title: Dispositional pathways to trust: Self-esteem and agreeableness interact to predict trust and negative emotional disclosure.
abstract: Expressing our innermost thoughts and feelings is critical to the development of intimacy (Reis & Shaver, 1988), but also risks negative evaluation and rejection. Past research suggests that people with high self-esteem are more expressive and self-disclosing because they trust that others care for them and will not reject them (Gaucher et al., 2012). However, feeling good about oneself may not always be enough; disclosure may also depend on how we feel about other people. Drawing on the principles of risk regulation theory (Murray et al., 2006), we propose that agreeableness-a trait that refers to the positivity of interpersonal motivations and behaviors-is a key determinant of trust in a partner's caring and responsiveness, and may work in conjunction with self-esteem to predict disclosure. We examined this possibility by exploring how both self-esteem and agreeableness predict a particularly risky and intimate form of self-disclosure, the disclosure of emotional distress. In 6 studies using correlational, partner-report, and experimental methods, we demonstrate that self-esteem and agreeableness interact to predict disclosure: People who are high in both self-esteem and agreeableness show higher emotional disclosure. We also found evidence that trust mediates this effect. People high in self-esteem and agreeableness are most self-revealing, it seems, because they are especially trusting of their partners' caring. Self-esteem and agreeableness were particularly important for the disclosure of vulnerable emotions (i.e., sadness; Study 5) and disclosures that were especially risky (Study 6). These findings illustrate how dispositional variables can work together to explain behavior in close relationships. (PsycINFO Database Record
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo.
authors.forename: Megan H
authors.initials: MH
authors.lastname: McCarthy
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo.
authors.forename: Joanne V
authors.initials: JV
authors.lastname: Wood
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo.
authors.forename: John G
authors.initials: JG
authors.lastname: Holmes
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008297:Male; D012649:Self Concept; D012650:Self Disclosure; D035502:Trust / Q000523:psychology*; D055815:Young Adult