Self-Disclosure and Relationship Disengagement

Altman and Taylor’s (1973) book, Social Penetration, has served as the foundation for much of the research on self-disclosure in developing relationships. However, Altman and Taylor posited the dynamics of depenetration in their volume as well as the process of social penetration. They viewed depenetration, or disengagement as it shall be referred to in this chapter, as a simple reversal of the relationship growth process, arguing that self-disclosure breadth, depth, and valence decreased to strangerlike status as relationship parties grew more distant. To date, Altman and Taylor’s so-called “reversal hypothesis” has met with inconsistent support. Some studies have reported reduced depth of disclosure as relationships disengaged (Baxter, 1979a, 1983; Baxter & Wilmot, 1983; Lloyd, 1983; Wheeless, Wheeless, & Baus, 1984; Wilmot & Baxter, 1983), but other research has noted an increased depth of disclosure (Tolstedt & Stokes, 1984). No reduction in the breadth of disclosure has been noted in some studies (Baxter, 1979a; Baxter & Wilmot, 1983), in contrast to the reduced breadth of disclosure found in other research (Tolstedt & Stokes, 1984). Although a shift toward affectively neutral disclosure has been noted in some work (Ayres, 1982), other research has reported an increase in negatively valenced disclosures (Tolstedt & Stokes, 1984). Certainly, methodological differences in these various investigations account at least in part for the discrepancies that exist. However, it is the argument in this chapter that the “reversal hypothesis,” despite the elegance of its simplicity, fails to conceptualize important complexities of self-disclosure in the disengagement process that may lead to a prediction of reversal in some instances but not in others. The chapter is framed in a rhetorical/strategic theoretical perspective in contrast to the social exchange perspective (Airman & Taylor, 1973; Knapp, 1984) and the stochastic structural perspective (Cappella, 1984; Gottman, 1979), which are often associated with the self-disclosure construct.

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