Gender and self-disclosure revisited: personal and contextual variations in self-disclosure to same-sex acquaintances.
Male and female American students who differed in masculinity and in femininity self-disclosed to a same-sex stranger in contexts that made either social/expressive motives or instrumental motives salient. The results were consistent with the primary assertion that measures of sex role identity are better predictors of contextual variations in self-disclosure than is sex per se. Sex consistently failed to predict subjects' willingness to self-disclose, both within and across contexts, whereas femininity promoted self-disclosure in the context that was clearly social and expressive in character. Although masculinity failed to exert the expected facilitative impact on self-disclosure within the instrumental context, it nonetheless influenced the results; androgynous subjects, who scored high in both masculinity and femininity, were more self-revealing across contexts than was any other group.
Shaffer
D R
DR
Department of Psychology, University of Georgia.
Pegalis
L J
LJ
Cornell
D P
DP
D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D005783:Gender Identity; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008297:Male; D012650:Self Disclosure; D012737:Sex Factors; D014481:United States