FACTORS INFLUENCING SELF-DISCLOSURE

IN ACTUAL THERAPY SESSIONS

by

THOMAS GERALD PATTEN, B.S., M.S.

A DISSERTATION

IN

PSYCHOLOGY

Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Texas Tech University in

Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for

the Degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Approved

Accepted

May, 198 3

C.^Vt^ ' ^'^' ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am deeply grateful and indebted to Professor Bill

J. Locke for his dedicated direction of this dissertation

and to the other members of my committee, Professors Clay

E. George, Charles G. Halcomb, Richard P. McGlynn, and

Cal D. Stoltenberg, for their helpful criticisms.

To Linda Boris, Bruce Head, Jackie Atherton and

Robert Bird, and especially to Mrs. Vicki Covey I extend

my deep appreciation for their diligent help in data

collection. Computing was done utilizing the facilities

of the Northeast Regional Data Center of the State

University System of Florida located on the campuses

of the University of Florida in Gainesville and the

University of North Florida in Jacksonville. A special

thanks to Eric Rhinehart for his guidance in the use

of those facilities. I also wish to express my appre­

ciation to Mrs. Ann E. Kelley, for her very professional

preparation of the final manuscript.

Financial support for this project was provided by

the Health Sciences Education and Training Command of the

United States Navy.

11

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

LIST OF TABLES iv

I. INTRODUCTION 1

Review of Content Analysis Systems 2

Review of Self-Disclosure Literature 9

Purpose and Hypotheses 42

II. METHODS AND PROCEDURES 4 9

Subjects 49

Instruments 50

Procedure 51

III. RESULTS 56

Data Analysis 56

Results of Analysis 60

IV. DISCUSSION 7 5

Overview of Results 75

Discussion of the Results 78

Implications and Contributions 94

Current Limitations and Future Directions ... 97

Summary 9 9

REFERENCES 101

APPENDICES 121

111

LIST OF TABLES

Table Page

1 Summary of Variables Included in Analyses 52

2 Results of Regression Equation F Tests for Duration of CSD 5 8

3 Regression Coefficients for Total Duration of CSD 59

4 Results of Regression Equation F Tests for Intimacy of CSD 61

5 Regression Coefficients for Total Intimacy of CSD 62

6 Results of Regression Equation F Tests for Number of CSD 63

7 Regression Coefficients for Total Number of CSD 64

8 Results of Regression Equation F Tests for Quarter Analysis 66

9 Regression Coefficients for Quarter Analysis 67

10 Number of Client Self-Disclosures by Selected Groups 6 8

11 Intercorrelations of Criterion Variables with Nine Predictor Variables 70

12 Intercorrelations of Content Variables with Criterion and Predictor Variables 71

13 Regression Equations for Duration, Intimacy, and Number of CSD 7 4

IV

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

The concept of self-disclosure has its roots in the

existential and phenomenological philosophies of Husserl,

Heidigger, Sartre, Buber and Mirleau-Ponty (Chelune, 1979)

However, it was Jourard (1971) and his colleagues who

launched self-disclosure as the subject of a burgeoning

area of conceptual and empirical inquiry that spans clini­

cal and social psychology, communications theory, philos­

ophy, and our everyday lives. Whenever we encounter anoth­

er person our mere presence reveals our sex, approximate

age, weight, and height, and perhaps, our affective state.

As we interact with others, we disclose more through body

movements, eye contact, proximity, how we speak and what

we say (Rosenfeld and Civikly, 1976). As a class of inter­

personal communications, self-disclosure involves multiple

channels limited only by the possible combinations of ex­

pressive and receptive modes (Birdwhistell, 1970). How­

ever, it is the verbal aspects of disclosure which have

received the lion's share of attention in the psychologi­

cal literature. Having identified verbal self-disclosure

as the variable of interest for this research, a general

definition is in order. Cozby (1973, p.73) presented one

which serves the purpose well at this point:

2

"self-disclosure may be defined as any information about

himself which Person A comraunicates verbally to Person B."

Refinements will be added to this definition later and the

focus of this work will be narrowed to include only verbal

self-disclosure which occurs in the context of inter­

actions between clients and therapists.

In order for any form of psychotherapy to be effec­

tive the client must reveal himself or herself to the

therapist to some degree. Self-disclosure provides the

material upon which the psychotherapeutic process is based

and has been seen by many as a critical aspect in thera­

peutic relationships (Jourard, 1964; Mowrer, 1968; Rogers,

1971; Strassberg and Anchor, 1977; Truax and Carkhuff, 1965).

Setting the stage for the examination of the role

of self-disclosure in psychotherapy requires a look at

the interactions between client and therapists. The data

necessary for understanding the phenomena are embedded in

those interactions. Some sort of order must be imposed on

the communications so that meaningful relationships among

the elements can be established. One of the methods re­

searchers have used to accomplish that kind of organi­

zation has been the use of content analysis systems.

Review of Content Analysis Systems

Attempts to devise schemes to organize and evaluate

the essential aspects of the therapeutic process began in

the 1920's. William Snyder (1945) was apparently the first

to develop a categorization system for use in the investi­

gation of client and therapist verbalizations. His system

was intended to be comprehensive. It included seventeen

categories for counselor statements, subsumed under four

headings (lead taking, nondirective response-to-feeling,

semidirective response-to-feeling, directive counseling,

and minor categories) and twelve client categories sub­

sumed under four headings (problem, simple response, under­

standing or action taking, and minor). A second dimension

dealt with affective expressions which were categorized

as positive, negative, or ambivalent and as directed to­

ward the self, the counselor, or external objects or others,

The scoring unit was the "idea" defined as a clearly in­

dicated change in the subject matter or attitude during

verbal exchanges. The breaks between ideas were arbitrarily

decided without explicit rules. Typed and sometimes con­

densed transcripts of counseling sessions constituted the

data to be coded. He chose selected sessions for coding

only when categorizing the entire series was not feasible.

Intrarater reliabilitiy over a one month period ranged

from .76 to .87. Interrater agreement ranged from .52 to

.78.

While Snyder included self-referenced affect in his

system, Raimy (1948) was one of the first investigators

to explicitly assess the occurence of self-reference in

psychotherapy sessions. Four types of self-reference were

scored: positive, negative, ambivalent, and ambiguous. Raimy

used the "response" of the client as the unit of the analy­

sis. Response categorization was based on the agreement of

three of four judges. Interjudge agreement was 81.8 per­

cent while intrascorer reliability over six months yielded

80.8 percent agreement.

In his attempt to assess how individual's perceptions

of themselves affect their views of other people and exter­

nal objects. Stock (1949) used ten content categories in­

cluding self-feelings and self-thoughts. Using this system,

two judges demonstrated between 68 and 82 percent agreement.

Murray's (1956) content analysis system was an attempt

to assess client and therapist verbal behavior in inter­

views. This system emphasized verbalizations as manifesta­

tions of underlying emotional currents. Client statements

were first put into one of four main drive categories (sex,

affection, dependence, independence) and then into one of

the three subcategories (expression of the need, internal

blocking of the need, external frustration of the need).

Therapist verbalization were initially assigned to one

of two general classes, active and passive remarks. They

were then classified into such subcategories as instruc­

tions to free associate, strong approvals, demands, direc­

tions, mild probings, mild approvals, and acknowledgements

that the client is talking. The basic unit for scoring

client remarks was the "meaning phrase" - essentially the

sentence. Everything the therapist said between client

statements was scored as a unit. Murray scored entire

sessions rather than sampling from within a session. His

selection of interviews from series showed no consistent

sampling procedures and he did not explicitly deal with

this issue. Interrater reliabilities for categorizations

of client and therapist remarks ranged from .46 to .99.

It is interesting to note that while the use of his system

has produced theoretically meaningful results Murray did

not present any data relevant to the possible interrela­

tions of the client and therapist categories.

Strupp's (1957) multidimensional analysis system was

an ambitious attempt to devise an instrument that would

allow assessment of theoretically significant elements of

therapists' verbal behavior in interviews and the evalua­

tion of individual differences among therapists. His system

contained categories for eight types of therapist activity

(facilitating communication, exploratory operations,

clarifications, interpretive operations, structuring,

direct guidance, activity not relevant to therapy, and

unclassifiable activity) and three quantifying dimensions

(depth-directedness, iniative and warmth-coldness). Point­

ing out that "experience indicates that the therapist

communications are usually brief and concise...and even

6

longer communications are usually devoted to the discus­

sion of a single theme" (1960, p. 257), Strupp chose as the

unit of measurement the therapist communication occurring

between two client statements. Like Murray, he scored the

entire session and made no explicit statements about

sampling of sessions from a case series. Agreement between

two judges ranged from 80 to 85 percent for type of thera­

pist activity and from 86 to 90 percent for the quantita­

tive dimensions ratings.

Lennard and Bernstein (1969) have emphasized the

social-dyadic interactional nature of psychotherapy. They

wrote, "Psychotherapeutic intervention has traditionally

located pathology within the individual and has focused

its attention on the management of intrapsychic variables.,

we shift the perspective from the individual and his

intrapsychic states to the interactional environment

within which his behavior is inevitably embedded" (1969,

p. 3). Thus, they viewed therapy as an interactional

system and emphasized the functions of dyadic verbal

communications and role expectations. Their Interaction

Analysis Scale involved six general categories: produc­

tivity, therapist informational specificity, grammatical

forms, affective content, and interaction process. The

system employed three units of analysis: propositions,

statements and exchanges. They typically scored an en­

tire session and, while selecting sample sessions from

7

a case series, they did not specify their sampling tech­

niques. Little information was provided concerning inter­

rater reliabilities for the system but in one study, for

one category there was a reported 82 percent agreement

between two judges.

Considerable work on the non-content elements of

interaction in the therapeutic process has been done by

Chappie (1939, 1940, 1949, 1953). Among the first to com­

bine content analysis with such non-content elements as

speech duration, speech latencies, and silences were

Hargreaves and Starkweather (1959) and the Matarazzo group

(Matarazzo, Saslow and Matarazzo, 1956; Phillips, Matarazzo,

Matarazzo, Saslow, and Kanfer, 1961; Saslow, Matarazzo and

Guze, 1955; Saslow, Matarazzo, Phillips, and Matarazzo,

1957) .

Siegman and Pope (1962) developed a scale intended

to aid in studying the relationship between the inter­

viewer's verbal behavior and the interviewee's verbal

behavior. Specifically, they quantified the specificity

and topical focus of the interviewer statements. They

initially used the scale to study intake interview

sessions but, "to avoid the longterm vicissitudes of the

doctor-patient relationship and the cumulative impact of

previous therapeutic sessions as confounding variables"

(1965, p. 191), they subsequently studied experimental

interview sessions. The scoring unit was the therapist

8

response and entire interviews were scored. The intra-

class correlations of the averages of judges ratings

ranged from .94 to .97.

The work of Truax and Carkhuff (1967) produced an

extensive body of research on the therapist's verbal

behavior. Three scales with their conceptual basis in

Rogers' (1957) formulations were developed for use in

analyzing the therapist's role in the psychotherapeutic

process. These scales allowed the rating of what were

seen as the pivotal therapist behaviors in effective

psychotherapy: accurate empathy, nonpossessive warmth,

and genuineness. Series of statement samples from ses­

sions were generally selected randomly for rating, al­

though restrictions were usually added such as sampling

from only the last half of the session. A wide range of

sampling techniques have been used, ranging from selec­

ting every fifth session to sampling from every session

in a series. Truax reported interjudge reliability co­

efficients ranging from .43 to .79 for accurate empathy,

from .48 to .84 for nonpossessive warmth, and from .40

to .61 for genuineness.

Two later studies have used content analyses to

investigate the therapy process. Otstott and Scrutchins

(1974) looked at the relationship between client self-

disclosure and five categories of therapist intervention

(open invitation to talk, interpretation, confrontation.

9

verbal follow, and self-disclosure). They found that open

invitations to talk and confrontations were by far the

most effective means of promoting client self-disclosure.

Most recently, Brunick and Schroeder (1979) used Strupp's

system for classifying therapist activity in a comparison

of the verbal behavior of psychoanalytically oriented,

gestalt, and behavioral therapists.

Review of Self-Disclosure Literature

Definition

Having enumerated some systems used in the investi­

gation of the therapeutic process, the present section

considers the type of content that is to be of particular

interest in this study. Researchers in the area of self-

disclosure have been prolific, but the large body of find­

ings resulting from their work contains much that is con­

tradictory. A good deal of this inconsistency is due to

differences in definitions and methods used in the assess­

ment of self-disclosure. To the extent that each investi­

gator develops and uses a unique operational definition,

different elements of disclosure are emphasized and

different measurement strategies are required. The use

of these different strategies make it difficult to compare

findings across studies and contributes to inconsisten­

cies in the literature.

10

To make explicit the elements of self-disclosure to

be considered in this study, the definition presented

earlier must be refined. Cozby's (1973) definition of

self-disclosure was "any information about himself which

Person A communicates verbally to Person B" (p. 73). This

broad definition sets these criteria: 1) self-disclosure

must contain personal information about.Person A, 2) the

information must be verbally communicated to a target

Person B, and 3) the information must be verbally communi­

cated by the discloser. The definition proposed by Worthy,

Gary and Kahn (1969) places further restrictions on what

is to be considered self-disclosure. They defined self-

disclosure as "that which occurs when A knowingly communi­

cates to B information about A which is not generally known

and is not otherwise available to B" (p. 59). Following

this formulation, the criteria of intentionality and

privacy were added to the operational definition. Goodstein

and Reinecker (1974) considered still another element to

be an important parameter of self-disclosure. Pointing out

that such aspects of the self as feelings, values, ideas,

and experiences are more central or important to the

individual, they contended that self-disclosure should

be limited to the "intentional revealing of these more

central aspects of the self" (p. 70). Combining the ele­

ments offered by these writers, there are six criteria

for self-disclosure. First, it contains personal

11

information about the discloser. Second, the information

is verbally communicated by the discloser. Third, the in­

formation is intentionally communicated. Fourth, the in­

formation is private. Fifth, it deals with some aspect of

himself or herself which the discloser considers important.

Finally, the information is communicated to a target per­

son. For the purposes of this study, self-disclosure will

be defined as verbally communicated information about her­

self or himself which is important to him or her (central-

ity) and which would ordinarily be private rather than

public information (intimacy). The definition will ob­

viously affect the assessment strategies to be used, but

before discussing the specific approach for this investi­

gation, an overview of measurement techniques used in

past disclosure research is appropriate.

Measurement

According to Goodstein and Reinecker (1974) there

are three major approaches to the measurement of self-

disclosure. The first approaches disclosure from the

perspective of the discloser and involves the use of

self-report rating scales or inventories. The second is

from the viewpoint of the recipient or an observer who

makes some assessment of the disclosure. The third ap­

proach involves the use of objective measures of self-

disclosing behaviors. These three perspectives will serve

12

as the basic framework for this overview.

