainty about others than do FtF communicators (Schouten et al., 2009). Moreover, people perceive the same self-disclosure to be more intimate when it is received online than when it is received FtF (Jiang, Bazarova, & Hancock, 2013). Jiang, Bazarova, and Hancock’s model (2011) argues that this is because individuals make interpersonal attributions (“My partner acted the way s/he did because of how much s/he liked me”) for online disclosure, but not for FtF disclosure. Interpersonal attributions enhance affection towards disclosers because the disclosure is interpreted as an act of affection, rather than a manifestation of disclosers’ personality or the situation.
To date, little research has examined an alternative model to explain the enhanced disclosure-liking effect in CMC. One potential problem with Jiang et al.’s (2011) model is that it does not distinguish between the different sources for the relationship between self-disclosure and liking. In their model, the receiver is both receiving self-disclosure and reciprocating self-disclosure. It is unclear where the liking towards partners originates as one receives someone else's disclosure, as their model dictates, or because both people are receiving disclosure and reciprocating disclosure. Meta-analytic evidence demonstrates that these two processes, receiving self-disclosure and reciprocating self-disclosure, can each lead to partner liking independently (Collins & Miller, 1994). It is therefore possible that receivers may like the discloser due to their own reciprocal self-disclosure, and as a result, we cannot be confident where receivers' affection towards their partner originates. Because disclosure is a fundamental component of relationships, and quality relationships are essential for health and well-being (Heidrich and Ryff, 1993, Kiecolt-Glaser and Newton, 2001), it is important to study the mechanisms for the disclosure-liking effect in CMC.
This study has two goals. The first is to examine alternative models that explain the relationship between self-disclosure and liking in CMC. This study replicates Jiang et al.’s (2011) disclosure-intimacy model, and proposes an additional explanation for the relationship between self-disclosure and liking in CMC. Meta-analytic evidence shows that there are three relationships between self-disclosure and liking (Collins & Miller, 1994). These include (1) people like those who self-disclose to them, (2) people self-disclose to those they like, and (3) people like those to whom they self-disclose. Without distinguishing among these three self-disclosure-liking effects, the relationships depicted by Jiang et al., (2011) may be caused by other disclosure-related processes and factors that Jiang et al. did not consider. The second goal of this study is to examine these three distinct disclosure-liking effects that have been verified in offline research. Though there is strong meta-analytic evidence for these effects in the FtF literature, there is little research demonstrating whether these effects also occur in CMC. These effects are important to understand the role of disclosure in CMC. These fundamental building blocks of relationships pertain whether two colleagues are getting acquainted, two best friends are catching up, or two people are planning their first date online. This study begins by reviewing relevant self-disclosure and attribution literature to understand the processes that lead to liking in CMC. It presents four hypotheses, followed by the details and the results of an experiment that tested them.
Section snippets
The importance of attributions on the disclosure-liking effect in CMC
“The effect of a disclosure on relationship intimacy depends on how the receiver makes sense of the disclosure, interprets it, and responds to it by making attributions about the sender's reasons for self-disclosure” (Jiang et al., 2011, p. 59). The attributions individuals assign to self-disclosure have a strong effect on liking towards the discloser. Strangers who reveal personal information too soon in a conversation tend to incur attributions of being maladjusted whereas strangers who
Participants
Undergraduate students in communication courses at a large Midwestern American university volunteered to participate in exchange for course credit, and signed up through an online research participant pool. The recruitment instructions required each participant to bring a friend to the study. The instructions defined friends as a close acquaintance who they spend time with outside of class but who is not an intimate or romantic partner (Dunne & Ng, 1994).
Initially, 146 dyads participated in the
Results
The data that were used to test each hypothesis were generated by two different types of participants: askers and disclosers. Disclosers always disclosed regardless of the experimental condition, whereas askers alternately complimented, deflected, or reciprocated the disclosers’ self-disclosure depending on their randomly-assigned role.
Hypothesis 1 predicted that interpersonal attributions mediate the relationship between self-disclosure and liking. Specifically, it predicted that askers make
Discussion
This study examined the relationship between self-disclosure and liking in a computer-mediated context. This research had two goals. First, a multiple mediator model was proposed to explain the relationship between self-disclosure and liking in CMC in line with meta-analytic evidence (Collins & Miller, 1994) and Jiang et al.’s (2011) disclosure-intimacy model. Second, it explored whether three distinct self-disclosure –liking effects that have strong meta-analytic support in the FtF literature
Conclusion
Overall, this research contributes to our understanding of the relationship between self-disclosure and liking in CMC. Research has shown that using CMC has a unique impact on self-disclosure. Computer-mediated communication affects the amount of self-disclosure people generate (Tidwell & Walther, 2002), and intensifies the perceived intimacy of self-disclosure (Jiang et al., 2013) due to the attributions people make about intimate disclosure (Jiang et al., 2011). The goal of this study was to
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