Trust and self-disclosure

Abstract

My research focus is on intergroup self-disclosure and the roles of trust and impression management in these cross-group communication contexts. This research is grounded in the theoretical understandings of the Social Identity and Self-Categorization theories, both of which have been widely applied in explaining and predicting various forms of social or group-level behaviour. This research initially looked at identifying the role of trust in influencing people's self-disclosing behaviours. Specifically, I wanted to determine how trust in strangers can be formed on the basis of shared social group-memberships and how this would impact upon people's self-disclosure patterns. While previous research in this area of group-based trust in strangers was primarily conducted within the domain of outcome-based decisions, such as the distribution of valued resources, I wanted to extend this work to the domain of self-disclosure.

Through the five empirical studies reported in this thesis, I demonstrated that people's intentions and actual self-disclosing behaviours are highly determined by their self-perceptions within these interaction situations. Specifically, if people see themselves in terms of a particular group membership (i.e. Australian, student, woman, young person) within an intergroup interaction context, their communicative behaviours will reflect the norms and values of that particular social group. Communication intentions and behaviours, therefore, will be guided predominantly by the interests of the salient social in-group, and those of the interacting parties, as group members, rather than the interests of the specific individuals. Based upon preliminary findings from my first two studies, I went on to argue that people's willingness to self-disclose in an intergroup interaction situation may be highly determined by their desires to project a positive image of the salient in-group to an out-group audience.

Intergroup disclosure, therefore, may be characterized by an increase in willingness to share information that portrays the salient social in-group in a positive light, whilst at the same time withholding information that would paint a negative impression of the in-group.