Self-report measures

Jourard and his colleagues pioneered the develop­

ment of self-report measures of self-disclosure. The

earliest and one of the most widely used scales is the

sixty-item Self-Disclosure Questionnaire (JSDQ) developed

by Jourard and Lasakow (1958). This instrument measures

the amounts of past self-disclosure to each of four tar­

get persons: mother, father, a male friend, and a female

friend. The sixty items are rationally classified into

the general categories of attitudes and opinions, tastes

and interests, work, money, personality, and body. Sub-

jects using this scale are asked to rate each item for

each of the four target persons using a three-point scale

(0 - have told the person nothing about this aspect of

me, 1 - have talked in general about this item with this

person, and 2 - have talked in full and complete detail

about this item to this person). In general, the JSDQ

demonstrates good psychometric qualities. Jourard and

Lasakow (1958) reported an odd-even, split-half reliabili­

ty coefficient of between .78 and .99 for the six topic

areas. Pedersen and Higbee (1968) found evidence for the

convergent and discriminate validity of the measure using

Campbell and Fiske's (1959) multitrait-multimethod

matrices. The JSDQ appears to be independent of intelli-

crence (Halverson and Shore, 1969; Taylor, 1968) and

13

social desirability (Burhenne and Mirels, 1970; Doster

and Strickland, 1969), providing additional evidence of

discriminant validity.

Although there appears to be ample support for the

construct validity and reliability of this self-report

measure, it seems to have little usefulness in predict­

ing actual self-disclosing behavior (Allen, 1974). Re­

searchers have tried to relate scores on the JSDQ to a

wide range of measures of actual disclosure. These in-»

eluded the number of items subjects revealed during self-

introductions in a classroom setting (Himelstein and

Kimbrough, 1963), subject ratings of intimacy in self-

descriptive essays (Burhenne and Mirels, 1970), subjects'

ratings of self-disclosure in a group setting (Hurley and

Hurley, 1979), time subjects spent talking in a struc­

tured interview (Vondracek, 1968), and ratings by ob­

servers of disclosure in interviews (Carpenter and

Freese, 1979; Ogden, 1979). All these attempts have re­

sulted in nonsignificant correlations. Chelune (1975)

has suggested that one possible reason for this failure

is that the JSDQ implicitly defines self-disclosure as

past disclosure to a specific target person on a specific

set of topics, while other measures tap disclosures that

are current and unique in terms of target and situation

involved. Some investigators have been able to achieve

significant positive relationships when the instructions

14

or target persons of the JSDQ have been modified to more

closely reflect the situation in which the actual dis­

closure is measured (Panyard, 1974; Simonson and Bahr,

1974; Wilson and Rappaport, 1974).

In addition to the JSDQ, Jourard developed two other

similar measures, the SD-25 (Jourard, 1961a) and the SD-

40 (Jourard and Richman, 196 3). The statements in the SD-

25 and the SD-40 cover the same general topics as those

in the JSDQ, but are worded differently and are not ex­

plicitly divided into topical categories. The SD-25 uses

the same four target persons but has an abbreviated yes-

no rating scale. The odd-even reliability for the SD-25

is .90 or higher for each target (Jourard, 1961b).

Pedersen and Higbee (1968) concluded that construct

validity can be demonstrated for the SD-25, but that

there is some variation between it and the JSDQ as

measures of self-disclosure. The format for the SD-40

is the same as that of the JSDQ. Odd-even reliability

coefficients for the total score was .85 and ranged from

.75 to .90 for each of the targets as reported by Jourard

Richman (1963). They also found test-retest reliabilities

in the low 60's over a six-month interval.

Many of the researchers in this area have used a

modification of the JSDQ or have used its general format

to develop their own self-report measures of self-disclo­

sure. Modifications have been made in instructions,

15

number of items, rating scale and/or target persons.

Simonson and Bahr (1974) and Wilson and Rappaport (1974)

asked subjects to rate their willingness to disclose each

of the JSDQ items. Sote and Good (1974) asked subjects to

rate some of the items in terms of frequency of discussion.

In order to improve the .73 split-half reliability of the

JSDQ, Panyard (1971) extended Jourard's original three-

point rating scale to a six point scale. She obtained

split-half and test-retest reliability coefficients of

.91. Some of the alternate target persons which have been

used include a stranger, an acquaintance, and a best friend

(Halverson and Shore, 1960), the therapist (Simonson and

Bahr, 1974), a best friend and a close family member

(Truax and Whittmer, 1971), and the best-liked girl and

best-liked boy in class (Fitzgerald, 1963). Using the

general format of the JSDQ, Plog (1965) developed a forty-

item scale in which the items were divided into eight

topic areas. Subjects were asked to rate themselves on

a four-point scale in terms of their willingness to dis­

close each item to six target persons. In contrast to

many modifications of the JSDQ, Plog reported reliability

statistics with split-half reliabilities for his instru­

ment ranging from .89 to .94.

Some of the early research using the JSDQ revealed

consistent differences in amounts of self-disclosure be­

tween the topic categories used in the instrument. After

16

it became apparent that the amount of disclosure varied

with the intimacy of the content of the items, investi­

gators began to develop a number of methods for assessing

the intimacy of self-disclosures. Taylor and Altman (1966)

scaled 671 statements for intimacy using the Thurstone

procedure for use in studies of jjiterpersonal relations.

The statements were also sorted into thirteen categories

according to content. The judgments for intimacy and

topical content were made by a group of college students

and a group of sailors. Correlations between the two

samples ranged from .76 to .94 for the thirteen cate­

gories considered individually. It was Taylor and Altman's

intent that the items should be used to develop self-

disclosure questionnaires with known intimacy and content

properties. Using these statements, Taylor (1968) con­

structed a forty-item scale and reported a split-half

reliability of .94 for several targets. Worthy, Gary

and Kahn (196 9) attempted to obtain more objective in­

timacy data by having their subjects choose a question

to answer from among seven alternatives previously scaled

for intimacy. Although the investigators had the subjects

write the answer to the question, only the intimacy of

the question chosen was recorded. A difficulty with this

approach is that no account is taken of what is actually

said so that an individual may choose a high intimacy

question but answer it in a superficial way. Jourard and

17

Resnick (1970) developed a procedure for partially over­

coming this difficulty. They paired subjects and instructed

the members to take turns discussing topics that had been

scaled for intimacy. After a topic was discussed, each sub­

ject rated his or her own response for amount of disclosure.

A composite score was obtained by multiplying the intimacy

value of the topic by the subjects' perceived amount of

disclosure.

Although the evidence is mounting that social-

situational factors play an important role in determining

level of self-disclosure, this issue has generally been

overlooked. A few researchers have, however, developed

situationally oriented self-disclosure inventories. Two

such instruments were those of Frankel and Powers (1971)

and Chelune (1976b). Frankel and Powers looked at reported

self-disclosure within an S-R framework. Their S-R Inven­

tory of Self-Disclosure presented subjects with nine

physical setting situations and sixteen topical questions.

The subjects were asked to respond to each of the sixteen

questions in each of the nine situations. Data from a

study using this inventory revealed that seven percent

of the total variation observed was due to subjects,

14 percent was due to the situation, 25 percent due to

the questions and 28 percent due to the interactions be­

tween these factors. Chelune developed a novel twenty-

item self-report measure, the Self-Disclosure

18

Situation Survey (SDSS) which was specifically designed

to assess the social-situational determinants of self-

disclosure. The SDSS divided twenty different social

situations into four groups, one for each of four targets

- a friend, a stranger, a group of friends, and a group

of strangers. The five items within each target group

represented five different levels of intimacy of the

physical setting. Subjects were instructed to imagine

themselves in each of the situations and then rate on

a six point scale the general level of self-disclosure

they would be comfortable with in that situation. Odd-

even split-half reliability coefficients ranged from

.80 to .89 with a test-retest reliability coefficient

of .75. An additional feature of Chelune's SDSS was that

it could provide a general index of self-disclosure

flexibility. The amount of variation among the 20 SDSS

situations could serve as a general indication of the

individual's ability to adjust his or her level of self-

disclosure to different situations.

Observational Measures

As indicated by the definition presented earlier,

self-disclosure involved both a revealer and a recipient.

Having looked at self-disclosure measures from the re­

vealer 's point of view, we now turn to the techniques

used by observers to assess self-disclosure. While pro­

jective techniques (Hamshire and Farina, 1967), peer

19

nomination (Halverson and Shore, 1969) and descriptive

self-essays (Burhenne and Mirels 1970) have been employed

as observational measures of self-disclosure, the most

popular approach has been the use of rating systems.

One of the earliest rating scales explicitly designed

to assess ongoing self-disclosure was Suchman's (1965)

Revealingness Scale. The scale consisted of six rating

levels along a continuum from verbalizations in which

the individual talks about external conditions of the

world to those in which the person expresses herself/

himself with self-involvement and feeling. Suchman re­

ported interjudge reliabilities ranging from .53 to .76

using four judges and a correlation of .87 with two more

extensively trained judges. The major contribution of

the Revealingness Scale was that it attempted to take

into account the affective manner of presentation. Brooks

(1974) extended the scale to eight levels of revealing­

ness in order to put more emphasis on affective involve­

ment. Interrater reliability for the revised scale was

reported to be .72 over 160 verbal segments. Doster's

(1975) Self-Disclosure Rating Scale allows the rating

of the content of verbal behavior along a seven-step,

superficial-personal continuum. At the lower values, the

subject is focusing on external material with little

indication of personal involvement. Higher values reflect

personal disclosures that focus on aspects of the self.

20

Interrater reliability coefficients for the scale range

from .62 to .71 (Doster and Strickland, 1971). Strassberg

and Anchor (197 3) have developed a scale for rating the

intimacy of self-disclosures on the basis of content

alone. The Intimacy Rating Scale is a three-point con­

tent categorization derived from a rescaling of the items

in Taylor and Altman's (1966) study. After deleting items

of similar content and those with large standard devia­

tions, the scale consisted of 35 items that were approxi­

mately evenly divided among the three intimacy levels.

Strassberg and Anchor (1975) rated 21 varied personal

statements using the scale, then asked college students

to rate the same statements. A correlation of .96 was

obtained between the author's ratings and the intimacy

scores of the subjects.

Objective Measures

Objective measures are most readily applied to two

parameters of self-disclosure, amount and duration. Amount

of self-disclosure refers to the number of items of infor­

mation disclosed, while duration refers to the time spent

disclosing.

Pedersen and Breglio (1968) and Burhenne and Mirels

(1970) counted the number of words subjects used to de­

scribe themselves as a measure of amount of self-disclosure

Although this approach is objective and highly reliable,

its conceptual link with self-disclosure is weak. The

21

underlying assumption was that the more words used to de­

scribe oneself, the greater the information revealed. The

measure is compromised by the possibility of redundancy

and the fact that a concise, explicit disclosure would

receive a lower score than a rambling, redundant revela­

tion. Amount of disclosure in terms of content has been

measured by observers during live self-introductions

(Himelstein and Kimbrough, 196 3) and from taped introduc­

tions (Chittick and Himelstein, 1967). The observers

marked each item of information revealed by a subject

within a topic area with a check. The subject's score

was the total number of checks or the number of topics

covered. Interrater reliabilities using this method were

.75 (Himelstein and Kimbrough, 196 3) and .99 (Chittick

and Himelstein, 1967) using the rank order method. One

shortcoming of this approach was that no provision was

made for elaborations within topics, since subjects re­

ceived only one checkmark per topic. Kohen (1975) over­

came the difficulty by defining a unit of disclosure as

the smallest segment of verbal behavior to which an

observer could assign a classification. As a result,

subjects who elaborated on a particular topic received

a check for each unit of disclosure. Interjudge agree­

ment for that procedure ranged from .81 to .87.

As noted earlier, general content analysis systems

use a wide variety of units of measurement. The

22

self-reference has been a popular unit of measurement.

Rogers (1960, p. 248) defined a self-reference as "a

verbal response by a subject which describes him in some

way, tells something about him or refers to some affect

he experiences." Rogers reported interrater reliabilities

between .83 and .95 for all self-reference category scores

from audiotaped interviews. Powell (1968) reported similar

reliability coefficients for the self-reference categories

and rescoring reliabilities between .88 and .94 after one

month.

One of the difficulties in using only the frequency

of self-references as the index of self-disclosure is

that not all subjects verbalize at the same rate (Chelune,

1976b). To deal with this problem, Powell (1968) deter­

mined the ratio of the number of self-references in each

class to the total number of responses for a particular

subject and used this percentage as the index of amount

of disclosure. Chelune (1975) used the same procedure

for computing the percentage of self-references. Using

this method, raters achieved a pooled reliability of

.98 for scoring the number of thought units, .97 for

classifying thought units as self-references, and .90

for computing the self-reference percentage. However,

Marsden, Kalter and Ericson (1974) have criticized this

procedure since percentages so calculated may be

23

correlated with the total number of units. They suggest

that percentages should be determined by the ratio of re- ;

sponses in one category to the responses in all other

categories.

The most widely used temporal measure of self-

disclosure is duration. Speech duration is assumed to be

related to self-disclosing output and willingness to

disclose (Doster and Strickland, 1971). In some cases

(Himelstein and Kimbrough, 196 3), duration has been used

as a measure of amount of disclosure. The assumption is

made that the more a person talks, the more disclosing

he or she must do. Although there does appear to be some

relationship between duration and recipients' perception

of degree of self-disclosure (Davis and Sloan, 1974;

Doster, 1975; Vondracek, 1969), the assumption does not

hold for objective measures of disclosure. In order to

control for the effects of different speaking times among

subjects, rate or the number of self-descriptive state­

ments per unit of time has been used (Chelune, 1976a;

Mehrabian, 1971). Unfortunately, little attention has

been given the relationship between duration and rate

of disclosure. Reaction time and the silence quotient

have also been used in self-disclosure research, primari­

ly by Doster and his colleagues (Doster and Brooks, 1974;

Doster and Strickland, 1971). The reaction time is the

amount of latency before the subject responds to an

24

interview topic. The silence quotient is obtained by

summing all silent pauses over three seconds in duration

and then dividing the sum by the total duration of response

to an item. Lenghty reaction times and high silence quo­

tients are considered to be indicative of cautiousness

in preparing verbal disclosures. Doster (1975) found

longer reaction times among highly anxious subjects than

among less anxious ones. Assuming anxious subjects are

more cautious, this finding supports his position. How­

ever, Fischer and Apostal (1975) disagreed with this

interpretation and, on the basis of their data, suggested

that silences may serve as discriminative cues for re­

cipients that high level self-disclosure is to follow.

Multidimensional Approaches

Most of the instruments discussed so far have been

unidimensional measures which assess only one parameter

of self-disclosure. Chelune (1975) has argued that self-

disclosure is not a unidimensional construct. He contended

that there are five basic parameters important to dis­

closing behaviors: amount, intimacy, affect, rate and

flexibility. In order for the phenomenon of self-disclo­

sure to be mere clearly understood, it seems advisable

for investigators to use multidimensional assessment

techniaues. However, few such measures have been developed.

Doster and his colleagues have usually assessed at least

two parameters - intimacy and duration. So.me studies have

25

employed measures of three dimensions of self-disclosure.

Doster and Brooks (1974) and McGuire, Thelen and Amolsch

(1975) assessed amount, intimacy and duration while Ribner

(1974) has measured frequency, intimacy and centrality.

Chelune (1975) has developed a detailed multidimensional

measurement system the Self-Disclosure Coding System

(SDCS). The SDCS consists of eleven coding categories

and uses both written transcripts and tape recordings

for coding. Seven categories constitute the core of the

system: 1) amount, the number of thought units expressed;

2) self-reference; 3) self-reference percent, the basic

index of amount of self-disclosure; 4) intimacy, the

judged depth or ego relevance of the content; 5) affect,

the judged degree of congruence between the verbal con­

tent and the affective presentation; 6) rate, the number

of self-references per unit of time; and 7) self-disclo­

sure flexibility, an index of variability in self-reference

percent among three or more situations. Four additional

categories subdivide self-reference into positive, nega­

tive and neutral disclosure and a weighted self-reference

score. In summary, he argued that "coding verbal behavior

in terms of the basic parameters of self-disclosure per­

mits a more meaningful and systematic explanation of the

effects of independent variables upon self-disclosing be­

havior than previous single dimension approaches" (Chelune,

1976a, p. 262).

Sampling . v V

A definition of the variable of interest has been j ^

presented and various approaches to its measurement have .Y' ^.0 ^

been examined. At this point factors involved in select- \ "" . •*

ing samples of the defined variable for measurement and .''

analysis will be discussed. The basic issue in sampling ^

decisions is the representativeness of the samples which

are taken of the session or series of sessions. In the

present investigation, sampling issues presented two

considerations: 1) the appropriate selection of samples

from within the therapy hour, i.e., randomly or at some

standard point? and 2) which sessions in the case should

be sampled to tap the variables of interest and their

variations? The decisions are not simple, since as

Kiesler, Klein and Mathieu (1965) pointed out, "not only

is the basic data, the therapy interaction, complex, but

also each interview takes place in the context of a series

of interviews and events" (p. 337). Most investigators

of the therapeutic process have not dealt with these

issues. This is particularly apparent when sessions have

been selected from a case series without the specification

of either a random or systematic sampling procedure. Of

those who have analyzed samples from within interviews,

most have divided the sessions into quarters and either

sampled systematically, e.g., the first eight therapist

utterances in each quarter. (Authier and Gustafson, 1976)

27

or randomly from each quarter (Strassberg, Anchor, Gabel,

and Cohen, 1978). Kiesler (1973) stressed the importance

of making decisions on the basis of the knowledge avail­

able concerning the variables of interest. There is some

evidence that higher levels of self-disclosure occur

toward the end of interview sessions. Anchor and Sandler

(1976) found that ratings by therapists indicated dis­

proportionate disclosure near the end of sessions. They

also noted a trend toward higher levels of self-disclo­

sure earlier in a session as treatment progresses. Ogden

(1978) found that disclosure levels were greater during

the second half of the session. Strassberg et al. (1978)

refined these findings by noting that the distribution

of self-disclosure differed within sessions only for

females and that the highest levels occurred in the last

quarter of the session. Based on their research, Klein,

Mathieu, Gendlin and Kiesler (1970) concluded that ran­

dom sampling may be better if the number of observations

is sufficiently large while systematic sampling may be

the method of choice provided reliable information about

the process is available. Altman and Taylor (197 3) have

shown that as a relationship develops over time, mutual

disclosures increase in breadth and depth from nonpersonal

areas to intimate topics.

28

General Correlates of Self-Disclosure

Demographics

A large number of studies have attempted to associ­

ate differences in sex, birth order, age and race to

differing levels of self-disclosure. Most of these deal

with sex as a variable. In one of the earliest studies,

Jourard and Lasakow (1958) reported that females had

higher disclosure scores on the JSDQ than did males.

Those results have been replicated in numerous studies

(Derlega and Chaikin, 1976; Himelstein and Lubin, 1965;

Hood and Back, 1971; Jourard and Richman, 196 3; Yang

and Hwang, 1980). In more than 75% of the studies using

the JSDQ, women disclosed more than men. However, there

is also the finding in a minority of studies that males

disclosed more than females (Rickers-Ovsiankina and

Kresman, 1958; Jourard and Friedman, 1970) or that there

were no differences (Dimond and Munz, 1967). Erikson

noted that when other questionnaires were used to mea­

sure disclosure, sometimes the relationship was found

(Pedersen and Breglio, 1968) and sometimes it was not

(Doster and Stickland, 1969; Plog, 1965). When behavioral

measures were used there was a similar diversity of re­

sults. Women were more disclosing in some (Fuller, 1960),

men disclosed more in some (Sermat and Smyth, 1973), and

in others sex was an equivocal factor (Hill, 1975;

Mulcahy, 1973). These differences in findings may be due

^ .

29

to differences in measurement procedures. For example.

Archer (1979) suggested that some of the variance could

be explained by considering such unique characteristics^

of the JSDQ as its basically historical nature, the se­

lection of items and targets, and variations in topic

intimacy. Chelune (1978) pointed out that failing to

approach self-disclosure as a multidimensional concept

and the use of different measurement strategies in

different studies might lead to conflicting results.

He used the multidimensional SDCS to examine the nature

of sex differences in disclosure. Males in his sample

did not differ from females in the percentage of in­

formation revealed, flexibility, or congruence of affect

However, females did verbalize more and make more self-

references per minute than males. In addition, the fe­

male subjects' verbal content was rated as more intimate

than that of the males (Chelune, 1976a). Plog (1965)

and Lewis (1978) suggested that the conflicting findings

concerning sex differences may be the result of using

samples from differing geographic areas where sex roles

and socio-cultural expectations varied. While this geo­

graphical hypothesis may not be tenable today, the in­

consistencies in the literature suggest that more is

involved in self-disclosure sex differences than simple

gender. Bender (1976) and Rosenfeld, Civikly and Herron

(1979) hypothesized that the more important element was

od)_

30

psychological masculinity or femininity. Many investi­

gators have begun to contest the assumption that masculin­

ity and femininity are conceptually opposite poles on a

single continuum and have argued that they are independent

personality dimensions. This viewpoint allows the possi­

bility that an individual may possess both masculine and

feminine qualities. As a result, researchers have adopted

a quadripolar typology which includes androgynous (high

level of both masculine and feminine characteristics),

masculine (high masculine, low feminine), feminine (high

feminine, low masculine), and undifferentiated (low

masculine and feminine) roles. In the Bender study, sub­

jects were male and female heterosexual and homosexual

college students who completed the JSDQ and two measures

of masculinity and femininity — the Bem Sex Role Inven­

tory and the Personal Attributes Questionnaire. There

was no overall effect of gender or sexual preference.

However, masculine sex role was unrelated to self-dislo-

sure while feminine sex role was significantly correlated

with disclosure. Further, females with high masculine

scores and males with high feminine scores on the Bem / . \,r

scale were more disclosing than low masculine females ^

and low feminine males (Pearson, 1980). These findings

suggest that an androgynous sex role may be the most

facilitative of self-disclosure. Similar findings were

obtained by Stokes, Childs, and Fuehrer (1981).

31

Birth order is another characteristic that seems

to be related to disclosure tendencies. Dimond and Munz

(1967) and Diamond and Hellkamp (1969) found in their

studies with the JSDQ that later-borns report more dis­

closure than first borns. Lord and Velicer (1975) found

that first-borns disclose less to siblings than later-

borns.

In general, self-disclosure seems to increase with

age up to a certain point. Rickers-Ovsiankina (1956),

West and Zingle (1969), and Klos and Loomis (1978) found

more self-reported disclosure for college seniors than

for freshmen. Similarly, Jourard and Lasakow (1958) found , , :>

a positive relationship between age and self-disclosure i'\

{•.

to opposite-sexed friends among both college students r

I and grade school children. Jourard (1964) found that ^"^

self-disclosure tends to decrease after age fifty.

Racial differences in self-disclosure have also been

investigated. Blacks reported less total disclosure

(Diamond and Hellkamp, 1969; Jourard, 1958) and less

disclosure to their fathers than did whites (Jourard

and Lasakow, 1958; Littlefield, 1969). Littlefield also

reported less disclosure for Mexican-Americans than for

blacks. There is a good possibility that the findings

concerning racial differences in self-disclosure may

be related to sociocultural factors. • A^ .V

/ ( •

(

M"" . , -\\o, v^-

32

Sociocultural Factors

Jaffe and Polansky (196 2) found no differences in 1,; tf

disclosure between lower-class blacks and whites. Mayer Uy^ ^} , (

(1967) reported that middle-class housewives disclosed i [^ \ s ft

more of their marital problems to others than had lower-

class housewives. There were also significant differences V'o / ^

f

in the targets chosen for disclosure. Lower-class women /^•^{i r, <>/•

disclosed primarily to relatives on their side of the

family while middle-class subjects reported more disclo­

sure to both their own and their husband's families, to

friends, to professionals, and to their husbands. Differ­

ences in national patterns of self-disclosure have been

investigated using samples of American, British (Jourard,

1961b), German (Plog, 1965), Polish (Derlega and Gurnick-

Stepien, 1977) and several Middle Eastern nationalities

(Melikian, 1962). Generally, there seems to be the same

order of intimacy among disclosure topics and no clear

differences in target choice in these studies. The most

consistent national difference is that total reported

self-disclosure varies, with Americans generally the

most disclosing.

Personality

There have been many attempts to relate personality

characteristics to self-disclosure. As measured by the

JSDQ, self-disclosure did distinguish between internals

and externals on the Rotter I-E Scale (Ryckman, Sherman

33

and Burgess, 1973). Kipnis and Goodstadt (1970) found

that impulsive subjects reported more disclosure to

friends than nonimpulsive subjects. Trait anxiety was a

positive correlate of disclosure in a study with insti­

tutionalized schizophrenics (Anchor, Vojtisek and

Patterson,1973). Duckro, Duckro and-Beal (1976) also found

a positive correlation between scores on the Taylor Mani­

fest Anxiety Scale and disclosure in a sample of black

female college students. Contrary to expectations, Baldwin

(1974) found that repressors have a greater willingness

to disclose during the initial hours of therapy than do

sensitizers. Becker and Munz (1975) did not find intro­

version or extroversion to be related to self-disclosure.

Although most of the research on the relationship between "/' ^ o^^

personality variables and self-disclosure does not show fl '

consistent results, two correlates recur, need for LJ^"

approval (Anchor, Vojtisek and Berger, 1972; Brundage,

Derlega and Cash, 1977; Burhenne and Mirels, 1970; Kipnis

and Goodstadt, 1970) and field dependence (Sousa-Posa

and Rohrberg, 1976; Sousa-Posa, Shulman and Rohrberg,

1973; Taylor and Oberlander, 1960).

Psychological Adjustment

Jourard (1959) consistently argued that the ability

to allow one's real self to be known is one of the ele-

ments of good psychological adjustment and there have

been many attempts to find support for that position.

34

Many of those studies have investigated the relationship

between reported self-disclosure and adjustment as measur­

ed by standardized personality tests, particularly the

MMPI. The only consistent finding that has emerged is

that subject who scored low on the JSDQ have high social

introversion scores (Dutton, 1963; Jourard, 1971;

Mullaney, 1964). Studies using the Pedersen Personality

Inventory have generally resulted in rather low negative

correlations between JSDQ scores and neuroticism (Mayo,

1968; Pedersen and Breglio, 1968; Pedersen and Higbee,

1969). Two studies (Jourard, 1971, Shapiro, 1968) found

positive relationships between reported self-disclosure

and the Tennessee Self-Concept Scale. Carpenter and

Freese (1979) noted a positive relationship for males

and a negative one for females between self-disclosure

and general interpersonal adjustment as derived from the

California Psychological Inventory. There has been some

research which suggests that the truly well-adjusted

person has the ability and the willingness to modulate

his/her self-disclosure depending on the particular inter­

personal situation (Chaikin, Derlega, Bayma and Shaw,

1975; Derlega and Grzelak, 1979; McGuire and Leake, 1980).

Clients and Therapists, Situations and Outcomes

Several authors (Jourard, 1964; Rogers, 1961; Truax

and Carkhuff, 1965) have discussed the importance of

35 self-disclosure to the process and outcome of therapy.

In this section four factors salient to self-disclosure

as it occurs in therapy will be dealt with briefly. A

fifth element will then be examined more closely.

Doster and Nesbitt (1979) described three client

types with different attributes which covary with their

self-disclosing behavior. The first type is a generally

well-adjusted person who enters therapy to achieve greater

self-understanding or to deal with circumscribed personal

difficulties. Clients in that group are generally willing

and flexible disclosers. A second type of client generally

enters therapy with moderately debilitating personal

problems or neurotic symptoms. These clients tend to ex­

hibit low to moderate disclosure in therapy consistent

with a history of low self-disclosure. A third type of

client is a low discloser across situations and enters

therapy with severely debilitating difficulties. With

these clients a low demand for self-disclosure from the

therapist appears to result in the best behavioral ad­

justment for the client. These general patterns appear

to be consistent with the findings of Schneider and

Lankford (1978) and Halpern (1977) which indicated that

individuals' characteristic level of self-disclosure

affects their willingness to take risks in therapy and

disclose themselves more.

Barrett-Lennard (1962) found that clients rated

36

more experienced therapists as "less willing to be known"

but felt that their willingness to be known had no effect

on the outcome of therapy. Barnes and Berzins (1971)

have concluded that A-type therapists - those more inter-

personally involved, more empathic and insight oriented -

were more able to elicit self-disclosures than those who

were less interpersonally involved, more directive and

who had problem solving orientations (B-type). One of the

findings of Merluzzi, Banikiotes and Missbach (1978) was

that high disclosing counselors were seen as more attrac­

tive but less trustworthy than low disclosing ones. Addi­

tionally, expert and nonexpert high disclosing counselors

were seen as more attractive than expert low disclosing

counselors. In a study in which subjects were actual

clients who evaluated therapists after reading a written

dialogue, Curtis (1981) found that higher levels of thera­

pists self-disclosure resulted in lower evaluations of

therapists' empathy, competence and trustworthiness.

Therapist qualities of being both facilitative (Pekar,

1979) and warm and empathetic (Trujillo, 1979) have been

found to encourage greater client self-disclosure

(Halpern, 1977). Rodin and Kunin (1982) found that sub­

jects increased their self-disclosure to male therapists

when the perceived status and attractiveness of the

therapist was high. There was no similar effect for fe­

male therapists. These findings suggest that the effect of

37

therapist gender on self-disclosure is mediated by other

therapist variables, including sex roles status (Feld-

stein, 1979) .

The setting in which therapy sessions occur may

have some effect on the extent to which clients are will­

ing to reveal themselves. Holohan and Slaiken (1977)

found that interviewees were more willing to self-disclose

when the setting afforded more privacy. Woods (1978)

demonstrated that the degree of confidentiality of

communication has a strong effect on levels of self-

disclosure. The perceived warmth of the therapy setting

is also an important element in fostering self-disclosure.

Chaikin, Derlega and Miller (1976) obtained results sug­

gesting that carpet, soft, indirect lighting and attract­

ively painted walls contribute to the encouragement of

self-disclosure. Chaikin and Derlega (1974) argued that

only in an atmosphere of discretion and trust can in­

dividuals comfortably reveal themselves. An interesting

study by Hubble and Gelso (1978) measured female clients' ,

willingness to self-disclose in situations where their

intake interviewer was dressed in either coat and tie,

sport shirt and slacks, or blue jeans and sweatshirt.

They found that clients preferred their counselors to

be less casually dressed than the clients themselves

were accustomed to dressing and were most disclosing

under those conditions. Rogers, Rearden and Hillner

"' .\

I

\ . ,

38

(1981) and Lecomte, Bernstein and Dumont (1980) reported

that the physical distance between the counselor and the

interviewee had an effect on the amount of disclosure

produced. Weiner (1978) pointed out that the appropriate

degree and timing of self-disclosure by the therapist

depends on the overall situation which would include such

elements as type and goal of therapy, client-therapist

relationship, and ego-strength of the client.

The weight of evidence available from the research

literature suggests that higher levels of client self-

disclosure are associated with more successful therapy

outcomes. Studies focusing on the content of disclosures

(Braaten, 1961; Kirtner and Cartwright, 1958; Seeman,

1949; Truax and Wittmer, 1971a), the intimacy of dis­

closures (Kiesler, 1971; Schauble and Pierce, 1974;

Truax and Carkhuff, 1965a; Walker, Rabin and Rogers,

1960) , and increasing disclosure over time (Gendlin,

Jenny and Schlein, 1968; Kiesler, Mathieu and Klein,

1967; Tomlinson and Hart, 196 2) have all supported a

positive relationship between self-disclosure and therapy

outcome. There are, however, other studies in which the

relationship is not found (McDaniel, Stiles and McGaughey,

1981; Strassberg, Anchor, Gabel and Cohen, 1978;

Tomlinson, 1967). The inconsistency of findings may be

in part a function of the complexity and difficulty of

developing and utilizing reliable and meaningful measures

39

of therapy outcomes as well as to lack of uniformity of

definition and measurement of self-disclosure.

Reciprocity

Among the earliest of the studies dealing with the

reciprocity effect was Jourard's (1959) experiment with

female nursing college faculty members. In that study,

the amount disclosed to a particular colleague was highly

correlated with the amount of disclosure received from

that colleague. Replication of the effect was accomplish­

ed by Jourard and Landsman (1960) and Jourard and Richman

(196 3). Other researchers have extended these findings

to other types of subjects and situations (Levenger and

Senn, 1967). Another approach to the study of reciproc­

ity is the use of high or low disclosing confederates in

experimental interactions. These studies have varied both

intimacy (Murdoch, Chenowith and Rissman, 1969; Ehrlich

and Graeven, 1971) and number of statements disclosed

(Chittick and Himelstein; 1967) and have demonstrated

that high disclosing confederates elicit greater self-

disclosure from subjects than low disclosing confederates.

While attempting to demonstrate an interactive effect

of increasing therapist disclosure, Levin and Gergin

(1969) provided further support for the reciprocity

effect.

Despite the relative consistency of the reciprocity

40 effect, there remains some doubt about its operation in

actual therapy situations. There have been very few

studies which assessed self-disclosure in actual therapy

situations. Moreover, evidence has emerged that the effect

may be attenuated or absent in client-therapist interac­

tions. Powell (1968) and Brody (1968) noted that clients

self-disclosed to a greater degree when the interviewer

used disclosure contingently. The fact that non-contin­

gent counselor self-disclosure had no effect suggests the

operation of simple reinforcement principles rather than

a reciprocity effect (Brody, 1968; Feigenbaum, 1977;

Formica, 1973). Mann and Murphy (1975) have collected

data which argues against a linear relationship between

therapist and client disclosures in initial interviews.

They found that an intermediate rather than a high number

of therapist disclosures produced the greatest number of

client disclosures. Otstott and Scrutchins (1974) found

that the client's self-disclosure was enhanced much more

by the therapist's encouragement to talk or confronta­

tion than by therapist self-disclosure. Both Shroad

(1978), for actual clients, and Ogden (1979) for sub­

jects in a realistic analog interview, found that client f

self-disclosure was not affected by the level of thera­

pist disclosure.

Some evidence indicates that certain intervening

variables affect the operation of the reciprocity effect.

41

One of these variables may be sex. Strassberg, Anchor,

Gabel and Cohen (1978) found no significant effects for

therapist sex, client sex or the interaction of the two

on self-disclosure. However, Feldstein (1979) did find

such effects when sex role rather than gender of the

counselor was considered. Another such variable appears

to be the expertise of the therapist. Simonson and Bahr

(1974) demonstrated that female interviewee volunteers

exhibited the highest levels of self-disclosure when the

interviewer was a paraprofessional who made personal

self-disclosures. The lowest self-disclosure production

occured when a professional therapist made personal

self-disclosures. Overall, subject self-disclosure was

higher when the counselor was a paraprofessional rather

than a professional. The authors suggested that the

operation of a moderating variable might account for

their findings. They proposed that the violation of

expectancies about self-disclosure by the professional

therapist could account for the lower level of subject

disclosure. The findings of Derlega, Lovell and Chaikin

(1976) are consistent with that suggestion. These

authors observed that female subjects increased their

own disclosure when expecting high self-disclosure from

the therapist and were induced to see that level of

disclosure as appropriate. When disclosure was seen as

inappropriate or under neutral e:ipectations, there were

42

no differential effects of therapist disclosure. Simonson

(1976) suggested that therapist warmth has an important

interactive effect with self-disclosure. There appears

to be little support for the operation of a simple reci­

procity effect in therapy settings. If it does have

an influence, it seems clear that it is mediated by other

variables.

Purpose and Hypotheses

Summary

The present research falls within the domain of two

major areas of research, content analysis and self-disclo­

sure. Interest in the content aspects of the therapeutic

process began in the 1920's and the work of Jourard during

the 1960's initiated a large body of self-disclosure re­

search. The two major lines of investigation have been

merged in the study of self-disclosure in client-thera­

pist interactions. Such variables as sex, sex roles,

psychological adjustment and therapy outcome have been

identified as important factors in such research. Al­

though self-disclosure seems to have important implica­

tions for therapeutic relationships, there are several

issues which bring into question the applicability of

results of prior research to actual client-therapist

interactions.

43

The first of these issues deals with the nature of

self-disclosure and the implications for measurement.

There has been a strong tendency in the literature to

view self-disclosure as a unitary phenomenon, particu­

larly when the concept is operationalized for experi­

mentation. However, both Cozby (1973) and Chelune (1979)

have presented arguments and evidence that the phenomenon

is multidimensional. In discussing the importance of a \ i '

multidimensional approach to the measurement of self-

disclosure, Chelune pointed out that the use of that

approach often clarifies inconsistencies in previous

findings. A second measurement issue is the frequent

use of self-report measures of disclosure. Although

the construct validity, discriminant validity, and >

reliability of such measures have been fairly well ' if

established, they seem to have little or no usefulness

in predicting actual self-disclosure. Another issue

which brings into question the applicability of past

research findings to therapeutic situations is the

nature of the participants in self-disclosure experi­

ments. Nearly every study published has involved self-

disclosures between individuals who are strangers to

each other. Although a model based on such research may

be appropriately applied to the initial stage of the

therapeutic process, it would probably not be accurate

over the entire course of therapy. A final issue is

44

that of the setting in which disclosure investigations

have been carried out. Davis and Skinner (1974) pointed

out that generalizations beyond the context of the

laboratory need to be made cautiously, if at all. Very

few studies of self-disclosure have been made in actual

sessions, so the generalizability of the results to

therapeutic interactions is questionable. The overall

purpose of this investigation is to examine some of the

factors which appear to influence client self-disclosure

in actual therapy sessions. To address these issues of

dimensionality, measurement, subjects, and settings,a

multidimentional approach to objective measurement of

actual client-therapist interaction was used to examine

the influence of sex roles, temporal session variables,

and the reciprocity effect on client self-disclosure.

Among the earliest investigations of self-disclosure

was one which considered the effect of gender on self-

disclosure. The finding that females disclosed more than

males has been replicated relatively consistently when

disclosure is measured using the JSDQ. When other

measures are used, the results have been far from con­

sistent. Neither Strassberg et d . (1978), using a uni­

dimensional measure in therapy interactions, nor Feldstein

(1979), using a therapy analog found any effects

associated with therapist sex, client sex or the com­

bination of client and therapist sex. However, when

45

Feldstein added the factor of therapist sex role she

found significant effects on disclosure. Bender (1976)

also demonstrated that sex role has an influence on

self-disclosure. In the present study, sex role of clients

and therapists served as two of the independent variables

in a multiple regression hypothesis testing analysis.

Based on the findings of Feldstein and Bender, it was

hypothesized that therapist sex role would have a signi­

ficant effect on client self-disclosure with androgynous

therapists receiving the most disclosure and the feminine

client being the most disclosing.

Most investigators of self-disclosure and of the

general psychotherapeutic process have not dealt ex­

plicitly with the effects of sampling from different

points in the series of sessions or sampling from diff­

erent portions of a session. Those few studies which

have been done on within session sampling generally in­

dicate that self-disclosure tends to increase toward

the end of the session (Anchor and Sandler, 1976;

Strassberg et. d . , 1978; Ogden, 1979). For the present

investigation, taped therapy sessions were divided into

quarters and these served as the third independent vari­

able in the analysis. There appears to be virtually no

empirical investigations of the effect of length of

client-therapist relationship or stage of therapy in

the literature. To determine whether this element

46

influences client self-disclosure, length of relation­

ship (in terms of number of sessions) was used as a fourth

independent variable. It was hypothesized that the pre­

vious findings of increased self-disclosure toward the

end of a session would be replicated using the present

objective rating measure. An initially high level of

self-disclosure in the first few sessions followed by

a tapering off in intermediate sessions and another in­

crease near termination was hypothesized. In addition,

on the basis of a suggestion by Anchor and Sandler (1976),

an interaction was expected between section of session

and length of relationship. More specifically, it was

expected that high levels of self-disclosure will occur

earlier in the session as therapy progresses.

Another early focus of self-disclosure research

was the reciprocity effect. The finding that the amount

and level of self-disclosure given is strongly influenced

by the degree of disclosure received has been replicated

using a number of measures and different subject popula­

tions. The effect has not, however, been demonstrated

behaviorally in therapist-client interactions. There is

some evidence that therapist self-disclosure has no

simple consistent effect on client disclosure (Mann and

Murphy, 1975). There is also experimental evidence that

there may be variables which moderate the reciprocity

effect in actual therapy settings (Derlega, Lovell and

47

Chaikin, 1976; Feldstein, 1979; Simonson and Bahr, 1974).

Considering the results which pertain most directly to

therapy situations and the typically low rate of therapist

self-disclosure, a significant reciprocity effect was not

expected to appear.

The multiple regression analysis will also permit

an address to a number of exploratory questions about

which variables are the most effective predictors of

client self-disclosure, how the objective and rating

measures related in this sample, and how evaluations

of disclosure made by oneself and one's partner compare.

Summary of Hypotheses

Hypothesis 1. It was hypothesized that sex roles,

but not gender, of the therapist and client would have

a significant effect on client self-disclosure, with the

androgynous therapist receiving the most self-disclosure

and the feminine client being the most disclosing.

Hypothesis 2. Client and therapist sex roles,taken

together, would influence disclosure such that the andro­

gynous therapist, feminine client combination would re­

sult in highest level of disclosure.

Hypothesis 3. Self-disclosure was expected to in­

crease toward the end of the individual sessions.

Hypothesis 4. An interactive effect between length

of relationship and section of session was hypothesized

48 with higher levels of disclosure occurring earlier in

a session as number of sessions increases.

Hypothesis 5. A reciprocity effect was not expected

to appear.

CHAPTER II

METHODS AND PROCEDURES

Subjects

Subjects for this investigation were 17 male and

19 female clients and their therapists who signed con­

sent forms (Appendix A) agreeing to participate in the

study. Nine of the clients were from the Outpatient

Psychiatry Service at NRMC Oakland, California and 27

were from the Texas Tech University Psychology Clinic.

Participating clients had been in therapy for from one

to 18 sessions with a mean of 6h sessions. Four female

and 15 male therapists took part in the study. Five were

Navy clinical psychologists and 14 were clinical and

counseling psychology graduate students. Counseling

experience of the therapists ranged from four to 120

months, with a mean of 35 months. In terms of sex roles,

four clients were androgynous, seven masculine, 12

feminine and 13 undifferentiated. There were five

androgynous, seven masculine, and seven feminine

therapists. in order to make the process as unintrusive

as possible, therapists were asked to obtain the con­

sent of their clients after giving their own consent.

49

50

Instruments

When the therapists and clients gave their permis­

sion for the use of their tape for this research they

were asked to complete a questionnaire after the session.

This questionnaire included Baucom's (1976) MSC-FMN

scale and twelve seven-point Likert-type scales (Appen­

dix B). The Baucom scale (Appendix C) was used to de­

termine each subject's sex role status. The rating

scales, which included irrelevant embedded scales, were

used to assess each subject's perceptions of their own

and the other's degree of self-disclosure. Clients'

ratings of their own level of self-disclosure and

therapists' ratings of client self-disclosure were used

as independent variables in the regression analysis. In

addition, they were asked to rank the personal importance

of seven topics: interests, attitudes and opinions,

finances, relationships, personality and body.

Another portion of the data was obtained from train­

ed observers who used an objective therapy process rating

system to measure eight content areas: therapist and

client self-disclosures, positive regard, encouraging

exploration, interpretation, directions, confrontations,

and indications of understanding. Self-disclosure was

defined as information about himself or herself inten­

tionally revealed by one person to another which is

51

important to the revealer (centrality) and which would

ordinarily be private rather than public information

(intimacy). A self-disclosure was indicated when a self-

statement dealt with a topic of significant intimacy

and importance. The intimacy of those self-disclosures

was judged by the raters on a three-point scale: per­

sonal, moderately personal and very personal.

A summary of the variables included in the analysis

and their sources is presented in Table 1.

Procedure

Four U.S. Navy Psychiatric Technicians (two males

and two females) were trained by the experimenter in

the use of the objective rating system. The raters were

first given written definitions and examples of each

of the content areas to be rated (see Appendix D). After

the raters familiarized themselves with the rating sys­

tem, the experimenter discussed each of the rating cate­

gories and its criteria and asked raters to provide ex­

amples of each category of their own. After answering

any questions, the author gave each of the raters a set

of typewritten statements (Appendix E) and asked them

to assign each of the statements to one of the categories

On this task the raters demonstrated 95% agreement with

the author's ratings and with each other. Raters were

52

TABLE I

Summary of Variables Included in Analyses

Variables from Rating System

Y^ Duration of client self-disclosure (CSD)

Y2 Intimacy of client self-disclosure (CSD)

Y^ Number of client self-disclosures (CSD)

X^ Duration of therapist self-disclosure (TSD)

^2 Intimacy of therapist self-disclosure (TSD)

X^ Number of therapist self-disclosures (TSD)

^13 Therapist statements encouraging exploration (EXP)

X-j^^ Therapist statements indicating understanding (lU)

X^c^ Therapist confrontations (CF)

X^g Therapist directions to client (DIR)

X,^ Therapist statements of positive regard (PR)

X,g Therapist interpretations (INT)

Variables from Post-Session Questionnaire

X,, Clients' rating of their own self-disclosure

X,2 Therapist rating of client self-disclosure

Other Variables

X. Length of relationship - number of sessions

Xc Quarter of session

X^ Length of relationship x quarter of session

X.y Sex of client XQ Client sex role

Xg Sex of therapist X,Q Therapist sex role

X,Q Rater X2Q Therapist

53

given practice using audio-taped therapist-client ex­

changes (Appendix F). The coefficient of agreement was .92

for this task. For both types of practice the experimenter

provided immediate feedback about the correctness of their

ratings and encouraged questions and discussion about the

ratings and categories. The training statements and ex­

changes were taken from examples given by Ivey and Authier

(1978) and from actual therapy sessions. An attempt was

made to make the rating discriminations more demanding

as the training progressed. By the end of training (ap­

proximately three hours total for each rater), raters

had achieved a 92% or higher agreement with the cate­

gory ratings made by the experimenter. Final specific

rating instructions were as follows:

The scoring unit for this study will be the

statement. A statement is defined as a group

of words which contain a single thought.

Each statement falling into one of the con­

tent categories of the system is to be scored

only once unless the statement is clearly

representative of two categories. Statements

which contain the same thought but are sepa­

rated by a statement or statements of another

person are scored separately. If several self-

disclosure statements are made consecutively

and without interruption by another person.

54

they will be rated as a single disclosure

unless the intimacy level or topic changes.

Disclosures will be rated separately for

therapist and clients.

The raters were originally trained to use a seven-key

event recorder assembled by the experimenter. However,

after rating several tapes, the raters reported that

the recorder was cumbersome and awkward to use. At that

point, it was decided that the use of tape recorder

counter numbers to identify beginning and ending points

for statements would provide the desired data and would

be much simpler and more efficient.

After training was completed, the raters listened

to portions of actual therapy sessions and used the

objective rating system to collect the major part of

the data used in the analysis. The identities of the

therapists and clients were not known by the raters or

the experimenter and the confidentiality of the inter­

action was stressed. Each of the tapes was divided into

quarters and the raters listened to randomly selected

six-minute sections from each of the quarters. A record

was kept of the starting and ending points of each

statement so that duration of the statement could be

derived. One male and female observer rated each of the

tapes independently. Their ratings were compared to

evaluate interrater agreement, resulting in a Pearson

55

correlation coefficient of .78.

CHAPTER III

RESULTS

Data Analysis

Data from the present experiment were analyzed

using multiple regression hypothesis testing and step­

wise regression techniques. The former technique was

used in the evaluation of the formal hypotheses. This

technique utilizes F ratios which are equivalent to

those resulting from an analysis of variance (Cohen,

1968; Darlington, 1968). The F ratios are obtained

by comparing the residual variance of a full model with

the unaccounted for variance of a model from which an

independent variable has been deleted (Naditch, Gargan

& Michael, 1975). When a variable is deleted from the

full model, the variance associated with that predictor

becomes a part of the residual variance. The ratio of

the full and restricted model residuals serves as a

basis for making inferences about the influence of the

deleted independent variable on the dependent variable.

For example, if a significant F ratio results from the

comparison of the unaccounted for variance of the full

model and a model deleting the TSD intimacy variable,

56

57

then TSD intimacy is considered to have a significant

effect on the dependent variable (see Table 2). The

technique has the advantages of making use of the full

range of the variables and not requiring that cell sizes

be equal.

Three measures of client self-disclosure (CSD) -

duration, intimacy, and number - obtained from the ob­

jective rating system served as the criterion variables.

The predictor variables were the same three measures

of therapist self-disclosure along with client sex,

therapist sex, client sex role, therapist sex role, and

the six therapist statement content variables: encour­

aging exploration, indications of understanding, confron­

tations, directions, interpretations, and positive regard,

A secondary, exploratory analysis of the data was

accomplished using a stepwise multiple regression program,

The dependent and independent variables were the same for

this analysis, except that therapist and client ratings

of client self-disclosure were added as predictors.

Correlations and descriptive statistics for all variables

were also obtained.

TABLE 2

Results of Regression Equation

F Tests for Duration of CSD

58

^todel Deleted Variable MSE df R

Full

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

TSD 3

Duration TSD

Intimacy TSD

Number TSD

Client sex

Therapist sex

Therapist & client sex

Client sex role

Therapist sex role

Th & CI sex role

41507.07

91905.94

77580.18

98531.56

102633.23

60096.54

45103.87

53052.01

51421.48

50337.68

54005.11

* 2.21

1.87 *

2.37 *

2.47

1.45

1.09

1.28

1.24

1.21

1.30

19

21

19

19

19

19

19

19

19

19

20

.71

.47

.61

.62

.62

.69

.71

.68

.68

.70

.66

11 Encouraging Exploration 42731.85 1.03 19 .71

12 Indicating Understanding 40035.54 .96 19 .69

13 Confrontation 54116.43 1.30 19 .70

14 Directions

15 Positive Regard

16 Interpretations

17 Therapist

61871.97 1.49

49752.88 1.20

45353.14 1.09

52190.12 1.26

19

19

19

19

.70

.69

.71

.62

Note: * p <.05

59

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60 Results of Analyses

Tests of Hypotheses

Tables 2 , 4 , and 6 contain the results of the

hypothesis testing analysis for total duration, intimacy,

and number of client disclosures. Each table includes

a mean squared error (MSE) for the full model and the

restricted models. One, two, or three variables have

been deleted from each of the restricted models. The

comparison of the MSE for the full and a restricted model

resulted in the tabled F ratios. Significant F ratios

indicate a significant effect of the deleted variable

or variables. The difference between the R^ for the full

model and a restricted model is an indication of the

percentage of variance accounted for by each of the

deleted variables.

An overview of the results indicates that none of

the variables included in the analysis had a significant

effect on the intimacy of client self-disclosures (Table

4). There were, however, several factors which influenced

the duration and number of CSD's in this sample (see

Tables 2 and 6).

The first hypothesis advanced in this study was

that sex roles, but not gender, of clients and therapists

would have a significant effect on client disclosures.

If this was the case, the comparison of mean square error

61

TABLE 4

Results of Regression Equation

F Tests for Intimacy of CSD

Model

Full

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

1 7

Deleted Variable

TSD 3

Duration TSD

Intijnacy TSD

Number TSD

Client sex

Therapist sex

Therapist & Client

Client sex role

Therapsit sex role

Therapist & Client

sex

sex role

Encouraging Exploration

Indicating Understanding

Confrontation

Directions

Positive Regard

Interpretations

Therapist

MSE

100.40

137.72

102.03

112.81

98.11

98.19

95.35

93.64

103.48

95.47

98.25

105.46

125.70

101.38

96.01

100.46

95.12

99.12

F

1.37

1.02

1.12

.98

.98

.95

.94

1.03

.96

.98

1.05

1.25

1.01

.96

1.00

.95

.99

df

19

21

19

19

19

19

19

20

19

19

20

19

19

19

19

19

19

19

R2

.68

.48

.65

.62

.67

.67

.67

.67

.67

.68

.65

.64

.57

.66

.67

.66

.68

.66

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63

TABLE 6

Results of Regression Equation

F Tests for Number of CSD

I odel

Fiill

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

Deleted Variable

TSD 3

Duration TSD

Intimacy TSD

Number TSD

Client sex

Therapist sex

Therapist & Client

Client sex role

Therapist sex role

Therapist & Client

sex

sex role

Encouraging Exploration

Indications of Understanding

Confrontations

Directions

Positive Pegard

Interpretations

Therapist

MSE

39.02

74.16

78.59

86.29

83.55

99.94

74.55

92.10

92.32

68.94

79.92

56.87

51.04

90.63

81.56

79.53

74.43

51.76

F

1.90

2.01 *

2.21

2.14

2.56*

1.91

2.36*

*

2.37

1.77

2.05

1.46

1.31

* 2.32

2.09

2.04

1.91

1.33

df

19

21

19

19

19

19

19

20

19

19

20

19

19

19

19

19

19

19

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.76

.72

.76

.73

.75

.69

.76

.69

.69

.76

.69

.74

.73

.74

.76

.72

.74

.67

Note: * p <.05

64

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65

for the full model and mean square error for the models

deleting client and therapist sex role would result in

significant F tests. As can be seen from Table 6, the

hypothesis was partially supported in that client sex

role significantly influenced number of disclosures by

the client (F=2.37, p<.05). The group means in Table 10

indicate that, contrary to the prediction, undifferen­

tiated rather than feminine clients were the most dis­

closing. No significant effect of therapist sex appeared

The second part of the hypothesis, that gender would

have no effect on client disclosure was rejected since

there was a significant effect of client sex on number

of disclosures (F=2.56, p<.05) with females disclosing

more than males. The combination of client and therapist

sex also had a significant influence on number of client

self-disclosures (F=2.36, p<.05). The group means of

client disclosure for those combinations indicate that

the male therapist-female client combination resulted

in the highest number of self-disclosures (see Table 10).

The prediction that client and therapist sex role

would exert a significant effect on client self-

disclosure was not borne out for any of the measures

of CSD since none of the associated F tests were

significant.

As indicated in Table 8, there was no significant

effect of section of session, length of relationship,

66

Model

Full

1

2

3

TABLE 8

Results of Regression Equation

F_ Tests for Quarter Analysis

D u r a t i o n of CSD Deleted Variable MSE F

4333.83 .99

Session Number(SN) 4276.69 .99

Quarter of Session(QS) 4302.12 .99

SN X QS 4308.48 .99

Rater 5082.54 1.17

df

66

67

67

67

67

R

25

25

25

25

33

Intimacy of CSD

M o d e l

F u l l

1

2

3

4

De le t ed V a r i a b l e

S e s s i o n Number

Q u a r t e r o f S e s s i o n

SN K QS

R a t e r

MSE

1 9 7 . 4 2

1 9 9 . 1 2

1 9 5 . 5 9

2 1 0 . 1 8

2 0 1 . 3 1

F

1 . 0 1

. 9 9

1 . 0 6

1 . 0 1

d f

66

67

67

67

67

R2

. 4 1

. 3 9

. 4 0

. 3 6

. 3 8

Number of CSD

M o d e l

F u l l

1

2

3

4

De le t ed V a r i a b l e

S e s s i o n Number

Q u a r t e r o f S e s s i o n

SN X QS

R a t e r

MSE

6 . 3 3

6 . 2 6

6 . 2 9

6 . 2 3

6 . 9 8

F

. 9 9

. 9 9

. 9 8

1 . 1 0

d f

66

67

67

67

67

R2

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. 3 3

. 3 3

. 3 3

. 2 4

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TABLE 10

Number of Client Self-Disclosure by Selected Groups

Comparison Group

Client Sex Roles

Androgynous

Masculine

Feminine

Undifferentiated

Mean N SD

6 . 0 0

3 . 2 9

9 . 4 2

2 . 7 7

4

7

12

13

2 . 4 5

6 . 1 6

7 . 0 6

1 0 . 0 1

Client Gender

Male

Female

6.65 17

11.37 19

6.99

9.49

Client-Therapist Genders

Female Client-Female Therapist 7.00

Female Client-Male Therapist

Male Client-Female Therapist

Male Client-Male Therapist

12.93

3.00

7.77

5

14

4

13

6 . 5 2

1 0 . 0 9

2 . 4 5

7 . 6 2

69

or their combination. Thus hypotheses three and four

were not supported.

The fifth hypothesis, predicting the absence of a

reciprocity effect between therapist and client self-

disclosure, was also rejected. The three measures of

therapist self-disclosure taken together exerted a

significant effect on duration of client disclosure

(F=2.21, p<.05), as did intimacy of therapist disclosure

(F=2.37, p<.05). Intimacy of therapist disclosure also

significantly influenced number (F=2.21, p<.05) but

not intimacy of client self-disclosure. Duration of

client self-disclosure was also influenced by the number

of therapist disclosures (F=2.47, p<.05).

Among the therapist statement contents only

confrontation exerted any influence on client self-

disclosure (F=2.23, p<.05 for CSD number), showing an

inverse relationship.

Correlation Results

Examination of Tables 11 and 12 reveal several

interesting correlations between the variables included

in the analysis. The correlations among the three

measures of client self-disclosure (r=.62, p<.0001;

r=77, p<.0001; r=.59, p^.OOOl) and the three measures

of therapist self-disclosure (r=.44, p^.Ol; £=.83,

p<.0001; r=.50, p<.005) were highly significant.

70

t H i - i

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71

TABLE 12

I n t e r c o r r e l a t i o n s of C o n t e n t V a r i a b l e s

w i t h C r i t e r i o n and P r e d i c t o r V a r i a b l e s

^ : ^13 X S.D.

^ 1

^2

X3

^8

10 X

11

^12

\ 5 X ^16 p

'17

^18

.33

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.44*

.06

.03

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.25

.16

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.24

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.46

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-.03

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-.17

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-.06

-.11

.07

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-.11

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-.04

-.15

-.05

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.10

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.09

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-.06

.18

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.27

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.06

.61^

.06

-.12

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-.17

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.06

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.10

.11

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.04

.21

.001

-.14

.07

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-.12

-.25

.11

.20

-.02

.05

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.11

.07

.07

-.18

.03

-.08

.12

-.29

.15

.09

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-.14

-.12

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281.78

2.62

10.11

7.53

.64

.42

3.11

2.08

6.01

5.24

9.75

6.89

1.78

1.47

.86

2.36

273.28

1.26

9.21

16.72

1.38

.87

.92

.81

1.00

1.42

6.37

8.27

3.19

2.12

1.05

3.19

Note: * p< .05 ; # p < . 0 1 ; + p<.001; I p<.0001 N-36

Yl - Dura t ion CSD Y2 - Int imacy CSDv Y3 - Number CSD XI - Dura t ion TSD X2 - Int imacy TSD X3 - Niomber TSD X7 - C l i e n t Sex X8 - T h e r a p i s t Sex X9 - C l i e n t Sex Role

XIO - Therap is t Sex Role Xl l - C l i en t Rated CSD X12 - Therap i s t Rated CSD XI3 - Encouraging Explora t ion X14 - I n d i c a t i o n of Understanding XI5 - Confronta t ion XI6 - D i r ec t ions X17 - P o s i t i v e Regard XI8 - I n t e r p r e t a t i o n

72

Duration of client self-disclosure was significantly

related to duration of therapist disclosure (r=.54,

p<.001) and number of therapist self-disclosure (r=.41,

p<.01). Intimacy of client and therapist disclosures

were also positively correlated (r=.35, p<.05). Therapist

ratings of client disclosure were correlated with

duration of client disclosure while clients' rating of

their own disclosure showed no significant correlation

with observed client self-disclosure. Client sex role

was significantly correlated with all three measures

of client disclosure. It is interesting to note that in

this sample, therapist sex role was negatively correlated

with therapist sex.

Among the therapist content variables, encouraging

exploration was positively correlated with duration and

number of client self-disclosures (r=.33, p<.05; r=.45,

p<.01 respectively). Indications of understanding were

also correlated with number of client disclosures (r=l46,

p<;.005) .

Stepwise Regression Results

After results of the stepwise analysis were obtained,

F tests were performed on R increments following Cohen's

(1968) formula to determine the most efficient regression

models. Although none of the tests for the models pre­

dicting duration of client self-disclosure were

73 significant, the F ratio for the two-predictor model

was the highest and approached significance (F=3.98;

df:l,29). The variables involved were duration of

therapist self-disclosure and encouragement of explora­

tion. The most efficient equation for predicting

intimacy of client disclosure also included two in­

dependent variables, intimacy of therapist disclosure

and indications of understanding (F=4.296; df:l,29;

p<.05). A six predictor equation was found to be the

most efficient for number of client disclosures (F=4.37;

df: 1,25; p<.05). Client sex, client sex role, encour­

agement of exploration, confrontations, therapist state­

ments of positive regard, and interpretations were the

included predictors. The full equations are included

in Table 13.

74

TABLE 13

Efficient Predictor Equations

Regression Equation for Duration of CSD ^ ^

B F p R dR

Duration TSD 7.94 12.16 .002

Encouraging Exploration 11.90 3.96 .06

Intercept 130.71

Regression F 8.36 .001 .37 .09

Regression Equation for Intimacy of CSD

B F p R^ dR^

Intimacy TSD .22 4.68 .04

Indicating Understanding .35 4.37 .05

Intercept 25.37

Regression F 4.33 .03 .23 .12

Regression Eauation for Number of CSD 2 2

B F p R dR

Client sex

Client sex role

Encouraging Exploration

Confrontation

Positive Regard

Interpretations

Intercept

Regression F_

8.65

4.75

.55

-.87

2.53

-.75

-21.31

12.35

11.76

8.85

5.50

5.59

4.10

6.27

.002

.002

.006

.03

.03

.05

.0005 .60 .07

CHAPTER IV

DISCUSSION

Overview of Results

The present study was designed to help fill a gap

in the self-disclosure literature. Researchers in this

area have been prolific but have not previously dealt

with self-disclosure in actual therapy sessions using

a multidimensional measure. Theorists have deemed self-

disclosure to be important in the therapeutic process,

but have had little direct data to support their

propositions. The current work was an attempt to

illuminate the role played by self-disclosure in actual

therapy sessions using a multidimensional objective

measure. Five hypotheses were tested and exploratory

analyses done. The results of these tests and other

significant findings are summarized below.

The hypothesis that no reciprocity effect would

appear was rejected since there was a significant influ­

ence of therapist self-disclosure on client self-

disclosure. This was consistent with the results from

the correlation and stepwise analyses. The intimacy and

duration of therapist self-disclosure were positively

75

76

correlated with intimacy and duration of client self-

disclosures. The single most effective predictor of

duration of client disclosure was duration of therapist

disclosure and the single most effective predictor of

intimacy of client disclosure was intimacy of therapist

disclosure.

It was hypothesized that client and therapist sex

roles, but not gender, and therapist-client sex role

combinations would influence client self-disclosure.

The results indicated that client sex role did influence

the number of client disclosures, with undifferentiated

clients making significantly more disclosures, partially

supporting the hypothesis. Contrary to expectations,

therapist sex role did not influence client disclosure,

nor did client-therapist sex role combinations. Client

gender and client-therapist gender combinations did

have significant effects on number of self-disclosures

in the sample. Female clients made more disclosures than

males and the male therapist, female client combination

resulted in the highest rate of client disclosure. Among

the sex and sex roles variables, only client sex role

demonstrated a significant correlation with client

disclosure. It was, however, significantly related to

all three dimensions of client self-disclosure. It was

interesting to note that therapist sex and therapist

sex role were negatively correlated in this sample.

77

This suggests that male therapists tended to endorse

feminine sex role characteristics while female therapists

tended to have masculine or androgynous role orientations.

Both client sex and client sex role were included in the

most efficient prediction equation for number of client

disclosures.

Among the therapist content variables, encourage­

ment of exploration and indications of understanding

were positively correlated with two measures of self-

disclosure. In addition to those two variables, con­

frontations, statements of positive regard, and inter­

pretations were included in the prediction equations

for client self-disclosure. The hypothesis testing

analysis indicated that therapist confrontations were

inversely related to the number of client self-

disclosures.

The correlations among the three measures of client

disclosure and among the three measures of therapist

disclosure were very strong, suggesting that the three

measures tap the same variable. Despite this close

relationship, results from the stepwise analysis

indicated that each of the measures is influenced by

different variables.

The expected increase of client self-disclosure

near the end of sessions and the interaction between

length of relationship and section of session did not

materialize, and the hypothesis was not supported.

The only significant correlation between the

participants' rating of self-disclosure and observed

self-disclosure occurred between therapist rating of

client disclosure and duration of client disclosure.

78

Discussion of the Results

The Reciprocity Effect

Probably the most significant results of the present

investigation were those which indicated an unexpected

reciprocity effect. Although there have been few previous

studies of self-disclosure in actual therapy sessions,

some analog studies have suggested that the reciprocity

effect might be absent or attenuated in actual therapist-

client interactions (Brody, 1968; Feigenbaum, 1977;

Otstott & Scrutchins, 1974). An additional consideration

in predicting a lack of reciprocity was that therapist

self-disclosure was expected to occur very infrequently

and, as a result, have little influence on client self-

disclosure. The actual occurence of therapist disclosure

in this study was, in fact, quite low (X= .42 TSD/session;

X duration of 7.5 3 seconds). However, it appears from

the current results that when therapists do make self-

disclosures, there is a powerful impac^: on the client's

79 disclosing behavior.

A closer look at some selected research may be help­

ful in clarifying the present reciprocity findings.

Powell (1968), Brody (1968) and Feigenbaum (1977) all

concluded that therapist disclosure was only effective

in increasing client self-disclosure when it was used

contingently. Given that conclusion, the relationship

found in this study was perhaps the result of reinforce­

ment rather than reciprocity. However, the present data

included only one instance in which a therapist disclo­

sure immediately followed a client self-disclosure. In

fact, the most common pattern appeared to be the

occurrence of a therapist disclosure followed by another

therapist statement, then a client self-disclosure. It

seems very unlikely that contingency played an important

role in this sample.

Simonson and Bahr (1974) proposed that intervening

variables were operative in the relationship between

client and therapist disclosures. The variables of

sex and sex roles, expectancies and therapist expertise

have been proposed to be such moderators. Simonson and

Bahr (1974) specifically identified therapist expertise

and client expectancies as influential variables. Kiyak,

Kelly and Blak (1979) found that client self-disclosure

was greater than therapist disclosure and that this was

congruent with a generally accepted view of the client

as the revealer and the therapist as the listener. The

data from this investigation are certainly consistent

with that viewpoint. Perhaps if high levels of therapist

self-disclosure had occurred, the effect would not have

materialized. Mann and Murphy (1975) argued that there

is a curvilinear relationship between client and

therapist disclosures such that client disclosure in­

creases with therapist disclosure through intermediate

levels of disclosure then begins to decrease as therapist

disclosure moves to higher levels. However, it seems

unlikely that such norm-violating high levels of thera­

pist self-disclosure would occur in actual therapeutic

interactions, so the point may be moot. Another variable

which might have had an effect is that of therapist

expertise. In the present study, experience of therapists,

as far as could be determined, was relatively balanced

so that this factor is not likely to have had an

influence in this sample.

The results from the stepwise analysis indicate

that the most efficient models for predicting duration

and intimacy of client self-disclosure in this sample

are relatively simple. The duration of clients' disclo­

sure is best predicted from the duration of therapists'

disclosure and the number of times therapists make

statements encouraging clients to explore issues,

feeling, or aspects of themselves. Intimacy of therapist

80

81 disclosure and therapist statements indicating under­

standing of what the client is saying are the most

efficient predictors of intimacy of client disclosures

in this study. Although causal inferences cannot be made

from this type of analysis, the results suggest that

duration of client disclosure may be influenced by

modeling and instructional aspects of therapist behavior

while intimacy is influenced by the emotional atmosphere

as well as modeling. The client may reciprocate therapist

disclosure in terms of duration and respond to encourage­

ment to explore, which could be viewed as a kind of in­

direct instruction, by spending more time disclosing.

If clients feel understood and the therapist shares on

a relatively intimate level, they may increase the

intimacy of their own disclosures.

The robustness of the reciprocity effect has been

documented across cultures, situations, measurement

approaches, and subject populations (Cozby, 1973). The

present results from all three analyses suggest that

that effect extends into the therapist's office as well.

Ogden (1979) used a relatively realistic interview analog

in his study and found no effect of therapist disclosure

on client disclosure. Although Shroad's (1978) subjects

were actual clients, his data was not gathered in actual

client-therapist interactions. Perhaps the reciprocity

effect occurs only in actual therapy interactions. The

82

findings of Nilsson (1978) and McCarthy (1982) are con­

sistent with the present ones. In the latter study,

subjects were asked to respond as they would if they

were a client interacting with the therapist. The results

showed client disclosure increasing with therapist dis­

closure.

Three hypotheses have been advanced to explain the

disclosure reciprocity effect: trust-attraction, social

exchange, and modeling. Briefly, the trust-attraction

hypothesis assumes that bestowing intimate disclosure

on another makes the recipient feel trusted. This kind

of compliment creates attraction and leads the recipient

to return the disclosure as a sign of liking and willing­

ness to trust the original revealer. The social exchange

hypothesis as proposed by Worthy, Gary and Kahn (1969)

suggests that receiving disclosure is a rewarding ex­

perience. Having received something of value, the

recipient feels obligated to return something of

similar value. Chaikin and Derlega (1974) added the

suggestion that reciprocity was influenced by the

principles of equity theory (Walster, Berschied &

Walster, 19 73). According to that theory, a relationship

is equitable if the pair of participants perceive that

the ratio of inputs to outputs is the same for both.

People are assumed to attempt to maintain equity and

to experience distress when a relationship is inequitable.

The modeling hypothesis (McGuire, Thelen & Amolsch,

1975) is the most recent attempt to explain disclosure

reciprocity. It is based on the principles of vicarious

reinforcement and imitation. Modeling occurs when

people look to one another for cues about the appropri­

ateness of their disclosure behaviors. After reviewing

the evidence for the three hypotheses. Archer (1979)

concluded that the social exchange explanation has the

most support, the modeling hypothesis has been questioned

but not disconfirmed, and the trust-attraction account

has been virtually refuted.

The results of the current investigation, although

not conclusive, generally seem to be most consistent

with the modeling hypothesis. Since the levels of

therapist and client disclosure were so disparate, there

seems to be little equity or mutual exchange occurring.

The findings of Howell and Highlen (1981) that client

self-disclosure had no effect on therapist disclosure

provides further evidence that an equity-exchange theory

is not a likely explanation for reciprocity in therapy

settings. The patterns of interaction do fit into a

modeling framework. The therapist provides an example

of disclosing behavior which is imitated by the client.

In those cases where there was no therapist disclosure,

perhaps the demand characteristics of the therapy

situation explain the disclosure. The findings of

83

84 Brewer and Mittelman (1981) that normative cues exerted

a powerful influence of client disclosure support that

possibility.

Gender and Sex Role Effects

The current gender findings are consistent with

the majority of reported results and affirmed the

conclusion that women are more willing to self-disclose

than men. Many researchers have argued that sex role is

the more important variable (Bender, 1976; Rosenfeld,

Civikly & Herron, 1979). While client sex role did have

a significant effect in this investigation, it did not

outweigh the effect of client sex. Both Strassberg et_

al. (1978) , using a unidimensional measure in therapy

interactions, and Feldstein (1979), using a therapy

analog, failed to find an effect for gender. Perhaps

the criticisms of Chelune (1978) are pertinent here.

The use of a multidimensional measure in actual

sessions may have revealed the influence of gender

when other approaches had not. Indeed, Brooks (1974),

Chelune (1976a), and Pederson and Breglio (1968) have

all concluded that the presence or absence of

differential effects of gender on disclosure depends

on the parameter of disclosure being examined.

The results of the present study indicated that

there were no sex differences for intimacy or duration

of client disclosure, but that males disclosed at a

lower rate than females. Client sex and client sex role

were found to be significant predictors of number of

client disclosures. Chelune (1976a) and Pederson and

Breglio (1968) found that males and females differed

in terms of intimacy of disclosure but not in duration,

rate, affect, or flexibility. Their research did not

involve actual therapeutic interactions, perhaps account­

ing for the divergence from the present results. Another

possible explanation is that the disclosures rated in

this study were all relatively intimate. Morgan (1976)

reported that males differed from females in disclosing

behavior only when the intimacy of disclosures was high.

This was also consistent with Chelune's results. For

the present study, raters were instructed to rate only

those disclosures deemed personally important to the

discloser. Thus, the intimacy of all the disclosures

in the analyses was relatively high. This may have

attenuated any effects on intimacy and perhaps allowed

a more subtle effect of sex on rate of disclosure to

appear.

Lewis (1978) suggests several possible causes for

the disparity of disclosing behaviors of males and

females. The traditional sex role demands placed on

males, the disadvantage that disclosure would create

in competitive situations, homophobia, aversion to

85

J 5"

•f V

I I I (

36 vulnerability, and lack of role models are all possible

causes of lower male disclosure. The apparently wide­

spread bias that males are less disclosing noted by

Jourard (1971) and Chelune, Skiffington, and Williams

(1981) may also help account for the sex differences

found. The males in the sample may have simply disclosed

in a manner consistent with that norm. Assuming that ^ ''' f''

therapists have the same differential expectations, ' , ) , -

their behavior - for example, asking males and females * /t "^ \

different questions - may have influenced clients' dis-, H ^

closing behaviors. \y^ " t t

The occurence of a significant effect of client-

therapist sex combinations are consistent with the

findings of Fuller (1961), Panyard (1973), and Feldstein

(1979) which indicated that mixed-sex client-therapist

pairings resulted in higher levels of self-disclosure

than same sex pairings.

The results indicated that client sex role had a ^,'^^

significant influence on number of client disclosures.

Clients with undifferentiated sex role were the most

disclosing while the masculine sex role clients were

the least disclosing. Bender (1976), using different

sex role inventories and a self-report measure of self-

disclosure, found that feminine sex role subjects

reported the greatest disclosure. The difference in the

findings can probably be explained in terms of the

^A^

87 differences in measurement procedures (unidimensional

self-report vs. multidimensional objective) and the

setting in which the studies were carried out. Stokes,

Childs and Fuehrer (1981) found that androgynous subjects

were the most disclosing of the sex role groups. They

argued that the masculine traits of assertiveness and

risk-taking and the feminine traits of expressiveness

and comfort with closeness are combined in the andro­

gynous role, resulting in the highest levels of reported

willingness to disclose. The present findings suggest

that in therapeutic interactions these proactive

qualities do not significantly influence self-disclosure.

The high disclosure rate of undifferentiated clients

in the present investigation could be the result of

their greater susceptibility to the demand characteris­

tics of the therapy situation (Bem, 1975; Brewer &

Mittelman, 1980). In addition, undifferentiated sex

role individuals have generally been found to be less

well-adjusted (Baucom, 1976; Kelly & Worell, 1977) and

more willing to acimit problems. Anchor et_ d . (1973)

and McDaniel, Stiles and McGaughey (1981) have concluded

that poorer psychological adjustment is related to higher

levels of self-disclosure. Thus, it may be that psycho­

logical characteristics of the undifferentiated sex role

could account for the higher levels of self-disclosure.

Previous investigations in this area have produced

88 contradictory and often unclear results. The finding

of the present study with regard to the influence of sex

and sex roles on self-disclosure indicate that both

factors are important influences on some parameters of

self-disclosure. This points up the necessity of using

appropriate multidimensional measures and evaluating

self-disclosure in as realistic a setting as possible.

The Influence of Therapist Content

Among the therapist content variables, encouragement ,•

of exploration, indications of understanding, and

positive regard were positively correlated with client

disclosure. In addition, confrontations and interpreta­

tions were inversely related to client self-disclosure.

Although there have been many examinations of the

content aspects of the therapy process, few of these

deal with the relationships between self-disclosure and

other contents. In general, the findings of these studies

indicate that the creation of a conducive atmosphere is

an important factor in fostering client self-disclosure.

Sullivan (1940) indicated that it was particularly

important for the therapist to modulate the client's

level of anxiety through assurance and support, since

low levels of anxiety were assumed to encourage self-

revelations. Ellison and Firestone (1974) found a

reflective, rather than an intrusive, style more

effective in building rapport. Feingenbaum (1977) con­

cluded that reflections increased the level of self-

disclosure of female interviewees. Williams (1972)

demonstrated that moderate levels of personal involve­

ment lead to the highest levels of self-disclosure in

an interview. The variables involved in these investi­

gations can be viewed as analogous to indications of

understanding and positive regard in the current work.

A second element which appears to influence

disclosure is the use of interventions which keep

disclosers on task. Doster and Nesbitt (1979) have

stated that the invitation to disclose is central to

the therapeutic process. Probing interventions have been

found to elicit greater self-disclosure than disclosing

or reflective comments by an interviewer (Vondracek,

1969). McDaniel et d . (1981) found that client self-

disclosure was influenced by therapist explorations.

Such explorations, as conceptualized in this study, can

be related to such contents as invitations to talk

(Otstott & Scrutchins, 1974), instructions to disclose

(Derlega, Lovell & Chaikin, 1976; Hamlin & Farina, 1967;

Highlen & Nicholas, 1978; Scheiderer, 1975), and

questions (Sermat & Smyth, 1973), all of which have been

found to increase self-disclosure.

The results of the current investigation are quite

consistent with previous findings. Encouragement of

89

90

exploration, indications of understanding, and state­

ments of positive regard were found to influence or be

related to measures of client disclosure. The contribution

of the present work in this area lies in demonstrating

that the different measures of client disclosure are

influenced by different content variables or combinations

of variables. Encouraging exploration is correlated with

duration of client disclosure. Extending the above

discussion, it is suggested that this aspect of disclo­

sure is the most responsive to interventions which

promote on-task behavior in therapy. In contrast, intimacy

of client self-disclosure can be partially predicted from

the number of therapist indications of understanding. In

this case, levels of disclosure appear to be primarily

influenced by factors which determine the interpersonal

atmosphere of the interaction. This hypothesis is

supported by previous results, as well as the current

finding that intimacy of therapist disclosure and

indications of understanding are the most efficient

predictors of intimacy of client disclosure. The relation­

ship between number or rate of client disclosures and

therapist content variables appears to be more complex.

Both task-oriented and atmosphere-creating contents seem

to be closely related to rate of disclosure, while

therapists' disclosing behavior is less important. In

addition to those already mentioned, the confrontation

91 and interpretation variables are important predictors

for number of client disclosures. Their influence may be /

the result of the creation of a colder interpersonal

atmosphere, thus reducing the level of self-disclosure

by clients.

Measurement

The importance of multidimensional measurement of

self-disclosure is demonstrated by the results of all

three analyses of the present data. Different factors

affected or were related to each of the parameters of

disclosure. Client disclosure,duration,and intimacy

appear to be most closely related to duration and

intimacy of therapist disclosure. Number or rate of

client disclosures appears to be more closely related

to or influenced by client characteristics and non­

disclosure aspects of the therapeutic process.

Each of the three measures of client self-disclosure

and each of the three measures of therapist self-

disclosure were highly correlated with each other,

suggesting that the dimensions share a significant

amount of common variance. This is consistent with the

finding that duration has typically been correlated with

intimacy (Davis & Sloan, 1975; Doster, 1975; Doster &

Brooks, 1974) and could lead to the conclusion that any

one of the three could be used to assess self-disclosure

;

92

effectively. Doster and Nesbitt (1979), while recognizing

this kind of interrelatedness, warned against using the

different parameters as interchangeable measures. The

results from the current regression analyses support

this position since the different aspects of client self-

disclosure are influenced by or related to varying aspects

of the therapeutic process. Chelune (1979) warns that

generalizations based on unidimensional measurement

approaches are limited in usefulness in understanding

self-disclosing behaviors. Differences found using only

one parameter are possibly confounded by the covarying

patterns of the other parameters and could result in

misleading conclusions. Given the complexity of the

therapeutic process and of the operation of self-

disclosure within that context, it seems reasonable to

reduce confounding as much as possible. In order to reach

understandable and meaningful conclusions about self-

disclosure, multidimensional measures should be used.

The lack of a significant correlation between

clients' ratings of their own self-disclosure and

observed levels of client disclosure suggests that

self-report measures have limited usefulness in this

area of research. Even though clients rated their own

level of disclosure immediately after the session, they

were apparently unable to make accurate estimates of

their own disclosing behavior. This suggests that

extreme caution should be used in extrapolating the

results of studies using self-report measures of disclo­

sure in therapy situations.

Temporal Variables

While few studies have examined the distribution

of self-disclosure within a session, those that are

available have generally indicated an increase in disclo­

sure toward the end of the session. This was not found

to be the case in the present investigation. This

inconsistency may reflect differences in the approach

to measurement of self-disclosure. Anchor and Sandler

(1976) used therapists' ratings as the dependent variable

in their study. This, of course, can be critized on the

basis of lack of objectivity. Ogden's (1978) subjects

were all females, and the results obtained by Strassberg

et al. (1978) indicated that within-session levels of

self-disclosure differ only for females. Accordingly,

the contradiction of results may stem from the present

use of a multidimensional objective measure in actual

therapy interactions involving both male and female

clients. The somewhat speculative hypothesis that self-

disclosure would increase with length of relationship

and there would be an interaction of within and between

session temporal factors was not supported. Kiyak, Kelly

and Black (1979) suggest that between session

93

self-disclosure levels may be quite complex and require

more rigorous investigation.

Implications and Contributions

After reviewing the literature on therapy and self-

disclosure, Chelune (1979) concluded that client self-

disclosures make important contributions to the thera­

peutic process. Self-reports by clients are a major

source of information about their experiences and

difficulties. Self-disclosure enables the therapist to

understand the client's problems, assets, and the social

context in which they exist. In some models of therapy

developing self-disclosure is a primary focus of treat­

ment. McDaniel et d . (1981) pointed out that client

disclosure is part of a common core of the therapeutic

process across a wide range of theoretical orientations

and therapist styles. Any variable v/hich exerts a

significant influence on client disclosure would also

be an important factor. The present research indicates

that therapist self-disclosure is such a variable. This

has implications for the training and practice of

therapists.

The use of a therapist disclosure to enhance the

process and outcome of therapy has been controversial

from both theoretical and empirical viewpoints (Doster

94

95 & Nesbitt, 1979). Humanistic/existential theorists claim

that therapist disclosures serve a critical relationship-

building function and are necessary for developing an

effective therapeutic climate (Jourard, 1971; Mowrer,

1964; Rogers, 1961). Social learning theorists support

therapist use of self-disclosure to model appropriate

therapy behavior for the client and as a social reinforcer

(Goldstein, 1962; Heller, 1968). Opponents of such

disclosure argue that it interferes with the development

of the transference by reducing ambiguity (Curtis, 1981).

One of the early issues beginning therapists must face

is the amount and type of personal information they will

reveal to their clients.

Such a potentially powerful tool as therapist self-

disclosure can be well used only when it is recognized

and understood. It seems reasonable to suggest that a

study of self-disclosure, its operation in therapy

interactions, and methods of using it should be a part

of the trainee therapist's curriculum. Weiner (1978)

provides some suggestions for the use of self-disclosure

as a therapeutic intervention. He contends that

frequency, timing, and degree of self-disclosure should

depend on the type and goal of therapy, the nature of

the client-therapist relationship, and the client's ego

strength.

The results of this study have consistently

demonstrated the importance of measurement techniques

in the examination of self-disclosure. The use of uni­

dimensional measure in such research would likely result

in adding to the existing confusion, rather than contrib­

uting to the clarification of the concept and its con­

comitants.

The current findings have some theoretical implica­

tions as well. Although other interpretations are

possible, the pattern of results seem to best fit into

a modeling theory of reciprocity. The demonstration of

a reciprocity effect in therapy session also has

theoretical implications. The author has suggested that

two elements may influence client disclosure. Task

orientation and creation of the proper atmosphere appear

to be factors which may foster self-disclosure.

Among the contributions of the present research

was the demonstration of a significant effect of therapist

disclosure on client disclosure during in_ vivo therapy

sessions. It has also extended the self-disclosure

literature into the realm of real client-therapist

interactions and provides a possible framework for

future investigations. The stepwise analysis resulted

in a set of regression equations which could be used

to predict aspects of client disclosure in therapy. A

final contribution was the successful use of an objective

method of assessing the ongoing process of therapeutic

96

97 interactions which does not require lengthy training

of raters.

Current Limitations and Future Directions

The major finding of this research was that

therapist self-disclosure has a significant influence

on client self-disclosure. Other results included

effects of client sex, client sex role and client-

therapist sex combinations on client disclosure.

Therapist confrontation also exerted a significant

negative effect on client self-revelation. It is

appropriate to consider at this point factors which

may limit the generalizability of these results.

The major limitation of the study has to do with

the participants. Despite efforts to obtain tapes for

rating over a two year period, the number of tapes

received did not allow for the creation of a balanced

analysis design. While client sex was essentially

equally represented, male therapists were overrepresented,

and client-therapist sex combinations were not balanced.

Had a larger pool of tapes been available a balanced

and perhaps more powerful design could have been used.

It should be noted, however, that the effects which

appeared in the study were robust and no other effects

pertinent to the hypotheses approached significance.

98 Another limitation has to do with the therapists

involved. Although therapists from two quite different

populations participated in the study, generalizability

would be improved if a wider variety of therapists had

been involved.

Perhaps the first priority of any follow-up research

should be the replication of the present results. This

is particularly true since this is among the first

investigations of actual client-therapist interactions.

The stepwise regression equations resulting from

these data are a potential basis for a valuable body

of research. Use and refinement of these equations could

result in powerful and theoretically useful predictors

of client self-disclosure.

The inclusion of therapist experience variables

and emphasis on other therapist verbal behaviors would

be valuable extensions of the present work. Another

useful approach would be to ask therapists to

systematically vary the intimacy and duration of their

self-disclosure, numbers of other contents, and/or

questions asked and assess the effects on client self-

disclosure. Client diagnosis could be used as another

independent variable. Another area of interest might be

the presence or absence of an influence of client disclo­

sure on therapist disclosure.

Two areas addressed in the present study are in

99 need of thorough investigation: the influence of temporal

variables and the factors influencing the sex and sex

combination differences.

Summary

The present study resulted in the demonstration of

a significant effect of therapist self-disclosure on

client self-disclosure. This relationship was demon­

strated in all three analyses and in spite of low levels

of therapist disclosure. The results were interpreted

as being most consistent with a modeling explanation of

reciprocity. Two major factors which appear to influence

client disclosure in therapy were proposed. Interventions

aimed at keeping clients on task and those which

influence the interpersonal atmosphere were suggested

to have important effects on client self-disclosure.

They also appear to differentially influence different

dimensions of disclosure. Duration appears to be most

influenced by on-task interventions, intimacy by

atmosphere creating elements, and rate by a combination

of the two. Rate of disclosure was also significantly

affected by sex and sex role variables.

The findings of the present study with regard to

the influence of sex and sex role on self-disclosure

indicate that both variables influence some parameters

100 of disclosure. The results of previous investigations

in this area have often been contradictory or inconclu­

sive. This points up the necessity of evaluating self-

disclosure in as realistic a setting as possible and of

using multidimensional measures.

The importance of multidimensional measurement of

self-disclosure is demonstrated by the results of all

three analyses, since different factors were related to

or influenced the different parameters. Correlational

results suggested that self-report measures of disclo­

sure should be used very cautiously.

The relationship of the present study to previous

research was discussed. Implications and contributions

were discussed as were suggestions for future research.

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Williams. E.E. The effects of interviewer disclosure level and interpersonal warmth on the disclosure level of interviewees during an experimental inter­view. Unpublished Master's thesis. University of Missouri at Columbia, 1972. Cited in G.J. Chelune (Ed.), Self-disclosure. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1979.

Wilson, M.N. & Rappaport, J. Personal self-disclosure Expectancy and situational effects. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 1974, £2, 901-908.

Woods, K.M. The effects of instructions regarding confidentiality on depth of self-disclosure and behavioral indicants of anxiety in an analogue interview situation (Doctoral dissertation, Ohio University, 1977) . Dissertation Abstracts International, 1978, 21/ 6186B. (University Micro­films No. 7807532)

Worthy, M. Gary, A.L. & Kahn, C M . Self-disclosure as an exchange process. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1969, H , 59-63.

Yang, M. & Hwang, K. [The Vedge model of self-disclosure and its correlates.] Acta Psychologica Taiwanica, 1980,22/ 51-70. Abstract in Psychological Abstracts, 1982, H , 956.

APPENDICES

A. CONSENT FORM

B. RATING SCALES

C BAUCOM MSC-FMN SCALE

D. DEFINITIONS AND EXAMPLES OF CATEGORIES

E. WRITTEN PRACTICE STATEMENTS

F. TAPED PRACTICE STATEMENTS

121

APPENDIX A

CONSENT FORMS

122

CONSENT FORM

We are seeking your participation in a study en­titled "Rating of Therapy Content" which is being con­ducted by Tom Patten of the Psychology Department, Vicki Covey, Jackie Atherton, and Robert Bird. The nature of the study is to investigate some of the variables in­fluencing the interactions of therapists and clients.

As a participant in the study, you will be asked tcp give ycpur permission for Jackie Atherton and Robert Bird to listen to parts of a tape of your therapy session You will also be asked to complete a sex role inventory, rate several topics in terms of their importance to you, and, after the taped session, complete a short question­naire about the session. The confidentiality of^the tape will be carefully protected. The tapes will be collected and rated anonymously. No one other than Jackie Atherton and Robert Bird (who are psychiatric technicians in Jacksonville, Fl.) will listen to the tape and it will be retained by Tom Patten in a secure place until analy­ses are completed when they will be erased. There is no risk to you other than that involved in the raters' listening to parts of your tape.

After your participation in the study, you will be provided with a written explanation of the study, in­cluding reasons for doing the study, what we hope to gain, and information about how you may reach the ex­perimenter to have any additional questions concerning the experiment answered.

Dr. Bill Locke (phone 742-3537) has agreed to an­swer any inquiries you may have concerning the procedures of the experiment. You may contact Texas Tech University Institutional Review Board for the Protection of Human Subjects by writing them in care of the Office of Re­search Services, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas, 79409, or by calling 742-3883.

If this project causes any physical injury to you, treatment is not necessarily available at Texas Tech University or the Student Health Center, nor is there necessarily any insurance carried by the University or its personnel applicable to cover any such injury. Financial compensation for any such injury must be pro­vided through the participant's own insurance program. Further information about these matters may be obtained from Dr. J. Knox Jones, Jr. Vice President for Research and Graduate Studies, 742-2152, Room 118, Administrative Building, 'Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas, 79409.

By signing this consent form you are acknowledging that you understand the nature of your participation in this study. You should also be aware that:

123

124 1) you may withdraw your consent and cease partic­

ipation at any time without questions or pre­judice of any kind.

2) your tape and responses will be anonymous and confidential.

3) you are giving your permission for the use of the tape of your therapy session in this study.

If you agree to participate in this experiment, please acknowledge this by signing in the appropriate space.

Date

Signature of participant_

Signature of witness

APPENDIX B

RATING SCALES

125

126 RATING SCALES

Please rate in general the degree to which the following occurred during this session.

You revealed information to the other person which is personal and important to you.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 very little / / / / / / / to a great or not at all extent

The other person revealed to you personal and important information.

1 /

2 /

3 /

4 /

5 /

6 /

7 /

You expressed positive feelings tov/ard the other person.

1 /

2 /

3 /

4 /

5 /

6 /

7 /

The other person expressed positive feelings to­ward you.

1 /

2 /

3 /

4 /

5 /

6 /

7 /

You pointed out some aspect of the other person's behavior which was interfering with achieving goals during the session.

1 /

2 /

3 /

4 /

5 /

6 /

7 /

The other person pointed out to you behaviors which were interfering with the goals during the session.

1 /

2 /

3 /

4 /

5 /

6 /

7 /

You let the other person know you understood what he or she was saying.

1 /

2 /

3 /

4 /

5 /

6 /

7 /

127 The other person let you know they understood what you were saying.

1 /

2 /

3 /

4 /

5 /

6 /

7 /

You pointed out patterns in what the other person has said or done.

1 /

2 /

3 /

4 /

5 /

6 /

7 /

The other person pointed out patterns in what you have said or done.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 / / / / / / /

You gave i n s t r u c t i o n s or adv ice .

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 / / / / / / /

You were given i n s t r u c t i o n s or adv ice .

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 / / / / / / /

Please rank the following topic areas, from those you consider the most personal and private (#1) to those you consider the least personal and private (#7).

Work/school 1 Interests 2 Attitudes and opinions 3 Finances 4 Relationships 5 Personality 6 Body 7

APPENDIX C

BAUCOM'S MSC AND FMN SCALES

128

129 MSC - FEM SCALE

In describing yourself, please circle T for a True statement or F for a False statement.

T F 1. When in a group of people I usually do what the others want rather than make suggestions.

T F 2. I am very slow in making up my mind.

T F 3. I think I would like the work of a building contractor.

T F 4. It makes me feel like a failure when I hear of the success of someone I know well.

T F 5. It's a good thing to know people in the right places so you can get traffic tags, and such things taken care of.

T F 6. I am often said to be hotheaded.

T F 7 . 1 think I would like the work of a dress designer.

T F 8 . 1 doubt whether I would make a good leader.

T F 9. Usually I would prefer to work with women.

T F 10. When I was going to school I played hookey quite often.

T F 11. I must admit that I enjoy playing practical jokes on people.

T F 12. I become quite irritated when I see someone spit on the sidewalk.

T F 13. VJhen someone does me a wrong, I feel I should pay him back, if I can, just for the principle of the thing.

T F 14. It is hard for me to start a conversation with strangers.

T F 15. I think I would like the work of a garage mechanic.

T F 16. I get very nervous if I think that someone

T F 17.

is watching me.

I think I would enjoy having authority over other people.

130

T F 18. I get very tense and anxious when I think other people are disapproving of me.

T F 19. I like adventure stories better than roman­tic stories.

T F 20. I am embarrased by dirty stories.

T F 21. The thought of being in an automobile acci­dent is very frightening to me.

T F 22. Sometimes I cross the street just to avoid meeting someone.

T F 23. At times I feel like picking a fist fight with someone.

T F 24. I don't blame anyone for trying to grab all he can in this world.

T F 25. I like poetry.

T F 26. I used to keep a diary.

T F 27. I often feel as if the world was just pass­ing me by.

T F 28. I think I would like to drive a racing car.

T F 29. I don't like to undertake any project un­less I have a pretty good idea as to how it will turn out.

T F 30. I like to be in a crowd who plays jokes on one another.

T F 31. I would like to wear expensive clothes.

T F 32. I like adventure stories better than roman­tic stories.

T F 33. Criticism or scolding makes me very uncom­fortable.

T F 34. Sometimes I think of things too bad to talk about.

T F 35. I prefer a shower to a bathtub.

T F 36. I have no dread of going into a room by my­self where other people have already gather­ed and are talking.

T F 37. I think I could do better than most of the present politicians if I were in office.

T F 38. When in a group of people I have trouble thinking of the right things to talk about.

T F 39. I think I would like to fight in a boxing match sometime.

T F 40. I am likely not to speak to people until they speak to me.

T F 41. I do not dread seeing a doctor about a sick­ness or injury.

T F 42. I very much like hunting.

T F 43. I have frequently found myself, when alone, pondering such abstract problems as free­will, evil, etc.

T F 44. I am somev/hat afraid of the dark.

T F 45. I have a tendency to give up easily when I meet difficult problems.

T F 46. I certainly feel useless at times.

T F 47. I have never been in trouble with the law.

T F 48. I am certainly lacking in self-confidence.

T F 49. I usually don't like to talk much unless I am with people I know very well.

T F 50. In school I was sometimes sent to the prin­ciple for cutting up.

T F 51. I am inclined to take things hard.

T F 52. I would rather be a steady and dependable worker than a brilliant but unstable one.

T F 53. If given the chance I would make a good leader of people.

131

T F 54. It is hard for me to find anything to talk about when I meet a new person.

T F 55. I like to talk before groups of people.

T F 56. Sometimes I feel that I am about to go to pieces.

T F 57. I like mechanics magazines.

T F 58. Lawbreakers are almost always caught and punished.

T F 59. Sometimes I just can't seem to get going.

T F 60. I would like to be a nurse.

T F 61. I sometimes feel that I am a burden to others

T F 62. At times I have been very anxious to get away from my family.

T F 63. I think I would like to belong to a motor­cycle club.

T F 64. I feel that a well-ordered mode of life with regular hours is congenial to my temperament.

T F 65. In school I found it very hard to talk be­fore the class.

T F 66. I usually feel that life is worthwhile.

T F 67. I usually try to do what is expected of me, and to avoid criticism.

T F 68. I like science.

T F 69. I have used alcohol excessively.

T F 70. I must admit I feel sort of scared when I move to a strange place.

T F 71. I used to steal sometimes when I was a young­ster.

T F 72. It is hard for me to act natural when I am with new people.

T F 73. My home as a child was less peaceful and quiet than those of most other people.

132

T F 74. As a youngster in school I used to give the teachers lots of trouble.

T F 75. I have never done anything dangerous for the thrill of it.

T F 76. I'm not the type to be a political leader.

T F 77. I am afraid to be alone in the dark.

T F 78. I have more trouble concentrating than others seem to have.

T F 79. I have been afraid of things or people that I knew could not hurt me.

T F 80. I would be willing to describe myself as a pretty "strong" personality.

T F 81. I get nervous when I have to ask someone for a job.

T F 82. I think I am usually a leader in my group.

T F 83. I seem to do things that I regret more often than other people do.

T F 84. I like to eat my meals quickly and not spend a lot of time at the table visiting and talk­ing.

T F 85. I usually have to stop and think before I act even in trifling matters.

T F 86. I must admit that it makes me angry when other people interfere with my daily acti­vities.

T F 87. I am quite a fast reader.

T F 88. At times I have been so entertained by the cleverness of a crook that I have hoped he would get by with it.

T F 89. If a person doesn't get a few lucky breaks in life it just means that he hasn't been keeping his eyes open.

T F 90. I am embarrased with people I do not know well.

133

T

T

F 91. I feel like giving up quickly when things go wrong.

T F 92. I sometimes tease animals.

T F 93. I sweat easily even on cool days

F 94. Even the idea of giving a talk in public makes me afraid.

T F 95. I dislike to have to talk in front of a group of people.

T F 96. I must admit it v/ould bother me to put a worm on a fish hook.

134

APPENDIX D

DEFINITIONS AND EXAMPLES OF CONTENT CATEGORIES

135

THERAPY CONTENT CATEGORIES 136

Indicates Understanding (lU) statements by the therapist which show that the thera­pist understands what the client has said or is feel­ing. The therapist may re­state what the client has said, state what the client seems to be feeling; or otherwise indicate that he or she understands where the client "is at."

Examples:

Interpretation (INT)

Examples

You seem to be saying you are confused about some of the things that have been happening to you. You seem to be feeling very sad now. You are wondering which way to go. It seems to be a choice between your boy­friend and your parents. A lot of things are going on right now. It's very dif­ficult to get it out.

a statement by the therapist which points out patterns and relationships in what the client has said or done; statements connecting un­conscious motives, ideas or conflicts which had pre­viously not seemed to be connected. An attempt to say why a client does some­thing.

You seem to have a tendency to seek close relationships, then when a closeness de­velops you lose interest. Perhaps your feelings of be­ing rejected by your mother results in your putting yourself down when ycu're with your girlfriend.

Self-disclosure (SD) 137

Confrontation (CF)

a statement made in the £irst person which is about a topic which is important to the person making the statement and which would ordinarily be private rather than public information.

Examples: I feel like my mother al­ways preferred my brother. My fiance and I aren't getting along very well when we're alone. I would not want anyone else to know, but I'm in bad shape financially. I'm having trouble with my sex life.

NOTE that self-disclosure can be made by either the therapist or the client, and the two should be rated separately.

a statement by the therapist V7hich invites or insists that the client consider some as­pect of his/her behavior that is preventing changes in be­havior or attitudes or inter­fering with the therapy pro­cess.

Examples

Positive Regard (PR)

Examples

It seems to me that your changing the subject con­stantly gets in the way of our work. You seem to me to be manipu­lating things in the session in order to get me to agree that you are right and your husband is wrong.

statements which indicate one person's respect for, good feeling for, or con­fidence in another.

I feel very good about the way you were able to tell your parents that you're an adult now without being hostile about it.

Directions (DIR)

138 It's really exciting to work with someone who makes such good use of what they have learned the way you do.

a statement which gives the client instructions or ad­vice.

Examples: I think you should have a pillow fight with your hus­band. Let's talk about your re­lationship with your brother now.

Encourages Exploration (EXP) a statement or question by the therapist which encour­ages the client to continue talking about a particular topic, to elaborate a point, or deal with an issue in greater depth. Encourages client's self-exploration.

Examples: Tell me more about that. How do you feel about that? Do you suppose that has some special meaning?

139

APPENDIX E

WRITTEN PRACTICE STATEMENTS

140 RATING PRACTICE

lU - Indicates understanding CF - Confrontation

INT - Interpretation PR - Positive Regard

TSD - Therapist self-disclosure EXP - Encourages Exploration

CSD - Client Self-disclosure DIR - Directions

lU INT SD CF PR EXP DIR

1. CL: It bothers me a lot. I don't think Cathy really loves me. I just don't think I'm important to her. She never tries to really understand how I feel about anything.

2. TH: You're upset and resentful because you're un­certain about whether she really cares about you.

3. Let's go back and talk some more about your problems with your husband.

4. CL: (shouting and pointing finger toward therapist) You use me just like all the rest. You want something from me. That's all - I know what I will do. I'll fail you. I'll lead you astray. You'll think I'm improving, but I'll fail. I'll be your failure case. You'll be responsible.

TH: I sense you question the whole experience and all of my motives. Right now you are angry with me because you feel I'm like others you've known, and you want to get back at me.

5. Right now I'm wondering why you come here. It seems to me you don't really talk about anything that's bothering you.

6. You seem to be feeling that you're ready to get out and get started using some of the things you've learned. And I feel like you are too. You've really made good use of this time.

7. Go with that, Mr. Carlin.

8. CL: Yeah, I really felt you thought I was treating my kids wrong when I hit them. I think they de­served it, but the look on your face really got me.

141 9. TH: It really hurt when I came across blaming you

for what happened.

10. TH: And now, we seem to be at the same place we have often been. You try to express yourself and I misinterpret what you mean. This is a pattern which occurs in many places - home, on the job, earlier with your parents.

11. I want you to make a list of all the pros and cons, make a decision based on the lists, tell someone about your decision, then carry through with it.

12. CL: Right now I'm really fouled up. My wife won't speak to me, I think I want to leave, but I'm afraid to be alone. I'm just confused.

13. TH: I sense in myself similar feelings of hurt and frustration. I want you to know I am with you and care.

14. Right now, it seems to me that you are looking for a "magic cure" and aren't very willing to make a commitment to really work on solving your problems.

15. Where do you suppose those feelings may have come from?

16. CL: I try to be nice to my stepfather, but he acts like he doesn't want me around.

TH: You're really upset, confused and disappointed. You wonder whether you're an important person to him.

17. I feel like you've really worked hard today - have really gone ahead and looked at and thought about some pretty tough issues.

18. There seems to be an inconsistency here between how upset you say you are and the things you're upset about, and I wonder if there isn't something more going on.

19. In your mind put your father in that chair and ask him that question.

20. This would seem to tie into your dreams of flying and crashing you have been having all week. It also related to your conflict with your father and his

142 dreams of achievement for you. You deliberately failed in school to avoid meeting his expectations. Are you again deliberately avoiding becoming what you want to become?

APPENDIX F

TAPED PRACTICE STATEMENTS

143

144 TAPED PRACTICE STATEMENTS

1. Could I share one of my own experiences like? This IS from the past. I know that I had a need, and maybe still do, to control, to own my wife. And looking back on it, I know that for me this was coming from my own point at that point from the feeling of not being sure of myself in my relation­ship with women.

2. On the conscious level I feel very good about my­self, but when I see, think I see others don't agree, I can get really worked up.

3. I lie sometimes to get by - to get out of explain­ing some failure.

4. I find it hard to transfer my emotions from one person who says they don't want them to someone else.

5. I'm really feeling very good about the way things are going now - you know with my drug problem, I feel like I've got control right now.

6. I feel insulted and hurt when others don't share the view I have of myself.

7. I wouldn't want anyone else to know this, but I'm seeing a shrink who's helping me deal with those problems.

8. Yeah, I know what you mean, there have been times when I have really had a hard time keeping my tem­per under control at home.

9. I've heard you say several things in the last few minutes which sound like you expect money to take care of all your problems.

10. Let's just stop for a moment and let me just feed back to you what I've been hearing so far. You've been saying you're in your new law apprenticeship. And yet the real issue is the man. And how can you be yourself and be a professional.

11. I'd like to suggest another frame of reference for looking at this. I hear you turning on and turning off this guy. I hear that you want it all one way or all another way in relationships.

145 12. This would seem to tie in to your dreams of flying

and crashing you have been having all week. It also related to your conflict with your father and his dreams of achievement for you. You deliberately failed in school to avoid meeting his expectations. Are you again deliberately avoiding becoming what you want to become?

13. Your negative experiences with your mother during your childhood are being kind of reenacted in you with women now. You want to get close, but when they begin to get closer to you, you set it up for them to reject you, before you can become really involved.

14. As I see you now, you seem very upset. Your hand is clenched. You'd like to do something right now, but you don't know what.

15. So V7hat you've been saying is that this business of someone owning you has really got you going emotionally.

16. CL: I try to be nice to my stepfather, but he acts like he doesn't want me around.

TH: You're really upset, confused and disappointed. You wonder whether you're an important person to him.

17. You feel right now you're responsible and you re­gret what happened. You're bewildered, curious and somewhat confused too.

18. You feel helpless and scared.... and you're at a loss what to do. At this moment you feel there is not any way out.

19. I've got to say I really like the way you make a decision that you feel good with.

20. I like the way you're responding now - soft and easy to hear. At the same time I like when you come across strong and sure of yourself. You come across to me in many different ways. And I guess, underlying that, my reaction to you is a very positive feeling.

21. I feel like you've really worked hard today - have really gone ahead and looked at and thought about some pretty tough issues.

22. At this point, I feel very confident that you'll keep on growing and making more and more of all your potentials.

23. You're the kind of person I really appreciate and enjoy working with.

146

24 I really respect your making a tough decision like that and sticking with it.

25. You've done that in the past sometimes, becoming quite that definitive that quickly. And my experi­ence is "is that where you're really at?"

26. Are you aware you're being defensive?

27. And what you do is again and again manipulate me, you manipulate your husband, you manipulate every­body to come to the rescue of the "damsel in dis­tress. "

28. Are you aware you've gotten away from talking about the issue we're trying to deal with....-

29. It seems to me that right now we may not be making very good use of our time here, because you don't seem to be interested in making any real changes in your life.

30. There seems to be an inconsistency between how up­set you say you are and the things you're upset about, and I wonder if there isn't something more going on.

31. Let's do an exercise we've done in the past. Stop for a moment. And would you just sort of close your eyes and imagine what you might like your relationship to be like.

32. In your mind, put your father in that chair and ask him that question.

33. I'd like for you to relax and imagine that situation

34. What are you feeling as we talk about this?

35. Could you explore that issue a little more?

36. Where do you suppose you've heard that before?

j T